Carrie (1976)

Posted on October 29, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is a social outcast due to her crippling shyness, awkward nature and plain, dowdy appearance, all a product of her intensely overbearing religious mother (Piper Laurie). Carrie’s pariah status comes to a head when, after a particularly bad gym class, she experiences her first period in the communal shower at school and, not understanding what is happening, she believes she is bleeding to death and pleads with the others for assistance, who only provide mocking and humiliation. Her mother believes the blood to be a curse from Satan and locks Carrie in a closet, but it seems all this mental and physical torment is causing the traumatised girl to develop telekinetic powers. Continue reading →

All the President’s Men

Posted on September 16, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

June, 1972. Five men are caught having broken into the Watergate Complex, specifically the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Routinely checking out their trial, reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) begins to suspect something may be up through some odd details of the trial, and a shared phone number amongst the address books of some of the accused. Bob’s colleague Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) helps Woodward write a piece on the potential scandal, and the two of them – with the support of their editor Benjamin Bradlee (Jason Robards) and a highly secretive and selective informant known only as Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) – dig ever further into how far this story goes.
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Donnie Darko

Posted on September 12, 2015 by jaycluitt

One morning in early October, 1988, troubled teenager Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is coerced into sleepwalking by a mysterious figure in a creepy giant rabbit costume. He wakes up on the local golf course and heads home, only to find a jet engine has fallen into his bedroom, with the FAA claiming no such engine is missing. Had Donnie been home, he’d have been killed. In his dream, Donnie was also told that the world would end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 26 seconds, so he sets out attempting to unravel this mystery whilst also dealing with the regular trials and tribulations of a teenager in the 80s.

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Schindler’s List

Posted on September 6, 2015 by jaycluitt

During World War II, an entrepreneurial member of the Nazi party, Oscar Schindler (Liam Neeson) takes advantage of the mistreatment of Jewish citizens by using them for cheap labour in his enamelware factory. However, as he gets to know his workers better – particularly his right hand man Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) – and witnesses first hand the inhuman brutalities they must endure – particularly at the hand of concentration camp overseer Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) – Schindler begins to realise the change he can make to the people around him.
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JFK

Posted on August 25, 2015 by jaycluitt

On November 22nd, 1963, President John F Kennedy was killed, supposedly by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was killed by a man named Jack Ruby before the case could go to trial. Despite several other theories, the case was dropped for three years, until Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, picked it up again after noticing some discrepancies within the Warren Report, written to document the details of the assassination. Garrison and his team re-launch the investigation, certain that there is more to it than simply one man and his gun.
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The Departed

Posted on August 9, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

In Boston’s grimy crime-ridden underbelly, Irish mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) is high on the wanted list of Massachusetts State Police, who plant a mole, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) inside Costello’s operation. Unbeknownst to the police, Costello has performed a parallel manoeuvre, with his man Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) infiltrating the police system.
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Enter the Dragon

Posted on August 2, 2015 by jaycluitt

A Shaolin monk named Lee (Bruce Lee) is invited to a martial arts tournament being held by Mr. Han (Shih Kien), a former Shaolin monk who abused his training for personal gain. Lee intends to bring him to justice, having been recruited by British Intelligence, but is joined in the tournament by other competitors Roper (John Saxon) and Williams (Jim Kelly). It soon becomes clear that the tournament may be a cover for something more sinister.
Lee Continue reading →

Do The Right Thing

Posted on July 23, 2015 by jaycluitt

This review was originally written for French Toast Sunday as part of my USA Road Trip series. It was also nominated for me to watch by Ryan McNeil of The Matinee, and is my submission for August for his Blind Spot series.

Brooklyn, 1989. On a particularly sweltering summer’s day, racial tensions simmer amongst the everyday lives of the inhabitants of a single street. Central to everything is Mookie (Spike Lee), a young, black, pizza deliveryman, working for the Italian-American Sal’s Pizzeria, run by Sal (Danny Aiello). As the day progresses and the temperature increases, everything threatens to boil over, and does so in a life-changing way for all involved. bugginout Continue reading →

Fight Club

Posted on July 11, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

At the end of the 20th Century, men have lost their sense of place in the world. With no real sociological problems to concern them, the American working class males wander through life in a daze, controlled by their jobs and their society-spawned desire for the perfect magazine lifestyle. One such man (Edward Norton) finds solace from his insomnia in support groups for people with terminal illnesses, with this contrast to his own lack of problems finally allowing him to sleep at night. However, his world is rocked by the existence of Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), a fellow group-attending faker, and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a rather bizarre fellow with a penchant for soap, explosives, splicing pornography into family films and, of course, beating the crap out of other consenting men.
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Posted on June 30, 2015 by jaycluitt

Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) is an introverted guy who has difficulty making eye contact with people, let alone asking them out. One Valentine’s Day, on a random impulse, he ditches work and heads to the beach in Montauk, where he keeps seeing a girl in a bright orange sweatshirt with even brighter blue hair. Her name is Clementine (Kate Winslet) and, despite their vastly contrasting personalities, they spend the day together, and the next. Alas, all is not great in their world, however, and sadly their relationship ends when, on another impulse, Clementine decides to erase Joel from her memory using a little known company who specialises in a very concentrated form of brain damage. Joel opts to undergo the same procedure, but it doesn’t quite go as planned when he decides mid-operation that he might have made the wrong decision.
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