A Haunting Love Affair
Every once and a while, a writer devises a ghost story that is not mere horror or thriller, but expands the eerie vibe to a more intimate otherworldly friendship or romance. Two of my favourites are the oddball buddy comedy Blackbeard’s Ghost (released by Disney in 1968) as well as the 1990 romantic dramedy simply titled Ghost. I now have a third excellent film to add to this rather abstract list – the 1947 motion picture The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
Batter Up
The fantasies that flow within a child’s mind are something special that I believe most people lose as they get older (when doubt, reality and logic come into play). Kids have the innate ability to dream about being a professional athlete, a space cowboy or any other bizarre profession (that would baffle the adult mind). The 1993 family sports film Rookie of the Year captures this unbelievable concept of a childhood wish becoming amazing reality.
Three’s Company
10 Cloverfield Lane is an unusual quasi-sequel to the 2008 handheld found-footage Godzilla-like monster movie Cloverfield. I watched the original in theatres back when I was at University, and it struck me as a rather exciting, large scaled horror movie. The gargantuan scope of that picture is interestingly scaled back to the complete opposite in this loose spin-off.
Star Pick with Stephen Harper
One of the more critically acclaimed films to come out of 2014 was the World War 2 drama The Imitation Game, which follows Alan Turing, a mathematical prodigy who builds a machine that can break the Enigma – a German device that decodes their secret military messages. Someone who wholeheartedly agreed with the praise this movie received is former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper – who proclaimed that it was easily his favourite film of 2014.
A Gringo Walks Into a Cantina…
His name, Lucky Gagin . . . or Robert Montgomery for those of you who are looking for the actor portraying this anti-hero. Montgomery, the iconic star, also tried his hand at directing (for the second time), with this rather unorthodox film-noir, Ride the Pink Horse. Our lead walks off a bus and into the city of San Pablo, a Mexican border town that is getting ready to host an annual fiesta.
Do Look Now
The horror genre has many incarnations. The two that seem to be most popular as of this point are the slasher flick (i.e. Saw) or the based-on-true-events-style ghost story – à la Paranormal Activity, The Conjuring and so on. From time to time we may see a more traditional, even Victorian-style ghost story such as Crimson Peak or The Woman in Black, but the film I am reviewing today is much harder to pigeonhole, as it is part searing psychological drama, which is then mixed with Gothic horror and a touch of thriller. It is Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 slow-burner of a picture, Don’t Look Now.