HitchcOctober Day 23: Rear Window

Posted on October 23, 2014 by jaycluitt

L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart) is a renowned photographer, whose latest on location piece resulted in a broken camera and a broken leg. He has been wheelchair-bound inside his two-room apartment for six weeks, with his cast due to be removed in seven days time. He is regularly visited by his acerbic carer Stella (Thelma Ritter) and fashion model girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), who wants to marry Jeff, but he has deemed her too perfect for him, and is reluctant to settle down from his country-hopping lifestyle. With cabin fever beginning to set in, Jeff spends his days peeping on his neighbours, including a lonely woman looking for love, a beautiful and nubile ballerina, a pair of newlyweds, a composer, a married couple with a dog and a salesman with his ill wife. After piecing together a few out-of-character actions, Jeff begins to suspect that the salesman (Raymond Burr) may have murdered his wife, so he calls in his detective friend Doyle (Wendell Corey) to look into it. Continue reading →

HitchcOctober Day 14: Rebecca

Posted on October 14, 2014 by jaycluitt

Whilst working as a paid companion (no, not that kind of paid companion; filthy mind) a girl with no friends or family (Joan Fontaine) meets the wealthy but recently widowed Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier). The girl’s obnoxious employer (Florence Bates) comes down with a bout of the flu, leaving Max and the girl to become acquainted enough for him to propose instead of losing her when the trip comes abruptly to an end. The newlyweds return to Manderlay, the stately home of the De Winters in Cornwall in the south of England (where Jamaica Inn was also set, and if I’d watched this when I was down there recently as well – and there was a chance; I took Rebecca with us as well – I think I’d have probably freaked right out), where the new Mrs de Winter feels very much out of place, especially because the memory of her predecessor seems to have a powerful effect on the house and its staff, particularly the head of the household, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson). 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 →

Threads

Posted on August 28, 2014 by jaycluitt

In Sheffield in 1984, Jimmy and Ruth are struggling to make amends. When she discovers she is pregnant, they make the decision to do the decent thing; get married and get an apartment together in the nearest block of flats. Their parents meet and life goes on, until the threat of a nuclear war between Russia and America begins to intensify, culminating in a bomb being dropped on the nearby military base. Does that sound like a spoiler for the end of the film? Well it isn’t. The bomb gets dropped roughly a quarter of the way through this film, after which we follow the fallout – both nuclear and otherwise – the survivors must endure. 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.
Continue reading →

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 →

Jules et Jim

Posted on August 11, 2014 by jaycluitt

This review was originally written recently for Blueprint: Review, and is also my selection for August for my Blind Spot pick.

Before I get into this review, I feel it’s only fair I give you a glimpse into my brief history with French New Wave cinema. As with David, whose review of another Truffaut film, Shoot the Pianist, posted yesterday, I’m not a huge fan, however, I’ve seen fewer films from within the period than he has, so there was a greater potential for me to like this film. To date, I’ve only really seen two New Wave classics, Godard’s Breathless (written by Truffaut) and Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad. I hated them both, and even went back to re-watch Breathless (also known as A Bout de Souffle) and in fact hated it more the second time around. My problems with these films are many and varied, but essentially I find the characters to be so dislikeable that I genuinely don’t want to spend any time with them, and they all suffer from an abundance of style over substance, more so than any other films I could mention. Marienbad is particularly frustrating, given the complete absence of anything resembling a cohesive plot. I’ve heard arguments praising its open-ended narrative, allowing the viewer to read all sorts of insights into the film, but I see it as laziness on the part of the writer, or potentially an inability to write two adjacent scenes at all. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that Jules et Jim didn’t have much of a chance to begin with, even though I went in with as open a mind as I could manage.

Continue reading →

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 →

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Posted on July 14, 2014 by jaycluitt

I think I may be approaching the 1001 Movies List (and the other lists I’m going through) from something of a skewed perspective, in that I may be crossing off a few too many of the “better” movies before I get to the ones I’m not looking forward to as much. Bearing in mind yesterday I reviewed Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and today sees me tackling Raiders of the Lost Ark, I need to make sure I don’t eat all of my dessert before getting to the vegetables, as I also recently crossed off Back to the Future, Taxi Driver, RoboCop, To Kill A Mockingbird, Fargo and Boogie Nights as well. That being said, Bueller and Raiders made for a most enjoyable weekend of movie watching, with a little Jurassic Park: The Lost World thrown in for good measure (I’ll be writing something about that for French Toast Sunday this weekend, where we’re celebrating July with a month dedicated to Steven Spielberg, hence the Raiders viewing). Spielberg is one of my favourite directors, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise considering he’s the guy behind Jurassic Park, the greatest movie ever made, but now I get the chance to talk about another one of the masterpieces he brought into cinemas. Continue reading →

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Posted on July 13, 2014 by jaycluitt

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

How much of an introduction do I really need to give Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? I’m hoping none but, as much as it pains me to say, there’s probably a few unenlightened souls out there who have yet to discover the wonder that is this film. Ferris (Matthew Broderick) is an unimaginably popular and enterprising teenager who, one day, decides to pretend to be ill and skip school. It’s something he’s perfected into an art form – this is far from his first game of hookey – but this time he’s roping in his girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) and hypochondriac best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck). Once the gang has been assembled and Ferris has “borrowed” Cameron’s father’s prized Ferrari, the trio head to Chicago for the best day they’ll ever have. Meanwhile, Ferris’ sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) and the school’s Dean, Mr. Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) both suspect Ferris to be faking, and set about trying to bring him down. Continue reading →