Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder star in Mel Brooks’ Oscar winning comedy The Producers. Scoring the Academy award for Best Original Screenplay, this one is a hoot from beginning to end. It also saw Wilder get a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Mostel stars as Max Bialystock, a producer, who will do anything to make…
Tag: Nazi
TIFF 25: Nuremberg dir. James Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt wrote and directed the powerhouse film that is Nuremberg. Using The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai as it’s basis, Vanderbilt grounds the film in facts and strong performances. Front and center in those performance is Russell Crowe who turns in what is arguably his best performance in years. Crowe plays Hermann Goring,…
Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943) – Roy William Neill
Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Watson (Nigel Bruce) are back in action, confronting and dealing with more World War II espionage as Sherlock Holmes heads to the new world. Not even using a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story as a launching point, the story is short, simple, and honestly, didn’t really need Holmes’ insight. A British…
Top Secret! (1984) – Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams
It’s been a couple of decades since I last watched Top Secret! I remember from my time working in a video store that it was a perennial favourite of my friend Ted. And with the passing of Val Kilmer, I felt it was definitely time to take it in again. And wow, did I laugh….
The New Doctor Who Adventures – Timewyrm: Exodus (1991) – Terrance Dicks
The second novel in the New Doctor Who Adventures continues the Seventh Doctor and Ace’s story, in fact this one continues the Timewyrn story that began in Genesis. The novel opens with the Doctor and Ace arriving in England in 1951, following the events of World War II. Unfortunately, someone or something has changed the…
The Guns of Navarone (1961) – J. Lee Thompson
I’m going to go on the record here before I write this one up. This is the first time I have watched The Guns of Navarone. I watched the semi-sequel, Force 10 From Navarone because it was Harrison Ford, sure, but never saw the original. I buckled up and settled in for an incredibly tense,…
Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny (2023) – James Mangold
James Mangold is not Steven Spielberg. No one said he was. But stepping into a film series whose other four instalments were directed by Spielberg, comparisons will be drawn as Harrison Ford grabs his whip and fedora and settles into the iconic role of Indiana Jones one last time. There are lots of things to…
Every Which Way But Loose (1978) – James Fargo
When I was a kid, there was just something really fun about Every Which Way But Loose, a film that follows blue-collar Philo (Clint Eastwood) in his pursuit of a country singer, Lynn Halsey-Taylor (Sondra Locke) accompanied by his rescued orangutan, Clyde, his pal, Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) and Orville’s new gal pal, Echo (Beverly D’Angelo)….
Fringe (2010) – The Bishop Revival, and Jacksonville
Glen Whitman and Robert Chiappetta penned The Bishop Revival which first aired on 28 January, 2010. Someone is using a toxin to target specific groups of people and as Olvia (Anna Torv), Peter (Joshua Jackson), and Walter (John Noble) investigate, they realize that it is someone using an old formula. One that was created by…
Lancaster: The Forging of a Very British Legend (2020) – John Nichol
I’ve always been a fan of history, it was one of my favourite classes in school. I would delve into it and try to imagine and conjure the world these people lived in, instead of simply memorising and delivering names and dates. When it comes to reading historical nonfiction I get a little reticent, because…
The Mind Reels 