My Week in Movies, 2015 Week 30

Posted on July 27, 2015 by jaycluitt

Sometimes I hate that writing is a creative endeavour. I’ve always been much happier with numbers than I have with letters, and the solution to a maths problem is always achievable somehow, whereas compiling thoughts into cohesive paragraphs can often, for me at least, seem impossible. I get near a deadline, I get frustrated, I get moody and I wander round the house scowling and breaking things. So, this time, I’ve opted to cease staring at the 8 lines I’ve written in the past 90 minutes for my overdue Road Trip post on The Departed, and I’m writing this instead. Yes, it means I’m now behind on my Road Trip target, however it also means I won’t have to clean up any smashed glassware later this evening, so there’s pros and cons to everything. Fortunately, I’m on track with everything else and only need to review one other movie to still be on track next week, and it’s a film I’ve already watched this past week. This is a very good thing, because in the fast-approaching month of August I’ll be needing to watch up to 15 films for podcasting purposes, only four of which will be towards any of my goals, so I better get cracking on these. It’s a good thing they’re mostly all films I want to watch then. Here’s what I saw this past week:
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Do The Right Thing

Posted on July 23, 2015 by jaycluitt

This review was originally written for French Toast Sunday as part of my USA Road Trip series. It was also nominated for me to watch by Ryan McNeil of The Matinee, and is my submission for August for his Blind Spot series.

Brooklyn, 1989. On a particularly sweltering summer’s day, racial tensions simmer amongst the everyday lives of the inhabitants of a single street. Central to everything is Mookie (Spike Lee), a young, black, pizza deliveryman, working for the Italian-American Sal’s Pizzeria, run by Sal (Danny Aiello). As the day progresses and the temperature increases, everything threatens to boil over, and does so in a life-changing way for all involved. bugginout Continue reading →

My Week in Movies, 2015 Week 29

Posted on July 20, 2015 by jaycluitt

Expectations, don’t you just hate them? When you hear a lot of good things about something for a long time, from pretty much everyone, it’s hard not to anticipate good things, if not even great ones. Such is something I’ve dealt with this week, on both sides of the coin. Two films this week have been something of a couple of disappointments in comparison with how great I’d heard they were, whereas elsewhere a film I’d never even heard of turned out to be pretty damn wonderful. Here’s what I watched this week: Continue reading →

Close-Up

Posted on July 19, 2015 by jaycluitt

Hossain Farazmand is a journalist who has heard wind of a potentially great story. A man has been pretending to be Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and has convinced a family that if they help him out they will be in his next film. Farazmand plans to make this story a life-changing event in his career, and heads to cover the man’s arrest and trial.
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My Man Godfrey

Posted on July 18, 2015 by jaycluitt

During an upper class social event, a scavenger hunt breaks out, with one of the required items being a forgotten man, meaning a man forgotten by society, such as the homeless men living down by the river, in a dump area slowly being filled in for renovation. Two sisters, Cornelia (Gail Patrick) and Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard) head to the dump and find Godfrey (William Powell). Cornelia offends him, but Irene’s desperation to finally defeat her sister at something warms Godfrey to her cause, so he helps her out. However, when he is humiliated at the event and questioned as to the validity of his “forgotten” status, Irene takes pity on him and employs Godfrey as the family butler, before promptly falling in love with him.
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My Week in Movies, 2015 Week 28

Posted on July 14, 2015 by jaycluitt

I’ve spent most of this past week watching movies about time travelling robots because, as you can probably guess, the most recent episode of the Lambcast (posting later this week) is devoted to the Terminator franchise, celebrating (commiserating?) the release of Terminator Genisys (more on that later). As such, my regular scheduling has taken something of a temporary back seat, and I’ve gone and lost one of my green ticks, dagnammit. I am way ahead on some of the others though, so if you add everything up I’m ahead. Maybe spending a week watching robot feet crushing endless piles of human skulls wasn’t a massive loss after all. Speaking of which, why is it always pile of skulls in these films? I get that it looks more ominous, but it implies that either pre- or post-massacre the terminators divide up and sort out the various human body parts into different areas. Are there pyramids of pelvic bones somewhere? Piles of shoulder blades? Towers of femurs stacked up like an H. R. Giger Jenga set? Anyway, here’s what I watched this week:
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The Voices

Posted on July 13, 2015 by jaycluitt

Jerry is a nice guy. The nicest guy, in fact. He lives a happy life working in the shipping department of a bathroom fixtures company and longing to get to know Fiona from Accounting a little better, but spending the evenings living above a bowling alley with his dog Bosco and his cat Mr. Whiskers. Who talk to him. And tell him to kill people.
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The Kid with a Bike

Posted on July 12, 2015 by jaycluitt

Cyril Catoul (Thomas Doret) is a kid, who wants his bike. He left it at his father’s apartment, but no-one has heard from his Dad in a month. Cyril lives in an orphanage most of the time, but regularly escapes and goes searching for his father. On one such venture, when he goes to his father’s home and finds it empty and unrented, Cyril tries to gain protection from the kind people who run the orphanage by clutching onto a woman, Samantha (Cécile de France), who agrees to look after Cyril on weekends. She also tracks down his bike, from a man to whom Cyril’s father apparently sold it, but Cyril says this must be a lie, his Dad would never sell his bike, and even refuses to believe it even after he has found an advert his father posted selling the bicycle. Samantha tracks down Cyril’s father at a restaurant where he works, but he wants nothing to do with his son. Without a strong male role model, Cyril soon becomes embroiled in a small gang, led by Wes (Egon di Mateo).
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Fight Club

Posted on July 11, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

At the end of the 20th Century, men have lost their sense of place in the world. With no real sociological problems to concern them, the American working class males wander through life in a daze, controlled by their jobs and their society-spawned desire for the perfect magazine lifestyle. One such man (Edward Norton) finds solace from his insomnia in support groups for people with terminal illnesses, with this contrast to his own lack of problems finally allowing him to sleep at night. However, his world is rocked by the existence of Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), a fellow group-attending faker, and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a rather bizarre fellow with a penchant for soap, explosives, splicing pornography into family films and, of course, beating the crap out of other consenting men.
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My Week in Movies, 2015 Week 27

Posted on July 6, 2015 by jaycluitt

What’s the point in doing something if it’s not a challenge? Where’s the difficulty in completing something you’re already on track for? Why do I insist on making life more difficult for myself?

Last week I celebrated finally catching up with all my aims for 2015’s mid-year point, albeit a little more than a day late, so seeing as I’m all caught up it seems ~~stupid~~ fair to add another goal to that mission of mine (not forgetting the October-centric HitchcOctober celebration too). I’ve mentioned my USA Road Trip series I write for French Toast Sunday on a semi-regular basis, wherein I’m travelling across America by reviewing a film set in each state, and I’ve decided that this is a mission I’m going to finish this year, so I’ve added it to the list down below. My main motivation for finishing the project is because the film I intend to finish on can also be found on the lists of “Bad” movies nominated by Chip and Steve, as well as one of the Nominated Movies from one of my blogging friends, so I kind of need to finish it this year just to make that all happen in sync. Oh, and an update for anyone who is interested, which I’m guessing is not too many of you, but I’ve nom opened and begun playing Lego Jurassic World. I’m up to the T-Rex breaking out of the paddock in JP1, and so far I’ve loved all of it. You start any game with me playing as Robert Muldoon and you’ve got a fan. Plus, Ellie’s special ability is watering plants, because she’s a paleobotanist, and Alan can build dinosaur skeletons with trampolines in them. Genius. Here’s what I watched this week:
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