My Week in Movies, 2015 Week 24

Posted on June 15, 2015 by jaycluitt

Don’t you just absolutely hate when you look forward to something since the very first moment you hear about it, then when the opportunity rolls around to experience it other elements of your life crop up and get in the way? Me too. As soon as I saw a trailer for the Lego Jurassic World video game I knew what my future would entail. I got a bonus last month, so treated myself to a pre-order. The game arrived on Saturday (Amazon put it in a giant box so it couldn’t be delivered on Friday and I ad to go collect it), and it’s still entombed within it’s cellophane wrapper. What has become of the world? Why must I be cursed with house guests and walks in the countryside?!? For what purpose to I burden myself with these time-consuming blogging goals, and why do I adhere to them instead of playing as a tiny plastic Muldoon!?! Why!?!?!?!?!? Anyway, here’s what I did do this week, most of which was tainted by the knowledge that there’s a game based on two of my favourite things, I own a copy, yet doing the stuff on this post got in the way of me even OPENING THE DAMN THING. Continue reading →

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Posted on June 15, 2015 by jaycluitt

It’s never a good sign when I begin my notes to a film with an exclamation of my distaste at what I’m seeing on screen, so the fact that the first scrawling for Tetsuo is “Gah!” should be viewed as a sign for bad things to come. This expression of shock and mild gagging was to a man, who apparently is named the Metal Fetishist (Shin’ya Tsukamoto, who also wrote and directed this), cutting a gouge down his leg and inserting a metal rod into it, parallel to the bone. Bear in mind last week I suffered a mild leg injury via bicycle accident (slamming on my brakes when a car turned without indicating led me to rake my leg down the metal grip-studs on my pedal, leaving me looking like I’ve survived a mild velociraptor attack), this visual did not go down well with me. Nor did the wound being filled with maggots. Delightful. The man who inserted the bar into his leg – which by no means impedes his ability to walk or run on it – seems to be turning into a man made entirely of scrap metal. Whether he is intending to or it is happening beyond his control is just one of the many questions Tetsuo throws up that I’m more than OK not receiving an answer to.
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The Sixth Sense

Posted on June 13, 2015 by jaycluitt

This review was originally written as part of my USA Road Trip series for French Toast Sunday.

Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is a troubled child. His inability to get along with others, multitude of secrets and general oddness cause his single mother (Toni Collette) to despair. Things start to look up however when Cole starts seeing noted child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) who, after being shot recently by a former patient Crowe evidently failed to help, is now wary of the similar symptoms Cole is showing. Eventually, Cole and Malcolm grow close enough for the youngster to reveal his big secret, which might just help Malcolm overcome some problems of his own.

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The Wolf of Wall Street

Posted on June 10, 2015 by jaycluitt

Back in 1987, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) was an ambitious up-and-coming stock broker on Wall Street but, on the day he received his broker’s license, h also lost his job to the infamous Black Monday. Starting from the bottom, he discovered the wonder of penny stocks, which were much cheaper but garnered the broker a far larger share of the profits, allowing Jordan to quickly create his own company – later named Stratton Oakmont – and rise up the ranks to becoming a ludicrously wealthy hedonist with a penchant for every kind of narcotic available, and many that aren’t. However, Jordan’s wealth and the corrupt manners in which it has been accrued soon come to the attention of the FBI.
midget Continue reading →

My Week in Movies, 2015 Week 23

Posted on June 8, 2015 by jaycluitt

I spent a grand total of three hours this past weekend looking at a computer screen (two of which were whilst podcasting) so please forgive the lack of content lately. I had what I call a gown-up day yesterday, in that it was mostly spent gardening. It would seem that despite my best efforts an ever-growing Lego collection, I am on an unstoppable route to become an adult, hence why the lawn-mowing mission somehow evolved into a 7-hour weeding session, resulting in sore bones, aching joints, calloused fingers, numerous bug bites and an unintentional sunburn. Yes, adulthood has it all.

