Network

Posted on December 30, 2015 by jaycluitt

The life and career of long-serving news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) has taken a downward slide recently after his wife left him and he sank into drink, and his once high ratings have fallen to the point where his network, UBS, is forced to let him go. After being told he has just 2 weeks left on the air Howard broadcasts that in a week he will kill himself, live and during his show. Understandably he is immediately taken off the air by Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), a rising executive surreptitiously taking over UBS from the inside, however Howard’s best friend and manager Max Schumacher (William Holden) is able to allow Howard one last show, for a chance at a dignified farewell, which Howard takes and runs with, instead offering up some frank and hard truths the general public eats up. Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), UBS’ new head of programming, sees potential in Howard’s popularity, and adapts his news show to suit, but what is more the important, the ratings or their host’s sanity?
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The Last Seduction

Posted on December 30, 2015 by jaycluitt

Clay Gregory (Bill Pullman) has successfully acquired $700,000 via a dodgy drug deal, but he wasn’t expecting his wife Bridget (Linda Fiorentino) to run off with it whilst he was in the shower. She flees New York City and lays low in the small town of Beston in Buffalo, aware that if she spends any of the money and her husband catches up with her he’ll legally own half of her belongings, and she can’t go back to New York or he’ll find her. So instead she settles down in Beston with the unassuming Mike (Peter Berg), a local man back in town after something went wrong with his recent marriage in Florida. Mike wants out of Beston, and Bridget knows just how they can help one another out.
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It Happened One Night

Posted on December 30, 2015 by jaycluitt

Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is a poor little rich girl running away from her father (Walter Connolly) in order to be with her fiancé Westley (Jameson Thomas), whom her father disapproves of. She aims to take a bus from Florida to New York, but has never had to travel alone in the outside world before. Peter Warne (Clark Gable) has just been fired from his job as a newspaper reporter and happens to be taking the same bus as Ellie, who is trying to travel incognito, without the press getting wind of her situation. Ellie and Peter strike up an uneasy agreement wherein he’ll help get her to New York if she gives him the exclusive rights to her story once she gets there, but of course that’s not how it’s going to play out in the end.
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The Conversation

Posted on December 27, 2015 by jaycluitt

In San Francisco, profession surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is working on his latest assignment, recording a discussion between a man and a woman in a busy courtyard. Having successfully recorded their conversation, Harry begins to grow suspicious that passing on the recordings to his employer may result in some dire consequences for those involved, as happened to Harry on another job sometime ago, which directly caused the murders of three people.
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Garden State

Posted on December 23, 2015 by jaycluitt

Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) is in a listless daze, working as a waiter/failed actor at a Vietnamese restaurant in Los Angeles when he receives a message from his father (Ian Holm) that his mother has died. Andrew returns home to New Jersey for the funeral, and ends up staying for a few days that will apparently change his life forever.
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The Wages of Fear

Posted on December 19, 2015 by jaycluitt

In an unspecified town in South America, a multi-cultural group of men strive for a means to leave their location, but none of them can afford to exorbitant fares for air travel, and they cannot earn much working for the town’s sole business, a major oil company. However, when the opportunity arises to earn big bucks transporting trucks full of barrels of unstable nitroglycerin 300 miles as quickly as possible, in order to cause an explosion to put out an oil fire, four of the men set out to get the job done.
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King Kong (1933)

Posted on November 29, 2015 by jaycluitt

Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is a film director, planning to make a moving picture on Skull Island, a mysterious land in uncharted waters, to which Denham has obtained a map, but he is short one lead actress. Scouring New York he finds penniless Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), and convinces her to take part before whisking her away and setting sail along with first mate Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) and a large crew. On the way to the island, the crew become wary of the legend of the great Kong, a mythical beast who, upon arrival, turns out to be a giant gorilla worshipped and rightfully feared by the native tribesman on the island. When the natives kidnap Ann – blondes being something of a rarity to them – and offer her up to the beast, he takes her back to his lair, prompting Jack, Carl and the rest of the crew to attempt a rescue mission.
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Goldfinger

Posted on November 10, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

British secret agent James Bond (Sean Connery) has been assigned a mission to investigate a gold smuggler, Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe). However, as the investigation deepens and Bond becomes embroiled within the plot, Goldfinger’s plan leads to plans to break into the U.S. Gold reserve in Fort Knox. Continue reading →

Chinatown

Posted on November 4, 2015 by jaycluitt

Los Angeles, 1937. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a private detective specialising in domestic cases. One day a woman (Diane Ladd) shows up at Jake’s office and hires him to follow her husband, Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) who she suspects is having an affair. Jake tracks Mulwray and does indeed photograph him embracing a much younger woman. He gives the photos to Mrs. Mulwray, and soon sees them printed on the front page of the newspaper, only to discover that the woman who hired him wasn’t Mrs. Mulwray, and the real one (Faye Dunaway) is somewhat irked that her husband has been publicly humiliated and has now disappeared, and all this is just the start of a web on intrigue that leads further than Jake could have imagined.
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Halloween (1978)

Posted on October 31, 2015 by jaycluitt

In 1963, six year old Michael Myers murdered his older sister with a knife on Halloween night, and was sentenced to a mental institution under the guidance and examination of Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence). Fifteen years later, on the day before Halloween, Michael escapes and heads for his home town of Haddonfield, Illinois, with murderous intent.
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