By Alan Hurst Flipping channels a few nights ago we caught a few minutes of What’s Up Doc? (1972), probably my favourite comedy of the seventies. It was at the point in the film where Madeline Kahn – upset, wig askew – was loudly expressing her frustration with being treated so badly by her fiancé…
By Alan Hurst People don’t often cite the 1950’s as a great decade for film comedies because comedies usually took a back seat to all other genres during that decade. In order to combat what was happening with the new tidal wave known as television, movie studios introduced the “bigger is better” coda that would…
By Alan Hurst If you watch The Quiet Man through the filter of 2019, it could easily be dismissed as being a broad and overly sentimental comedy, hopelessly dated and filled with misogynism and superficial stereotypes. But to do that, you would deprive yourself of one of the most perfect movies director John Ford ever made,…
By Nick Maylor (***) With the news that Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Reboot has entered production, I decided that it’s time to look back on this raunchy classic. The new film (despite the title) is a sequel to this 1999 ensemble wherein Smith promises to one-up the celebrity cameo factor now that he…
(***) Chilling Today Because of Plausibility By John H. Foote Though dismissed by some critics upon release in 1983, through the years Martin Scorsese’s rather chilling, cautionary tale The King of Comedy (1983) has gained in prominence and is now recognized as one of the director’s best films. Released three years after a fan shot John Lennon dead outside…
By Nick Maylor (****) There’s a question that has been bothering me for about a decade… What business is it of a fifty-year-old lollipop man to know karate? Do you know what a “lollipop man” is? I didn’t. I thought it was a guy who sold lollipops. And now, context: That scene is just one…
By Nick Maylor Much like The Lego Batman Movie (2017), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is an animated superhero feature that is packed with laughs and will no doubt be warmly received by the kids. It is also reminiscent of The Lego Batman Movie in that the entire thing serves as an irreverent love-letter to the titular character(s), their history, and…
By Alan Hurst This is an exercise in pure nostalgia. Just like my favourite Christmas movies were primarily released or filled with a 1940s sensibility, my favourite TV episodes with a Christmas theme are primarily from the sixties and seventies, with a few more recent additions. Most of these are things my sisters and I…
By Alan Hurst With the release this year of Mary Poppins Returns (2018) there has been a resurgence of interest around the original Mary Poppins (1964) and Julie Andrews’ performance in that classic film. It’s the film that launched Andrews’ movie career and within a year she had overtaken both Doris Day and Elizabeth Taylor…
By Alan Hurst The Editorial Team at Foote and Friends on Film have been asked to come up with their top five holiday-themed films before Christmas. As I started to pull my list together (hoping that it wouldn’t overlap too much with some of the other lists), I was challenged in getting my choices down…