2001: A Space Odyssey

Posted on November 24, 2014 by jaycluitt

Where do I begin with 2001: A Space Odyssey? It’s a film I’ve kind of seen once before, in the background whilst I worked on other things. I’d gleamed a few details from certain scenes, but for the most part I remembered very little, with various podcasts I’d listened to seemingly describing a film I’d clearly not paid anywhere near enough attention to. Thus, I championed it to be the latest Movie of the Month on the Lambcast. It won, I hosted the show (here’s a link to it) and, despite that relatively in depth conversation with Robert, Jess and Nick – all of whom have more experience with this film than I – I’m still a little lost as to how I feel about the film.

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Brokeback Mountain

Posted on November 4, 2014 by jaycluitt

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

If you’re anything like me, before you saw it you knew Brokeback Mountain as just the gay cowboy movie, or that film where Donnie Darko and the Joker get jiggy in a tent. Technically this is true, and it’s the reason the film has such notoriety – it’s not often that such a high profile film centres around a homosexual relationship between two otherwise straight male characters – but there’s a great deal more to this film besides that one aspect. Continue reading →

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 →

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Posted on September 29, 2014 by jaycluitt

When we last saw Steve Rogers, aka Captain America (Chris Evans), the scientifically advanced super soldier had been frozen during the Second World War and defrosted in modern day, where he helped sort out the attack from Loki and the Chitauri in The Avengers. Now he’s dealing with a threat that’s much closer to home, when it appears SHIELD, the company he works for, may be a little more corrupt than he anticipated.
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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 →

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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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 →

A Birthday Present To Me

Posted on August 7, 2014 by jaycluitt

Today is my birthday. Well, technically, as I’m writing this, tomorrow is my birthday, but I’m scheduling this post ahead of time, so I’m not wrestling with WordPress on my actual birthday. It’s all pointless anyway, because by the time you’re even reading this it could be the day after my birthday, or the week, or even next year, in which case it’s my birthday again, doesn’t time fly? Anyway, I thought I’d use this day as a mini-announcement for a List I’ve aided to my many projects upon this site.

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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 →

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 →