Simon's Movie Reviews

The average moviegoer will know Peter Sellers solely for his work in The Pink Panther franchise, but devout film fans will know one of his best performances was in Hal Ashby’s Being There (1979). Sellers was a performer who could easily inhabit colourful characters, whether that was the bumbling inspector Clouseau or the deranged Dr. Strangelove, but the character of Chance the gardener in Ashby’s film is a person who almost has no personality to speak of. Yet Sellers’ performance and the situations in which the character is plunged ended up making Being There a memorable send off, as it was Sellers’ last film. The reason I know it was his last film is because I learned it from watching his biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers in which he his portrayed by Geoffrey Rush. In that movie, whether it is 100 per cent accurate or not, Sellers pursues the role of Chance in Being There with great enthusiasm because he saw it as chance to prove he could play something other than a...

Movies have always had a dream-like quality with the fluid editing, lighting, and impossible situations. Therefore it is only natural for some movies to create a nightmare atmosphere, and in 1984 Wes Craven took that concept to the next level with A Nightmare on Elm Street featuring one of the scariest villains in cinema history, the disfigured Freddy Krueger. It’s already a horrible scenario to have a maniac is chasing you down a dark alley, but what can you do when the alley is your own mind? With his fedora, stripped sweater, metal claws, and sick sense of humour, Krueger has become ingrained in pop culture ever since he began killing teenagers in their nightmares back in the 1980s. The fact that there have been over half a dozens sequels and a remake has helped keep the character alive, and it has also had the unfortunate effect of lessening his impact. If there is one thing that will make a supernatural monster less scary it is the tenth instalment in his franchise. Still, o...

Ever since it was discovered people would pay to see movies, Westerns have been popular in one form or another with many towering American actors willing to strap on a pair of six-shooters and ride into the sunset. I have a preference for Clint Eastwood’s movies, but John Wayne can definitely boast being the king of the genre. His politics off-screen became too far to the right for many audience members as time went on, but he remained an American screen hero until his dying day. In The Searchers (1956), one of many films he made with master director John Ford, Wayne does not play a hero or a straight-up villain, but rather a man caught in between because of his intentions and quest for vengeance. This is what makes this John Wayne movie a great movie whether you like Westerns or not. Some movies are so good you could write essays on them, which is exactly what I did with The Searchers while spending a semester at the University of British Columbia in 2009. The class was Hollywood...

Goldfinger (1964), one of four Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton, is the one that set the template for the rest of one of the most successful franchise in history. Dr. No was the first, but it was a small first step. From Russia With Love is great, but it can pass as a regular Cold War spy film. With Goldfinger however, we get the cold open followed by a song interpreted by a popular artist, a villain with a dastardly plot, a henchman with a special weapon, life-saving gadgets provided by Q branch, an Aston Martin, and a vodka martini; shaken, not stirred. Then of course you have the women. I know it was the 60s, but seriously, Pussy Galore? As I grew up in the 90s, my first Bond was Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye , after which I was hooked. I then spent hours playing the best-selling game on Nintendo 64, I watched every new movie on the big screen, and I made it my goal to get every Bond movie on VHS, from Sean Connery to Timothy Dalton. I got a an illustrated book detailing a...

If you want horror movies that are psychologically disturbing and scratch the surface of the human psyche, go back to the 1970s when you had filmmakers who explored what made people tick. Although Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) does feature a serial killer and an explicit sex scene (for the time) it deals with themes of grief, the otherworldly, and the impact the death of a loved one can have on a relationship. This is one of those thrillers with a twist that make you rethink everything you have seen before, and because it is so famous it was spoiled for me before I got to see it. I saw the ending as part of those 100 Scariest Movie Moments list, so it wasn’t as scary or powerful when I saw the film in its entirety last year on Netflix, but I was still impressed by the technical achievement. Also given the story deals with premonitions, you could say it is slightly appropriate to know the fate of one character as the big moment approaches. Right from the beginning you...

They say to understand someone else you should try to walk a mile in their shoes. With Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie (1982) Dustin Hoffman got to get a glimpse of what women in the acting industry go through by playing an actor who pretends to be a woman in order to get a role and of course a good paycheck. Given what we know today about the gender pay gap between men and women in Hollywood, this makes the whole premise of Toostsie even funnier in an ironic way. The concept of men pretending to be women has of course been a premise for many comedies, some crude ( White Chicks ) and some classics ( Some Like it Hot ). One of the first movies I saw in that sub-genre was Mrs. Doubtfire , which some people felt was ridding on the coattails of Tootsie . When I got to watch Tootsie a few years ago when it was playing on TV I sort of understood that point given the similarities in plot. However Pollack’s film has a lot more interesting things to say, some about working actors, and many abou...

Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) is fascinating for many reasons, the most obvious being its reverse order that brings the viewers back to the beginning. Or is it the ending? That this was only Nolan’s second film proved this guy is a master storyteller, which is probably why Warner Bros. went to him to resurrect Batman after Joel Schumacher had buried it under layers of campiness in Batman and Robin . The protagonist of Memento probably sees himself as a hero since he is trying to avenge the death of a loved one, but as Nolan would shows in his Dark Knight trilogy sometimes revenge is not black and white. I first saw the film while I was studying at the University of Sherbrooke and it was being shown in the local film club as part of a double feature along with Nolan’s first movie Following , which seen together can spark interesting conversations about morality. One film has a character following strangers and getting into all sorts of trouble. The second is about a mentally...