The Thin Blue Line

Posted on December 28, 2015 by jaycluitt

On Thanksgiving weekend, 1976, policeman Robert W Wood pulled over a car for driving at night with no headlights on in Dallas, Texas. The car was stolen, which Wood had no knowledge of, and sadly he was shot and killed, with the car peeling away as Wood’s partner, one of the first female officers in Dallas, fired shots after it. The police investigation led to 16-year-old David Ray Harris, who had reportedly stolen the car from his neighbour and later bragged to his friends about committing the crime, but he pointed the finger at 28-year-old Randall Adams, a man new in town planning to start a new job, whom Harris had given a ride to and spent the day with.
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Spellbound (1945)

Posted on December 27, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is a brilliant psychiatrist, but is lacking in bedside manner. She works at Green Manor amongst some quite sexist male colleagues and has never found love, until the new hospital director, Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck, and I’d love it if in E.R. Anthony Edwards played a Dr. Gregory Pecke, but alas life isn’t perfect) arrives to take over from long-term serving director Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll). Constance and Edwardes become close but his behaviour concerns her, particularly his outbursts whenever he sees dark parallel lines against a pale background and, in digging into his past, Constance discovers that Edwardes may not be quite who he seems. 12518_55 Continue reading →

The Conversation

Posted on December 27, 2015 by jaycluitt

In San Francisco, profession surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is working on his latest assignment, recording a discussion between a man and a woman in a busy courtyard. Having successfully recorded their conversation, Harry begins to grow suspicious that passing on the recordings to his employer may result in some dire consequences for those involved, as happened to Harry on another job sometime ago, which directly caused the murders of three people.
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Lolita (1962)

Posted on December 26, 2015 by jaycluitt

Professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) has a job as a French Poetry teacher lined up in Ohio in autumn, but until then he plans to spend the summer in New Hampshire, staying in the spare room of the widow Mrs. Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters). It’s clear Charlotte takes an instant liking to Humbert, but he is instead infatuated with Charlotte’s 14-year-old daughter Lolita (Sue Lyon), who relishes this sudden influx of attention.
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The Smiling Madame Beudet

Posted on December 23, 2015 by jaycluitt

Madame Beudet (Germaine Dermoz) lives an unhappy live being mocked and tormented by her husband (Alexandre Arquillière). He works all day as a cloth merchant and ignores his wife when he comes home. He arranges tickets for them for the theatre to a performance of Faust but, when she declines to go, he pretends he will kill himself with a gun he keeps in a top drawer. Evidently he keeps the gun unloaded and uses this trick often to mock his wife. However, when he goes to the show with his associate and his wife (Jean D’Yd & Madeleine Guitty), Mrs. Beudet loads the gun in the hope that the next time he pulls the stunt he’ll follow through and kill himself.
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Garden State

Posted on December 23, 2015 by jaycluitt

Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) is in a listless daze, working as a waiter/failed actor at a Vietnamese restaurant in Los Angeles when he receives a message from his father (Ian Holm) that his mother has died. Andrew returns home to New Jersey for the funeral, and ends up staying for a few days that will apparently change his life forever.
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Blind Spot 2016: Vote!

Posted on December 22, 2015 by jaycluitt

This year I’ve tried to take part in Ryan McNeil’s Blind Spot series over at The Matinee, wherein every month we cross off an unseen classic from our own blind spots. I’ve nearly finished, just got the last one to write up (The Conversation), and as it’s nearing the end of 2015 it’s time to decide what next year’s blind spots will be. And to do this I’m enlisting you fine folk to help me vote.

Below, and on the sidebar, there is a poll to vote for the films I’ll be watching next year. I’ll watch the 12 highest voted movies, so please be kind. They’re all taken from the 1001 Movies list, as indeed were this year’s. I’ll close the poll on New Year’s Day, and please vote for as many or as few films as you’d like.

Thanks for voting!

My Week in Movies, 2015 Week 51

Posted on December 21, 2015 by jaycluitt

This past weekend I decided to stop moaning and worrying about how many of my goals I’m going to miss and instead just get on with doing what I can. It’s unlikely – very unlikely – that I’ll complete at least two of them, but let’s try anyway, right?

Here’s what I’ve been watching this week: Continue reading →

Traffic

Posted on December 20, 2015 by jaycluitt

Two Mexican police officers (Benicio del Toro and Jacob Vargas) become embroiled in a corrupt drug investigation. Meanwhile a judge in Ohio (Michael Douglas) is tasked with heading the Office of National Drug Control, whilst his daughter (Erike Christensen) becomes more experimental with her own drug use. Even more meanwhile a DEA investigation (led by Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) arrest a dealer (Miguel Ferrer) and keep him in custody to testify in court against a drug lord, whose wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) suddenly finds herself having to deal with her husband’s way of living with the help of her lawyer (Dennis Quaid).
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The Wages of Fear

Posted on December 19, 2015 by jaycluitt

In an unspecified town in South America, a multi-cultural group of men strive for a means to leave their location, but none of them can afford to exorbitant fares for air travel, and they cannot earn much working for the town’s sole business, a major oil company. However, when the opportunity arises to earn big bucks transporting trucks full of barrels of unstable nitroglycerin 300 miles as quickly as possible, in order to cause an explosion to put out an oil fire, four of the men set out to get the job done.
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