HitchcOctober Day 13: The Lady Vanishes

Posted on October 13, 2014 by jaycluitt

In a small European town, an avalanche has forced a variety of people to stay at an overcrowded hotel. Many of the guests are waiting for the snows to clear so they can catch the train the next morning. One such guest is Iris (Margaret Lockwood), a much-travelled young woman heading back to England to meet and wed her fiancé. She befriends an elderly women travelling alone by the name of Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), a governess who has been in Europe for a number of years, and is now regretfully heading home. Amongst the other passengers are a rude clarinet player named Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), an adulterous couple attempting to hide their situation (Cecil Parker and Linden Travers) and two cricket-obsessed Englishmen (Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford). Before the train sets off, Iris suffers a blow to the head from a falling potted plant. Miss Froy cares for her, but after Iris takes a short nap she awakes to find Miss Froy has disappeared, and everyone else on the train denies her existence. Something is definitely amiss – either Iris’ head injury is causing her to be delusional, or there’s a far greater conspiracy at hand.
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HitchcOctober Day 8: The Wrong Man

Posted on October 8, 2014 by jaycluitt

Christopher Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Balestrero (Henry Fonda) is a pretty ordinary man. He makes a living playing bass fiddle in a band, and takes his modest pay home to his wife and two sons, barely scraping by with the bumps life throws into the road. Manny’s kids are learning to be musicians like their father, he dutifully visits his ailing parents, and his wife Rose (Vera Miles) suffers from toothache, which means they need to borrow money against her life insurance to pay for the dentist bill. When Manny attempts to obtain this money, his life is suddenly throw upside-down as he finds himself caught in the midst of an incredible case of mistaken identity. The-Wrong-Man1000 Continue reading →

Mulholland Drive

Posted on September 24, 2014 by jaycluitt

In L.A., a woman survives a late night car crash but loses her memory and can’t even remember who she is. Meanwhile, a plucky young hopeful arrives in town with dreams of being a star, and a director must deal with the demands of his powerful producers, who will stop at nothing to force him to hire their chosen leading lady. All three storylines will converge and attempt to merge into one another, at which point they turn into a completely different film that makes no sense. Trying to work out what is going on will result in crying, throwing things at the screen, substance abuse and, eventually, giving up and wondering just what the big deal was about. Continue reading →

Russian Ark

Posted on September 19, 2014 by jaycluitt

When I made my list of films from the 1001 List that I’m Most looking forward to, this was one I was a little apprehensive of, but looked forward to nonetheless. You see, I knew Russian Ark was filmed as one long steadicam shot – a filming technique I’m fascinated with and always impressed by – but I didn’t know a great deal more about it, other than it somehow featured Russian History in some way. History isn’t my strong suit, especially not Russian (Alexander Nevsky proved that), and once again I felt I was missing out on a great deal, simply because I’ve never cracked open a book on the lineage of the Tsars. Continue reading →

Ghostbusters

Posted on August 24, 2014 by jaycluitt

This review has been written as part of Todd Liebenow’s 1984-a-thon for his site, Forgotten Films. Be sure to check out everyone else’s reviews!

After three parapsychologists are kicked out of their university, they set up shop as the Ghostbusters, an elite force who will assist in any supernatural goings-on that may be bothering you. When a portal appears in the refrigerator of a particularly attractive client, the guys have their work cut out for them in working out what is going on, and how they can stop it.
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Little Big Man

Posted on August 13, 2014 by jaycluitt

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

In a retirement home, a 121-year old man – claiming to be the only white survivor of the battle of Little Big Horn – is being interviewed about the habits of the Native Americans. Instead he recounts his life story, starting when he was ten years old and, after his family’s wagon trail was attacked, when he and his older sister were taken in by a tribe calling themselves the Human Beings. We see the boy – originally called Jack Crabb until the tribe renames him Little Big Man – undertake many adventures, becoming embroiled with the likes of a devout Christian couple, a snake oil salesman, Wild Bill Hickok and General Custer along the way. little-big-man-5
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Field of Dreams

Posted on August 12, 2014 by jaycluitt

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

Ray (Kevin Costner) was brought up a baseball fan, but after falling out with his father and heading off to college, he’s now found himself owning a farm in Iowa with his wife Annie (Amy Madigan) and young daughter Karin (Gaby Hoffmann). All seems to be well, until Ray hears a voice in the cornfield, and has a vision of a baseball field in its place. So begins a story of faith, family and ambition, that will lead Ray down paths he never knew existed – or were even possible.If I were to lay out the entire plot of Field of Dreams – which I’m not going to do because that’s an insane level of spoiling, and it’s already been done on Wikipedia – the story would read as a wildly fantastical one, with many unexpected supernatural elements. It would also probably come off as deeply unsatisfying. You see, within this movie that is ostensibly about a man not wanting to throw his life away – as he believes his father did – there lies a lot of questions, and precious few answers. The origin of the mysterious voice Ray hears in the field, how it is talking to him and where exactly the owner is are all plot strands never entirely tied up, and many more have been added by the end of the film, yet if you’re searching for answers you’re not only looking at the wrong film, but you’ve entirely missed the point of this movie. Continue reading →

The Color Purple

Posted on August 3, 2014 by jaycluitt

Celie and her younger sister Nettie are being raised by an abusive father in southern USA, near the start of the 20th Century. They have just lost their mother, and so far their father has taken the two children he raped into Celie and killed them in the woods. Now, though, their father’s eye has begun to wander onto the blossoming Nettie, so Celie is married off to a widowed man who needs a wife to take care of his house and his three unruly children. This new man turns out to be just as bad as Celie’s father, and it doesn’t help when he spends all his time pining for a lost love, in the form of Shug Avery. Purple03

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Planet of the Apes (1968)

Posted on July 17, 2014 by jaycluitt

In the year 1972, four astronauts are deep in space, on a mission of discovery. They awake from suspended animation to find that one of their crew is dead and their ship has landed on an unfamiliar planet, and is rapidly sinking into a body of water. After making a quick escape with as much equipment as they can carry, the three survivors must find a way to survive, something made much more difficult by the planet’s native population.

Recently we recorded an episode of the Lambcast all about the original Planet of the Apes movies, from 1968’s Planet through to 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes. I’d never seen any of the films before, so I was especially looking forward to the show, as I’ve now seen them all. They vary from the excellent (this one) to the dismal (Battle), the thought-provoking (Escape from the Planet of the Apes) to bat-shit insane (Beneath the Planet of the Apes), and you can listen to the discussion we had about them all here. As it happens, Planet of the Apes is also on the 1001 Movies list, and is widely regarded as a classic, so I’m selecting it as my Blind Spot pick for this month. Continue reading →

A Separation

Posted on July 15, 2014 by jaycluitt

Nader and Simin have been married 14 years and have a daughter just weeks away from her 11th birthday and some important exams. However, they’re getting separated. They haven’t fallen out and bear no ill will towards one another, but circumstances require them to live apart. Simin (Leila Hatami) wants a better life for herself and her daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), which she believes is impossible whilst living in Iran, so she wishes to move out of the country to live with her mother. However, her husband Nader (Peyman Mooadi) needs to stay to look after his father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) who suffers from Alzheimer’s.

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