Simon's Movie Reviews

A classic of the Italian cinema and the Golden Palme winner of the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) is on many lists of the best movies of all times. It tells the story of Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) a journalist working in Rome who could be seen as one of the original paparazzi. His modern American equivalent could be a member of the TMZ network, but in 1960s Italy Marcello’s job looks much more glamorous although he still does a fair amount of celebrity hounding. Fellini is one of those filmmakers whose name is revered by other filmmakers who are also revered, yet I have only seen two of his movies including this one and La Strada (1954). I received both of them as a Christmas present on collector’s edition DVDs about seven years ago and was glad to be able to cross at least one more classic off my watch list. Personally I preferred La Strada , which is a much sadder movie, but I loved the lead actress whereas the character of Marcello in...

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shinning (1980) is a fascinating movie because it is a Stanley Kubrick film but in certain aspects it is disappointing because it is not entirely Stephen King’s The Shining. This is a perfect example of two great artists clashing because they are both very good at what they do and are also determined to do their own thing. Consequently the movie is in ways very different from the book on which it is based, and yet it is still a horror classic. One might even say a classic film, period, if only for Jack Nicholson’s manic performance. Kubrick’s adaptation came out 39 years ago and yet after close to four decades it remains an engrossing and frightening experience. I started hearing about it when I was in middle school because a teacher in my school was playing it for a class and word got around quick. Every now and then I would see clips of it on TV, or even in other movies because it has so many scenes that stand out. Eventually I bought a copy of King’s nov...

Some movies start off with a bang but with his 1958 film noir Touch of Evil cinema legend Orson Welles decided to start with three minutes and 20 seconds leading to the bang. During a tracking shot set in a U.S – Mexico border town we follow a car right after an unseen person has installed a crude bomb in the trunk. It’s a lovely evening with people having a good time and border agents diligently doing their jobs as they let the car cross over onto the American side. Then the bomb goes off, two people die violently, and suddenly it’s not such a good evening. That’s one way to hook in your audience. Some people resolve to eat better, quit smoking or do more exercise for the New Year. As we start off 2019 one of my resolutions is to try to watch more classics films, and even though I got a lot of great films as Christmas gifts I thought I would use my day off to check one classic film I had never seen off my list. Of course I am familiar with Orson Welles, a filmmaker so prolific...

Historical movies are often controversial because they tend to play fast and loose with the facts in order to prioritize spectacle for the sake of reaching mass audiences. I should know a lot more about the history behind Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans (1992) since it features the historical figure General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, a key figure in the history of Quebec City which I consider to be my home town. I don’t know if he is accurately portrayed, but the movie itself is an old-fashioned historical epic with romance, action and drama. Maybe I’ll read up on the history later. The movie itself is based on a novel that was published in 1826 by American author James Fennimore Cooper. I read the book a few years ago, but mostly because there was a free version online and I was curious to read a novel that dealt with that period of history. It was definitely not a page-turner, which is something Mann and co-writer Christopher Crowe must have had in mind when they were ...

The James Bond series is without a doubt one of my favourite movie franchises. These movies are two hours of pure fun filled with globetrotting adventures, impossible spy gadgets, femmes fatales and over-the-top villains. You always know what you are going to get with a Bond movie and that has been working well for audiences for decades. Yet after decades the continuity was getting very muddled in a 2006 the guardians of the Bond franchises released Casino Royale , which boldly restarted the franchise at zero with not just a brand new Bond, but also a Bond on his first mission. A risky undertaking, but as with most Bond missions it was a success. I had first discovered James Bond with Goldeneye , Pierce Brosnan’s first outing as the world famous spy, and then dove into the franchise by watching every movie starring Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, George Lazenby and of course Sean Connery who launched the series in the first place. It is an interesting franchise in that it reflects ...

It’s taken me years, but I have finally watched John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), just mere weeks before actual Halloween. What’s more, we are about one week away from the release of the next entry in the franchise, which acts as a direct sequel to the original and ditches about 10 movies worth of convoluted continuity, so my timing is just about perfect. Overall impression of the original: it’s a pretty simple story, but I can see why it’s a horror classic because it is very well executed. Even though I had never seen Halloween until yesterday it is one of those movies that you pretty much know the story without actually seeing it since it has become part of pop culture. Like with It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol in December, there are plenty of channels that are playing Halloween all day on October 31. There is also the fact there are a bunch of sequels to Carpenter’s original movie as well as a remake and a sequel to that remake. Of those I have seen Rob Zombie’s r...

It can be a bit weird watching movies that were shot decades ago as well as movies in which the characters work in your own profession. With His Girl Friday (1940) I get a helping of both cases since a lot of this movie is set in a newspaper office close to 80 years ago. Some things portrayed in the movie have changed, some things have stayed the same, and as with most movies set in a certain workplace some things are down right inaccurate. However there’s no denying this remains a hugely entertaining story thanks to the rapid-fire dialogue, the film’s humour and the chemistry between the two leads. I think I first saw His Girl Friday during a university course on classic movies, but I recently re-watched it to refresh my memory. Upon first viewing I was just a university student and now I have been working as a journalist for a few years. Since then the terms “fake news” and “alternative facts” have sadly become a part of the vernacular, and it was hard not to think of that while...