By Nick Maylor (****) “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” -Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018) is a non-stop thrill ride that encompasses all the best attributes of the series. It also serves as the greatest example of why the Oscars are long overdue for the introduction of an award…
By John H. Foote (****) Joaquin Phoenix is having one of those dream years for an actor, everything he does is golden. Earlier in the year he gave a superb, haunted performance in You Were Never Really Here (2017) portraying a brutal hit man sent to rescue a young girl being held in a sex…
More melancholy, less fizzy but still a good time. By Alan Hurst (**1/2) I know. The first Mamma Mia! (2008) was not a good film. Shots didn’t match, the songs were shoehorned into in places that didn’t always make sense and the plot had holes to spare. But it was fun, it was pretty and…
By John H. Foote THE APOSTLE (1997) (****) Imagine being Robert Duvall in 1984. He had by then won an Oscar and awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics as Best Actor and was hailed as one of the greatest actors in American film history. He had appeared…
By John H. Foote (****) Released earlier in the year to strong reviews and great worldwide box office, Ready Player One (2018) was an awe-inspiring movie which drew on the last thirty years of pop culture, bringing them to vivid life in a mysterious virtual world called the Oasis. Thus far this year, this might…
By John H. Foote (****) Finally, of the great films about the war in Vietnam comes to Blu Ray! One of the best films of Brian De Palma, a brilliant director makes its way to Blu Ray, to be seen as he intended. Ten years after Apocalypse Now (1979) rolled on movie screens, the definitive…
By John H. Foote Skyscraper is like a piece of cotton candy, tasty, even exciting, but it melts fast and you forget about it until the next time. Kind of a merging of Die Hard (1988) with The Towering Inferno (1975) it is, surprise an action thriller loaded with huge action sequences, great visual effects,…
By John H. Foote (****) Released in March, this exceptionally original horror film did very well at the box office and with film critics who praised the taut, tight direction of actor John Krasinski, and the performances of the entire cast. The opening moments invite us into this world, earth, but something has happened. The…
By Alan Hurst June 22, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of Judy Garland. She was only 47, but seemed to have packed multiple lifetimes into that short span of years. She had achieved significant success in films, records, on stage, and on television, but the well-known struggles were equally part of her…
By John H. Foote (****) The first film Sofia Coppola directed after her brilliant, career altering Lost in Translation (2003) was her dream project on the young queen, Marie Antoinette. Armed with an Oscar for her Screenplay, and a nomination for Best Director for Lost in Translation (2003), The first American woman to be so…