Simon's Movie Reviews

The life of rock stars is very fascinating and often highly absurd. Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap (1984) captures that absurdity perfectly by going through all the tropes of the rock’n’roll world through the lens of a fake documentary. The band members are played by actors, but their mannerisms and anecdotes sometimes feel pulled from real-life rock legend. Plus, the movie popularized the expression “dial it up to 11”, which I think we can all agree is one awesome expression. It’s been a while since I first saw This Is Spinal Tap , but I remember laughing a lot while watching it with my brother. Ever since I have noticed its influence in many facets of pop culture, such as how the Defense against the Dark Arts teachers in the Harry Potter don’t last more than one year. Without it we also wouldn’t have Andy Sandberg’s comedy Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping which does for pop music what Reiner’s film did for rock and roll. Then of course we have the cast, a who’s who of ...

What do you get when you mix buckets of fake blood, creative camera operators, the humour of the Three Stooges, and a man with the most recognizable chin in Hollywood? You get Evil Dead II (1987), the horror classic that somehow manages to remake the original in the first 15 minutes and yet feel entirely original. Even though it is mostly set in a cabin in the woods, that staple location in the horror genre, it feels like a roller coaster ride. This is especially true once the film's hero, the scrappy Ash Williams, embraces the madness by arming himself with a sawed-off shotgun and attaching a chainsaw where his hand used to be. "Groovy" indeed. This gore-soaked franchise has had a long run, starting off with one low-budget movie directed by a young Sam Raimi and then growing into two sequels, a remake, comic books and a TV show with three seasons. My starting point was the third entry, Army of Darkness, which moves the action to the Middle Ages with the same ...

An Elvis Presley movie is like an Elvis Presley album: it is reasonable to expect to get a lot of rock’n’roll music. However given the fact no one has ever compared the king of rock’n’roll with Sir Laurence Olivier one might wonder if there would be any good acting in an Elvis movie. I can’t speak for his entire filmography, but I found Jailhouse Rock (1957) to be a surprisingly good piece of acting from both the king and his supporting cast. The music is of course a rocking good time. I found this black and white piece of cinema history on iTunes last week and prior to that the only Elvis Presley movie I had seen was Bubba Ho-Tep , a movie in which Bruce Campbell plays an aging Elvis battling a mummy at an East Texas retirement home. Make of that what you will. My expectations for Jailhouse Rock, directed by Richard Thorpe, were low despite the fact there are plenty of good singers who have had successful acting careers. In a way you could say there is not much acting required...

When it came out in 2001 after almost going straight-to-video, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko earned the distinction of becoming one of the 21 st century’s first cult films. This was back in an era when cult status had to be earned through word of mouth, late night viewing on cable, as well as VHS rentals just as the DVD market was killing it. Kelly’s certainly has all of the ingredients required for underground discovery: a bizarre plot involving time travel, striking imagery, a soundtrack filled with hits of the era, a first time director and an eclectic cast. Looking back on the movie’s plot now one might think it’s the result of a fever dream. I know I watched this thing sometime in the mid-2000s, probably when it was playing on TV one night, and that it involved a jet engine falling from the sky and not smushing Jake Gyllenhaal to smithereens because a freaky-looking rabbit got him out of bed at the right time. I also remember that what bothered me the most was not the rabb...