Simon's Movie Reviews

On paper David Fincher’s Seven (1995) sounds like just about every other serial killer movie that came before. You have the senior detective inching his way towards retirement, the hotheaded rookie, and the killer murdering people in the dark streets of the city according to his own twisted logic. Then the movie gets to THAT ending and the answer to the question: “WHAT’S IN THE BOX!?” Fincher and writer Andrew Kevin Walker could have just made a standard serial killer movie with great performances and dark street corners, but by making that uncompromising conclusion they delivered one of the best films of the 1990s. It is a good thing the movie was made before the rise of social media, because the ending might have been spoiled for many viewers. When I rented the movie in the early 2000s I just knew it was a movie about a maniac who kills people according to the seven deadly sins, I knew nothing about the content of a certain box. Therefore it was a genuine surprise for me to se...

The comedy Duck Soup (1933) came out over eight decades ago, and yet its influence can still be seen in pop culture today. Starring all four of the iconic Marx Brothers, this is the comedy that made the ultimate “mirror scene” in which Harpo comes face to face with Groucho and tries to imitate his every moves in order to convince Harpo he is actually seeing his reflection and not an intruder in his bedroom. Over the years the scene has been recreated in Bug Bunny cartoons, Mickey Mouse cartoons, and an episode of Family Guy . A slightly less family friendly example of the film’s influence is how Rob Zombie used some of the characters’ names for his horror movie House of 1000 Corpses ( 2003) and its sequel The Devil’s Rejects (2005). Clearly you can’t accuse Mr. Zombie of not having a sense of humour. I have not seen House of 1000 Corpses because I don’t see the entertainment value in a bunch of teenagers getting massacred by rednecks, but I did enjoy the creativity and thrills o...

I will never go to the opera, but I consume movies like food so watching Milos Forman’s Amadeus (1984) is probably the closest I will ever get to spending a night at the opera. There have been plenty of biographies about singers and artists, but most of them are about rock musicians who ascend to greatness before crashing and burning because of their drug addiction. The life of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart doesn’t feature any cocaine-fuelled downfalls, but it still has plenty of drama courtesy of a scheming competing artist straight out of a Shakespeare play. The movie was a massive critical hit when it was released in the 1980s and made a star out of F. Murray Abraham as the man planning Mozart’s downfall. It also had the unfortunate side effect of having him be pigeon holed as a villain for many movies to come, something that was referenced in the action movie parody Last Action Hero . In that meta movie within a movie the young protagonist tries to warn Arnold Schwarzene...

Westerns traditionally portray Native Americans as either vicious antagonists or sidekicks for the hero. Even though it stars a white Hollywood movie star in the lead role Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990) must be credited for being one of the few films in which Native Americans are portrayed as a group of people with their own culture and customs. When a technologically advanced civilization encounters a less advanced culture, the less advanced one always ends up being absorbed by the more advanced civilization, but if there is only one member of that advanced civilization facing the less advanced one then that one member must either fight them and lose, or actually learn about them and adapt. Seeing the movie for the first time it really plunges you into the old American west. With a 180 minute running time it may come off as slow moving at first, but that is actually the point. When Costner’s character is isolated on the American plains he has no one to talk to so the...

If a movie is going to have a complete dick as a protagonist, said dick better be played by one charming movie star like say, Jack Nicholson. Hence the success of As Good As It Gets (1997) James L. Brooks’ comedy-drama in which Nicholson plays reclusive New York City author Melvin Udall for whom good manners is a foreign concept. Melvin does many bad things throughout the story, the first one being throwing a small dog down a garbage chute. Luckily for him and the audience, Helen Hunt is his favourite waitress and she does end up melting his icy heart revealing a more or less kind man. It’s cheesy, but it works and it is often hilarious. This was one of my first Jack Nicholson films and it came out right around the time I was living in Santiago, Chile, because of my dad’s job. As transplanted Canadians living in a Spanish-speaking country we of course had to learn to speak the local language and luckily for us the American movies came out in English with Spanish subtitles. So wh...

Odds are you know the story of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs by heart, and the odds are greater still that the first you became familiar with the story was when you saw the 1937 Walt Disney animated musical, directed by David Hand. The Brothers Grimm were the ones who first popularized fairy tales in the 19 th century, but it was the creator of Mickey Mouse who created the versions we all know in the 20 th and 21 st century. Comparing the work of the Brothers Grimm with the cheerful films of Uncle Walt is like comparing Game of Thrones to Frozen : they both feature princesses and elements of fantasy, but one has a lot more blood and murder. Of course by removing the more mature parts of the Grim fairy tales and using colourful animation as well catchy tunes to tell the story, Walt Disney pictures managed to reach millions of viewers and cemented their movie as the definitive version of the fairy tale. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was Hollywood’s first full-length animate...

Despite being a commercial failure when it was first released, Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000) is the kind of movie that can easily please every audience member with its humour and performances. That being said you might find a lot more to enjoy or indentify with if you are either a fan of rock music or have an interest in journalism because the movie focuses on a young reporter imbedded with an up-and-coming rock band in the early 1970s. Since the movie is based on Crowe’s own experiences touring with big name bands in his youth it gives a very accurate behind the scenes look at that unique, entertaining, and sometimes damaging world. The first time I tried to watch the movie was during movie night when I was still living in my mom’s place and it was my older brother’s turn to pick the movie. Unfortunately this was still the days of renting DVDs and some nimrod had scratched the disc so about ten minutes into the movie we gave up because the image kept screwing up. Fast fo...