Films That Matter
Montreal Magnum
When it comes to car chase scenes, the one that is always highlighted, and for good reason, is from Peter Yates’ 1968 action thriller Bullitt starring Steve McQueen... but some eight years later, the city of San Francisco was replaced by Montreal, Quebec in this little known Italian production with quite the epic speedy sequence of its own, Shadows in an Empty Room (1976), directed by Alberto De Martino. Fusing this touch of Bullitt with a Dirty Harry style storyline – hence why it is called Blazing Magnum in some markets (including the UK), while also including a hint of the ever popular at the time 70s giallo for some murder mystery elements, the narrative follows gritty, hard as nails Ottawa cop Capt. Tony Saitta (Stuart Whitman) as he dispatches some bank robbers in his own city... before getting the tragic call that his much younger sister, Louise (Carole Laure – Sweet Movie), who lives in Montreal, has died under very suspicious circumstances.
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Fashionation
Last Night in SohoFebruary 4, 2022A deep dive into 60s Swinging London, or should I say ‘dream dive’, Edgar Wright follows up his 2017 hit Baby Driver with another film that gets its title from a song – Last Night in Soho (a 1967 single by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mich & Tich – I know, quite the band name). Set in the present day, Eloise ‘Ellie’ Turner (Thomasin McKenzie – Jojo Rabbit) is a fragile, mousy young woman who has immersed herself in 60s culture... constantly listening to records of the time, her dream is to bring the swinging era’s fashion back. Leaving for fashion school in Soho, she is still haunted by her mother’s suicide – something that happened when she was just a young child (in fact, she sometimes sees her mother’s spirit in the mirror).
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Fly By Knight
The Green KnightJanuary 10, 2022Fabled reverberations of distant past, a time when magic still filled the air... and men would quest to prove their knightly virtues, are brought to vivid life in writer/director David Lowery’s 2021 Arthurian era legend, The Green Knight. Almost ethereal in its nature – not due to some sort of fragility, but rather because it feels as if it is transcendent of this time... a wisp of lore echoing from distant past that ought be lost at the merest blink of an eye, it is akin to being transported back into a magic-tinged Medieval landscape. Lowery deserves much credit for brewing such a mythical auratic atmosphere. It is no easy feat being an Arthurian laureate, for you must know the earliest records dating back to Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century, through the long annals...
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Wipe the Slate Clean
Clean SlateJanuary 5, 2022Riffing on the gumshoe detectives of yesteryear, 1994's Clean Slate, directed by Mick Jackson, is a bit like a comedic and much less complex version of Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000). Poor Maurice Pogue (Dana Carvey) has a lot going on in his life: a former LAPD detective, the private eye will soon be taking the stand. . . as he witnessed a murder by a notorious one-thumb-missing gangster, Philip Cornell (Michael Gambon) – who’s always accompanied by two menacing bodyguards (Mark Bringelson and Christopher Meloni); though the supposedly murdered woman, Sarah Novak (Valeria Golino), has returned looking for the PI’s help – or is she simply a well chosen lookalike
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Christmas in Earnest
Ernest Saves ChristmasDecember 22, 2021A very different type of Christmas classic, 1988's Ernest Saves Christmas, directed by John R. Cherry III, is where season’s spirit meets slapstick comedy, saving Santa comes by way of snakes, and a taxi driver can concoct a plan to salvage Christmas morning for millions of youngsters. The third movie of the Ernest (Jim Varney) franchise finds the man driving taxi in Orlando (in fact, this was the first film to be shot at the new Disney/MGM Studios). Akin to limo driver Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber, his heart and soul is bigger than his brain. A huge lover of the holiday season, Ernest is pleased to give a man claiming to be the real Santa Claus (Douglas Seale) a ride.
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Calling All Demons
We Summoned a DemonOctober 29, 2021Reveling somewhere between cheesy 80s horror flick and Abbott and Costello buddy comedy slapstick, the 2017 short film We Summoned a Demon, written and directed by Chris McInroy, is six minutes of pure horror comedy goodness. Following a pair of less than cool guys, Kirk (Kirk C. Johnson) and Carlos (Carlos Larotta), they are really pulling at straws. . . as they’ve decided to attempt a satanic ritual to make the former a slick talking pick-up artist (of course, it’s all about getting a girl). After a ‘slight’ blood mishap, they inadvertently summon a glowing yellow eyed demon with horns that could qualify as overcompensating (John Orr).
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Home Is Where the Dark Is
The Night HouseOctober 27, 2021Almost as if Sigmund Freud, Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock got together to make a movie (Roman Polanski could probably be thrown into the group for good measure), 2020's The Night House lives in the realm of the double, the uncanny, as well as the horror found in grief and the chasm of nothingness it can bring with it. Written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, and directed by David Bruckner, the story follows teacher Beth (Rebecca Hall), the audience joining her immediately after the suicide of her husband, Owen (Evan Jonigkeit). Living in a bluff-top lake house that he himself built (the reflective water perhaps the first indication of the double), she might as well be out at sea. . . though she might not want that, as Owen killed himself on the water. And, when the darkness of night comes, Beth’s world feels like an encased glass tomb.