Spring Breakers

Posted on May 27, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

For this addition of my USA Road Trip I’ll be celebrating – albeit a little tardily – that great American tradition of Spring Break as I delve into the wonderful insanity that is Florida, home state of FTS’ very own Robert, and he has informed me that it is definitively the craziest state in the whole country. Judging by this movie, I’ll have to agree. Spring Break is not a thing in the UK, or at least if it is I was never invited, and for that I’m grateful. I have a reputation for being anti-fun and especially anti-partying, and that goes double for absolutely everything that takes place in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, a film that, if I were a character in it, I’d have happily remained in the nondescript, comparatively tedious college town at the start because, as I’m frequently told, I fail at life.
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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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Faeries

Posted on May 9, 2015 by jaycluitt

Nellie and George (Carley O’Neill and Geoffrey Williams) are children forced on a countryside holiday, staying with family friends whilst their parents move house. Nellie is very much opposed to the idea, but the slightly younger George embraces it for all the fun it could be. Immediately upon arrival, Nellie and George go and play in the nearby woods, and George accidentally stumbles into a fairy world. With the help of the house’s secret hobgoblin Broom (Tony Robinson), Nellie must retrieve George before he eats anything in the fairy world, which will make him have to stay there forever. Of course, George eats something, but the Fairy Prince (Dougray Scott) makes an exception for George: if he and Nellie can complete three tasks for him, George can go free, with most of these plans involving the farmhand Brigid (Kate Winslet). However, the Prince’s evil brother The Shapeshifter (Jeremy Irons) has other plans, and wants to take over the Fairy Kingdom.
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Bad Land: Road to Fury

Posted on May 7, 2015 by jaycluitt

This review was originally written for Blueprint: Review.

Sometime in the future, the world has been left barren and dry. The population is but a tiny fraction of its former size, and water is the most valuable commodity. Ernest Holm (Shannon) is a farmer and courier, transporting goods to the workers drilling for water for the government, and lives with his son Jerome (Smit-McPhee) and daughter Mary (Fanning), and occasionally visits his hospitalised wife. When the family donkey – the sole reason Ernest is able to maintain his job – has to be put down, Ernest is forced to buy a new mechanical quadrupedal carrier, outbidding his daughter’s boyfriend Flem (Hoult), which changes the family’s life forever. Shannon Continue reading →

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 →

Andrei Rublev

Posted on April 29, 2015 by jaycluitt

Andrei Rublev sits in an odd position for me. As regular readers will know, this year I’m watching films that have been hand-selected from the 1001 Movies list for me to watch by some of my movie-blogging friends, and I’ve also asked a couple of guys who have finished the 1001 List to highlight some of the worst movies on said list, and I’m working through those as well. Andrei Rublev somehow sits on both lists. It was picked for me as a “Recommended” film by Joel Burman, but a “Bad” film by Chip Lary, so I wasn’t sure where I’d settle down on this film. The fact that it appeared on not just the 1001 Movies list but also four of the other five lists I’m going through (everything except for the Total Film Top 120) made me think that perhaps Chip was in the wrong with this one, but now that I’ve seen it I’m definitely swaying more in his direction than Joel’s.
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Batman

Posted on April 28, 2015 by jaycluitt

Leading up to Gotham City’s bicentennial celebrations, the mayor, the police and the district attorney are all keen on increasing the police presence to stamp out the city’s rampant crime. Mob boss Grissom (Jack Palance) is not keen on this, but even less keen on his second-in-command, Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson). He sets Napier up to take the fall on a job, but doesn’t expect the city’s masked vigilante, Batman (Michael Keaton), to step in and, in the process of trying to apprehend Napier, accidentally drops him into a vat of acid. The acid dyes Napier’s skin white and his hair green, and a facial injury prior to the fall renders him with a permanent demonic grin, Thus, the Joker is born.
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