Seeing as we’ve now entered June and 2015’s halfway point is only three weekly posts away, I’m going to make it a mission to be caught up on not just most, but ALL of my goals by the time My Week in Movies, 2015 Week 26 rolls around. The second half of the year will be harder anyway, due to how I weighted the scheduling of the 2015 New Releases, so if I’ve got any hope of completing it all I need to have a line of six green marks by mid-year. So what does that entail? Well, I’m already more than caught up on the TiVo movies, so none of those need to be seen, but I need to watch five 2015 Movies (which will include: Burying the Ex [screener for Blueprint: Review], The Voices [screener for my own site], Coherence [dispatched from LoveFilm today] and Jurassic World [DINOSAURS!], and watch-and-review one Kate Winslet movie (I’ll be submitting Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for July’s Lambcast Movie of the Month, and even if it doesn’t win I’ll be making a bee-line for it anyway, with Little Children as part of my French Toast Sunday Road Trip later in the year), one “Bad” movie (haven’t decided yet, maybe Tetsuo), seven Nominated Movies (Including the already-seen-but-not-yet reviewed La Grande Illusion, The Tree of Life and Picnic at Hanging Rock, as well as the to-see-because-it’s-Terry-Gilliam-month-over-at-FTS Brazil) and four 1001 Movies, which will be easy if I do all the other missions because that’ll be more than covered then. Maybe I should stop writing this post and go review some more movies! Here’s what I watched this week:

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The Phenix City Story

Posted on June 8, 2015 by jaycluitt

This post was originally written as part of my USA Road Trip series over at French Toast Sunday.

Phenix City, Alabama, 1954. The city, just across the bridge from Georgia’s Fort Benning, has been at the mercy of mob rule for a hundred years. The town officials all turn a blind eye due to either being on the pay roll or fearing the consequences of standing up for themselves, with town attorney Albert Patterson (John McIntire) only getting involved for which ever side hires him in various disputes. A small band of townsfolk regularly picket and protest the syndicate, but have always proved ineffective. That is until Albert’s son and war hero John Patterson (Richard Kiley) returns home with his wife and children. Upon seeing the state of his home town, and witnessing the brutality of the mob’s men against those that dare oppose them, John sets about trying to clean the place up, but he can’t do anything without his father’s help.
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My Week in Movies, 2015 Week 22

Posted on June 1, 2015 by jaycluitt

I watched Guardians of the Galaxy again on Saturday night. We started watching something called Life of Crime, starring Tim Robbins as an arrogant, wealthy drunk whose wife (Jennifer Aniston) is kidnapped by Mos Def and John Hawkes, but he doesn’t want to pay the ransom because he was going to divorce her anyway. Sounds mildly interesting, with a bunch of actors I enjoy – Will Forte, Isla Fisher, Kevin Corrigan and Mark Boone Junior are all in there somewhere too – but 10 minutes in Aisha and I were already bored and checking our respective phones, plus a 5.8/10 on IMDb didn’t bode well, so we bailed and watched Guardians. When I saw it in the theatre last year I loved it. At that point it was one of the best films I’d seen all year, and I raved about it on the Lambcast episode dedicated to it. It was quickly added to my prospective Christmas list, and I was overjoyed to find the Blu-Ray under the tree. I was hard pressed to find anyone with many problems with it, and couldn’t wait to see it again. Then I watched it my partner and her parents. They were all relatively lukewarm on the experience, and I found myself in a similar situation as I had the year before. When I saw Pacific Rim in the cinema back in 2013, I left proclaiming it to be my new favourite film (As an exaggeration, in truth no film can be thought that highly of until I’ve seen it at least twice, with the viewings being at least 9 months apart from one another. Yes, I’ve dictated myself a set of rules through which I allow myself to enjoy things. And yes, I know how absurd that is.). I subsequently got Pacific Rim for Christmas, watched it with my partner and her family, they all hated it, I suddenly didn’t like it much any more, and haven’t gone back since. My second viewing of Guardians brought me down not to the same level of dismissal as the potential in-laws, but somewhat closer than I had been.

It was my partner’s idea to watch it again this past weekend, and I didn’t hesitate because I still remember that first viewing, and I hoped her opinions would improve second time around. They did, she rather enjoyed it, but alas I did not. There was something missing, some spark of creativity and innovation that had dissolved and withered away since that first viewing. I found myself watching this vastly entertaining blockbuster, previously lauded by myself for its witty script, its deft handling and shaping of unknown characters, its ability to introduce a frankly ridiculous amount of new locations, people, items and mythology without feeling overstuffed or confused, and this time around I was bored. The jokes fell flat. The plot was dreary. Even the soundtrack had lost its appeal. Something has happened in my mind that seems to prevent me from enjoying something I loved in the past. And now I’m stuck with a quandary. Do I give it a few months – maybe even a year or so – and watch it again, in the hope that I’ll rediscover what I once saw? Or in doing so will I continue the ever-steepening downward slope of my appreciation for the film, evolving from outright love, through emphatic enjoyment and now sitting in disappointed mundanity? Will a fourth viewing make me actively dislike it? Help! Continue reading →