By John H. Foote COMING HOME (1978) (****) Hal Ashby was a bonafide free spirit, a hippy who hated the system that held the power of making movies. He loved making movies, loved it with an unbridled passion, but he hated the suits that held the power to making those movies. During his most fruitful…
TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (****) By John H. Foote My wife was very close with her mother. Best friends. They could spend an entire day together, then call each other at night to chat some more. Ellie often went with us to various events, movies, plays, fairs, to hear the folk group Tanglefoot, and of course…
By John H. Foote SNUBBED ENTIRELY, BUT MASTERFUL NONETHELESS… Kevin Costner won an Academy Award for Best Director for his western epic Dances with Wolves (1990), which won six other Oscars including Best Picture, and saw the likable star nominated for Best Actor. This was very near the beginning of his career, when his baseball…
By John H. Foote When The Silence of the Lambs (1991) swept the major Oscars, Best Film, Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay, there was some griping about Jodie Foster winning again, just three years after winning for a The Accused (1988). Let me state here and now, her Clarice Starling is the heart and soul…
By Alan Hurst From a first viewing in the late 70s and then multiple viewings since, no other film of the horror/suspense genre has ever had the impact on me that Rosemary’s Baby (1968) has. It was a big hit when it came out in 1968 and it sill holds up today. It’s the perfect…
“Everybody’s talking at me, I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’, only in the echoes of my mind.” “Everybody’s Talking” (Harry Nilsson), 1969 It seems inconceivable to me that Midnight Cowboy (1969) celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The film is a time capsule film of what New York City was in the sixties, about…
By John H. Foote It was 8:30 am in June, 1998, when a small group of film critics, myself included were ushered into the old Uptown Theatre, one of Toronto’s greatest movie palaces. The cinema was cold, outside the sun already blazed in the stifling city heat. The publicist gravely, unsmiling handed us our press…