The Lovely Bones

Posted on March 19, 2016 by jaycluitt

Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is an ordinary 14-year old girl. She has a younger sister Lindsey (Rose McIver), an even younger brother Buckley (Christian Ashdale), a perfectionist father obsessed with building model ships in bottles (Mark Wahlberg), a stressed out mother (Rachel Weiz) who knits terrible headwear, an alcoholic grandmother (Susan Sarandon) and is developing her first crush on fellow schoolmate Ray Singh (Reece Ritchie). One day, however, Susia doesn’t make it all the way home from school. Whilst crossing a field near her family home she is lured into an underground bunker by her creepy neighbour George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), Harvey kills Susie, and the ramifications of this will throw her family into turmoil.
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Naked Lunch

Posted on March 11, 2016 by jaycluitt

A bug exterminator, Bill Lee (Peter Weller) discovers the supply of his bright yellow bug-killing powder is running low, because it turns out his wife Joan (Judy Davis) has been shooting it up like heroin. Bill gives the powder/drug a try too, leading to some rather bizarre possible-hallucinations involving giant bugs, alien-like creatures and who knows what else?
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Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Posted on January 31, 2016 by jaycluitt

In New York, a horrid freeloader by the name of Holly Golightly flitters through life utterly oblivious to how vile and despicable she is, mooching off everyone, never doing anything to benefit society and aiding criminals along the way. She receives a new upstairs neighbour, Paul Varjak (George Peppard), whom she insists on calling Fred because that’s how frustrating a creature she is. Paul is a semi-failed penniless writer working as a sort-of escort on the side. He is bemused by Holly’s lifestyle and inexplicably falls for her, despite her gold-digging tendencies and his own significant lack of funds.
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Come Drink With Me

Posted on December 31, 2015 by jaycluitt

Two arrested bandits are being transported by the governor’s son Chang (Wong Chung) when the bandit gang sets upon them, rescuing their members, slaying all of Chang’s men and taking him prisoner. Legendary warrior Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-pei) is sent to rescue Chang, who is also her brother, and along the way she receives help from a kung fu master living as a drunken beggar named Drunken Cat (Yueh Hua).
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Network

Posted on December 30, 2015 by jaycluitt

The life and career of long-serving news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) has taken a downward slide recently after his wife left him and he sank into drink, and his once high ratings have fallen to the point where his network, UBS, is forced to let him go. After being told he has just 2 weeks left on the air Howard broadcasts that in a week he will kill himself, live and during his show. Understandably he is immediately taken off the air by Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), a rising executive surreptitiously taking over UBS from the inside, however Howard’s best friend and manager Max Schumacher (William Holden) is able to allow Howard one last show, for a chance at a dignified farewell, which Howard takes and runs with, instead offering up some frank and hard truths the general public eats up. Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), UBS’ new head of programming, sees potential in Howard’s popularity, and adapts his news show to suit, but what is more the important, the ratings or their host’s sanity?
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The Last Seduction

Posted on December 30, 2015 by jaycluitt

Clay Gregory (Bill Pullman) has successfully acquired $700,000 via a dodgy drug deal, but he wasn’t expecting his wife Bridget (Linda Fiorentino) to run off with it whilst he was in the shower. She flees New York City and lays low in the small town of Beston in Buffalo, aware that if she spends any of the money and her husband catches up with her he’ll legally own half of her belongings, and she can’t go back to New York or he’ll find her. So instead she settles down in Beston with the unassuming Mike (Peter Berg), a local man back in town after something went wrong with his recent marriage in Florida. Mike wants out of Beston, and Bridget knows just how they can help one another out.
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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 →

Katniss Sniddlegrass and the Cauldron of Mockingjays

Posted on December 5, 2015 by jaycluitt

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers everywhere!

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in the world of Panem, and land rife with civil unrest. 74 years ago Panem, which is split into twelve working-class districts and one wealthy capitalist Capitol, was host to an uprising, during which the unruly numbered districts were defeated by the Capitol’s military powers, and during which District 13 was destroyed. As penance for this act, every year the Capitol holds an annual Hunger Games, for which a boy and girl aged 12 to 18 from each district are randomly selected, trained, presented to the public and thrown into a specially made arena to fight it out to the death, until only one player survives. Katniss lives in District 12, and the when her younger sister Primrose (Willow Shields) is picked in her first draw, Katniss volunteers in her stead. Her male counterpart is Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), a baker who only tangentially knows Katniss. Katniss asks her friend Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth) to look after her sister and emotionally frail mother (Paula Malcomson).

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Nashville

Posted on November 22, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

In Nashville, Tennessee, the birth-place of country music, several story arcs cross paths and words over 5 days, leading up to a big musical celebration and presidential election rally. 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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