Johann Koehler

The Hollywood staple in sports films is typically inextricable from some facile metaphor about the American Dream: pure determination predicts real success. Work hard, and you’ll make it on to the team. Believe in yourself, and you can overcome racism. Train hard enough, and you may even defeat communism. Yet for this week’s movie recommendation, […]

After Ivan Reitman’s success with Ghostbusters in 1984, it took some cajoling to convince the team to return and make a sequel. While this week’s movie recommendation doesn’t succeed quite as well as the first in the series, Ghostbusters II (1989) nonetheless meets all the requirements for a wonderful Boxing Day spectacle in the run-up […]

Now that the wintry November weekends make staying indoors for whole afternoons acceptable, you might need a long film to wile away the day. It’s a perfect opportunity to go back and watch Stanley Kubrick’s period masterpiece Barry Lyndon (1975), based on the Thackeray novel of a similar name. The story unfolds in two acts. […]

Closing out the October fright-fest, this week’s movie recommendation is Ridley Scott’s wildly successful maiden voyage of one of the best haunted house franchises in movie history. It’s Alien (1979). The opening shot lingers on a wide open expanse of space. Instead of being a place of tranquil comfort, though, Scott’s outer space is an […]

The October Hallowe’en season of RBC’s Weekend Movie Recommendations begins. Keith and I will be devoting this month to writing about terrific and ghoulish films. And what better ghoul is there to introduce the theme than the most horrific of them all, the notorious Dr. Hannibal Lecktor? It’s Michael Mann’s 1986 film adaptation of Thomas […]

The stakes are high, the chips exchange hands, and dreams crash as quickly as the cards are revealed: it’s got to be Texas Hold ‘Em. This week’s movie recommendation is John Dahl’s film about the underground world of professional poker players, known as Rounders (1998). The story begins with Mike, played by Matt Damon, collecting […]

By 1993, Daniel Day-Lewis had cemented his reputation as one of the foremost young British talents in cinema. The method acting for which he had acquired the interest of the critics (and the consternation of the film crew) in Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot was deployed yet again in their collaboration on the film adaptation […]

Be prepared to buckle your swash and save the day in this week’s big-budget movie recommendation, as we’re going back to the 17th century in Richard Lester’s take on The Three Musketeers (1973). The plot is well-trodden ground: the feisty and ambitious D’Artagnan (played by Michael York), son of a dispossessed nobleman, dreams of joining […]

Rise, comrades, from your slumber! A rousing film of the people awaits you this weekend! Ok, maybe not. But at least it’ll give you a good chuckle. This week’s movie recommendation is Jacob Tierney’s recent offbeat independent Canadian film The Trotsky (2009). Leon Bronstein, played by the stoner-comedy staple Jay Baruchel, is a quirky high […]

Although writing reviews of remakes throughout last month was a lot of fun, there was one original that came to mind that I really wanted to review. The new month brings the opportunity to switch over and recommend the movie that inspired Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. It’s Anthony Mann’s Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). Many […]