Amelie (2001) – Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The final recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of Pretty Woman is a film that is pure joy captured on film. Jeunet’s beautiful comedic romance brought Audrey Tautou to international attention, and did something that usually takes a lot of effort – got a North American audience…

South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season

Incredibly, this series just keeps getting better and better. South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season, recently re-released on blu-ray from Paramount Pictures took a spin in my player, and made me laugh throughout. This season, over the course of fourteen episodes, series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker pull out all the stops and make…

Fake Blood (2017) – Rob Grant

Whether Canadian film-makers Rob Grant and Mike Kovac movie is fact or fiction isn’t the point of their latest cinematic effort. What is important is the film’s subject matter, and the commentary it makes on film, violence in cinema and the responsibility of the film-makers. Opening Friday at the Carlton here in Toronto, Fake Blood,…

War of the Worlds: The Complete Series

Back in the late 1980s, I was first discovering classic science fiction film and was completely taken in by George Pal’s original War of the Worlds film from 1953. I was in my late teens, and as soon as I heard that there was a new series coming along picking up decades after the original…

Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) – Stephen King

Reading like a cross between Our Town and The Wolfman, Stephen King’s too short novella, Cycle of the Werewolf is on the Book Shelf this week. Serving as the basis of the 1985 film, Silver Bullet, Werewolf reads as a not fleshed out enough short story. That’s not to say it doesn’t work. It does….

South Park: The Complete Second Season

South Park’s second season came fast on the heels of the first season, but this time, there were eighteen episodes set in the snow clad Colorado town. To celebrate its twentieth anniversary, Paramount Pictures has re-released the early seasons on blu-ray, and I was eager to take a look at them. Despite my recall of…