Spellbound (1945)

Posted on December 27, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is a brilliant psychiatrist, but is lacking in bedside manner. She works at Green Manor amongst some quite sexist male colleagues and has never found love, until the new hospital director, Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck, and I’d love it if in E.R. Anthony Edwards played a Dr. Gregory Pecke, but alas life isn’t perfect) arrives to take over from long-term serving director Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll). Constance and Edwardes become close but his behaviour concerns her, particularly his outbursts whenever he sees dark parallel lines against a pale background and, in digging into his past, Constance discovers that Edwardes may not be quite who he seems. 12518_55 Continue reading →

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 →

HitchcOctober: Dial M For Murder

Posted on October 9, 2015 by jaycluitt

Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) is a former tennis pro who has grown too old for the game and now works as a sports equipment salesman, living with his beautiful young wife Margot (Grace Kelly). Tony has recently begun to suspect that Margot has been having an affair with American detective novelist Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), and has obtained proof via a letter from Mark that Tony stole from Margot’s handbag. Instead of confronting his wife, Tony plans instead to enact revenge. He hires a down on his luck old college friend of his (Anthony Dawson) to murder Margot, and forms a flawless scheme to ensure he is the major beneficiary of all her money. As expected, however, not everything goes to plan.
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HitchcOctober #2: Pre-View

Posted on October 1, 2015 by jaycluitt

HitchcOctober is back! It’s my second annual celebration of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and this year I’m trying to finish them all. I’ve got eight films left to review, plus a few others that are tangentially related that might get thrown into the mix as well. Of those left there’s a couple I’ve seen before, including a personal favourite, a few I’ve got no idea about, and at least one that I can’t actually get hold of yet, but will try and track down by the end of the month. This time last year it was on Youtube, but alas it’s no longer available. A few of those remaining are also on some of the other lists I’m going through, so multiple birds are being killed with far few stones.
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Insurgent

Posted on August 18, 2015 by jaycluitt

In a nonsense dystopia where people are separated into groups based on their personalities, four people are on the run as fugitives from the state, after rebelling in the previous film. These people are Tris (Shailene Woodley), her love interest Four (Theo James), her brother Caleb (Ansel Engort) and a dick called Peter (Miles Teller). They’ve been hiding out amongst the forgiving and generally pleasant Amity faction, but when Peter sells out the others, Caleb heads back to his home in Erudite, leaving Tris and Four to go on the run, passing from faction to faction in an attempt to raise an army against the evil Erudite, led by Jeanine (Kate Winslet) and her army of Dauntless, led by Eric (Jai Courtney) and Max (Mekhi Phifer). Continue reading →

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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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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O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Posted on April 1, 2015 by jaycluitt

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

Everett, Pete and Delmar (George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson) have just escaped from a chain gang in 1930s Mississippi, with the intention of recovering the loot from the burglary that resulted in Everett’s incarceration, before the area within which it is hidden becomes flooded in a few days time. The three men – at least two of whom are amongst the stupidest creations the Coen brothers have ever concocted, which is saying a great deal – have a long way to go and a short time to get there, and their journey isn’t made any easier by the lawmen on their tails and the various obstacles that must be overcome, not least of which is coping with each other’s company. Continue reading →

Inherent Vice

Posted on February 12, 2015 by jaycluitt

Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is a drug addled private investigator in 1970s L.A. His ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) comes to him with a case involving the disappearance of her new lover, Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), whom Shasta believes has been committed to an insane asylum by his wife. Doc heads out on the case, but ends up collecting a couple more along the way, both also involving missing people, and eventually becomes embroiled with the police, a brothel, a manic dentist and something known as The Golden Fang. inherent-vice-movie-clip-shall-we-sit- Continue reading →

Punch-Drunk Love

Posted on February 5, 2015 by jaycluitt

Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a little bit different. He runs a plastic plunger company with his business partner Lance (Luis Guzman), and is constantly being hassled by his seven sisters, who belittle him and essentially ruin his life at every turn, as they have his entire life. One day, a harmonium (kind of like a small piano, I’d never heard of them before) is dropped outside the industrial estate on which he works, and shortly afterwards a woman named Lena (Emily Watson) shows up too. Then some more stuff happens involving a phone sex line and an awful lot of pudding.
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