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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Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Posted on May 26, 2015 by jaycluitt

Upon returning home from a trip, small town doctor Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) begins to suspect something is wrong. Whilst he was away, his nurse/receptionist informs Miles that he had a waiting room full of patients who all refused to tell her what was wrong, but now all these people are suddenly fine and well. Others complain that people they know aren’t whom they seem to be. On the outside everything looks fine, but there’s a feeling that something is missing. Then, one night whilst catching up with Becky (Dana Winter), an old flame back in town for the first time in 5 years, Miles is called out to an emergency. Friends of his, Jack and Teddy (King Donovan and Carolyn Jones), have found a body that seems to be in the process of forming an exact copy of Jack’s. Dun dun-duuuuuuuuun!
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Vinyl

Posted on May 17, 2015 by jaycluitt

Victor (Gerard Malanga) is a juvenile delinquent. He beats people up and dances a lot, but is apprehended by the police, who re-educate him via brainwashing, until he becomes a better person and less of a danger to society. Not that any of that matters, because this is easily one of the worst so-called-movies in existence. Continue reading →

Wuthering Heights

Posted on May 11, 2015 by jaycluitt

One stormy night, a traveller finds himself sheltering at Wuthering Heights, a rundown, morbid old house that we later learn used to be a home of joy and laughter. Warming himself by the fire, he is told by a servant the tragic story of Heathcliff and Cathy, which will apparently make him believe that ghosts can walk the Earth. Heathcliff, as a boy, was orphaned and then adopted from the streets by Mr. Earnshaw, who already had two children, Hindley and Cathy. The latter took a shining to the new boy, playing with him whenever possible and forging a firm bond, but her older brother saw this newcomer as nothing more than a stableboy, which is the position Heathcliff was reduced to when Mr. Earnshaw passed away and the property became Hindley’s by right. By this time, the adult Heathcliff and Cathy (Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon) are obvisouly in love with one another, but their positions in society prevent them from doing anything about it. When their wealthy neighbour Linton (David Niven) falls for Cathy too, Heathcliff runs away, but seeing as this is a romance movie you know he’ll be coming back, and that it probably won’t work out all that well for everyone involved.
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Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Posted on May 11, 2015 by jaycluitt

In London, real estate agent Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is sent to Transylvania to handle the transactions of Count Dracula (Gary Oldman), leaving behind his young fiancée Mina (Winona Ryder). Jonathan gets held up at the Count’s castle, and Mina longs for the man she loves, whilst her friend Lucy (Sadie Frost) picks between three suitors, the gallant Lord Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes), the dashing American Quincey P. Morris (Billy Campbell) and the sweet-but-awkward Dr. Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant). Oh, and Dracula is a vampire.
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The Kingdom (Riget) (1994)

Posted on May 10, 2015 by jaycluitt

Stig Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) is the chief consultant neurosurgeon at the Kingdom hospital in Denmark. He has just transferred from Sweden, having gotten into some trouble for plagiarism, and is plagued with a recent mishap that led to a girl he was operating on suffering severe brain damage. Helmer has various problems to deal with at the hospital, including junior registrar Hook (Søren Pilmark), who lives in the basement performing various errands and making ends meet for everyone in the hospital, whilst gathering potential blackmail information on everyone in any place of power. There’s also Mrs. Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes) a recurring patient with a fixation on the occult, and Moesgaard (Holger Juul Hansen), Helmer’s boss, who is midway through a new initiative to increase morale at the hospital, and continually pesters Helmer to join the hospital’s elite lodge. There’s also the ghost of a little girl and a dog, a phantom ambulance, a pregnancy that increases at a worryingly rapid rate, a surgeon trying to convince the family of a dying patient to donate his liver that contains a rare affliction, some business with a severed head, Haitian zombies and two dish washers who seem to know a great deal more about what’s going on than anyone else.
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The Cloud-Capped Star (Meghe Dhaka Tara)

Posted on May 6, 2015 by jaycluitt

Neeta (Supriya Choudhury) lives in Calcutta with her parents, two brothers and her sister. She goes to college and works as a tutor on the side, and has a steady boyfriend, who she plans to one day marry, leave the family home and make a life for herself. However, literally everyone she has ever met or had any contact with is a complete and utter shit of a human being. Continue reading →

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Posted on May 4, 2015 by jaycluitt

Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is a down on his luck American trying to make ends meet in Mexico. He can’t get a job, and lives day to day by begging for handouts from other working Americans he sees around town. After a particularly bad stroke of luck, he and his friend Curtin (Tim Holt), who is in a similar state of fiscal disarray, hatch the idea to go prospecting in search for gold. They convince Howard (Walter Huston), a former prospector, to come with them and offer advice, and he warns the pair of the dangers of too much gold amongst friends, but Hobbs in particular is adamant that wealth won’t change him. That is, until they find some, and discover other people might be after it too.

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Wake in Fright

Posted on May 3, 2015 by jaycluitt

John Grant (Gary Bond) is the sole schoolteacher at a school in Tiboonda, with nothing for miles around except the bar and hotel on the other side of the train tracks. After breaking up for the 6-week Christmas holidays, John travels to see his girlfriend in Sydney, but gets waylaid in the Yabba (the local name for Bundanyabba), a town that pretty much everyone who lives there loves. The straight-laced John, who is stuck in his teaching job thanks to some legal shenanigans that would require him to pay 1,000 Australian dollars to get out of it, finds himself sinking deeper and deeper in the Yabba’s culture, gradually losing everything he held deer about himself. large_wake_in_fright_blu-ray2 Continue reading →

Princess Mononoke

Posted on May 3, 2015 by jaycluitt

A young prince, Ashitaka (Billy Crudup), defends his home by killing a giant boar-god that has been corrupted by a monstrous force and turned into a demon, but in the process Ashitaka finds himself infected on his right arm. His only chance at survival is to be exiled from his city – to which he can never return – and seek the Spirit of the Forest and ask for forgiveness. However, when Ashitaka finds the forest, he uncovers a war between a nearby town, led by Lady Eboshi (Minnie Driver) and the animals and gods of the forest, led by the wolf-goddess Moro (Gillian Anderson) and her adopted human daughter San (Claire Danes), who is known to the townspeople as Princess Mononoke. In order to achieve the help of the Spirit of the Forest, Ashitaka must help resolve the conflict between the two factions, neither of whom seem to want his help.
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