The World’s End… and an Announcement!

Posted on August 8, 2013 by jaycluitt

Hello all, apologies for the lack of content recently, the house move isn’t going terribly well and my time is somewhat limited at present, but I’m working on putting some new stuff up in the near future. In the mean time, the start of my review of Edgar Wright’s Cornetto-wrapper The World’s End is below. I wrote the review for French Toast Sunday, one of my favourite sites on the web, and the rest of the review can be read there, link at the bottom of the page. Continue reading →

Man Of Steel

Posted on June 18, 2013 by jaycluitt

On the planet Krypton, the elders have disrupted the planet’s core and caused it to begin to erupt. Everyone on the planet is doomed, except for a small, barely explained plot contrivance that allows one newborn baby to be launched in a pod and sent to another planet that will be hospitable to him, but where the atmosphere and density are different enough to provide him with extraordinary powers. Krypton explodes, but the baby arrives safely on Earth, where he lives his life as a loner, the last of his kind, until General Zod, an exiled Kryptonian soldier, and his crew discovers the baby – now a man named Clark – on Earth. Look, it’s fucking Superman, alright? You know what happens. Alien baby, adopted by Ma and Pa Kent, Dad dies, kid can fly, run really damn fast, x-ray laser vision, falls in love, glowing green rock, Daily Planet, threat against the planet, saves the world. Yadda yadda yadda.
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Fast & Furious 6

Posted on May 30, 2013 by jaycluitt

Former drag racer turned international bank robber Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) has given up the life of the crime and settled down with his new girl Elena (Elsa Pataky) after the death of his wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). CIA Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), who was last seen on the hunt for Toretto and his gang, shows up at Toretto’s home – not to arrest him, but to ask for his help, as Hobbs is now trying to arrest Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) and his team of master criminals and drivers, who are currently making Hobbs’ cops look like idiots. And apparently, the only way to catch an international thief with crazy driving skills and his similarly equipped team is to employ another set of international thieves with crazy driving skills. So why on Earth would Dom agree to help his former foe? Well, it turns out Letty may not have died after all, as Hobbs has a photo of her working for Shaw, so Dom calls up his team, and they set to work.
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Star Trek Into Darkness

Posted on May 15, 2013 by jaycluitt

Previously on Star Trek… James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) was born during an attack upon the spaceship his father, Thor, was briefly captaining. His Dad gave his life so James and his mother (House‘s Jennifer Morrison) could survive. James grew up to be a reckless, rebellious dropout with a way for the ladies but not much else going for him, until a bar fight saw him catch the eye of Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), a Starfleet captain, who recommended Kirk sign up. Kirk does so, and eventually ends up captaining Pike’s ship, the Starship Enterprise, along the way compiling a trusty crew including emotionless half Vulcan Spock (Zachary Qunito), frenetic engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg), ship’s doctor Bones (Karl Urban), communications officer Uhura (Zoe Saldana), helmsman Sulu (John Cho) and navigator Chekov (Anton Yelchin).

Now, Kirk is still captaining the Enterprise and investigating other planet’s life forms. On a routine reconnaissance mission to observe the primitive planet of Nibiru, things do not necessarily go to plan when an active volcano threatens to wipe out the indigenous species. Kirk’s solution to the predicament is frowned upon back at Starfleet, and his ship is taken away from him and returned to its former captain, Pike. Meanwhile, a former member of Starfleet, the necessarily tediously named John Harrison (played by the incredibly un-tediously named Benedict Cumberbatch), begins to wage a one-man war against Starfleet, beginning by blowing up a data archive. Kirk takes it upon himself to, along with the rest of his crew, track Harrison down and bring him to justice. Continue reading →

Iron Man 3

Posted on May 2, 2013 by jaycluitt

Genius billionaire philanthropist with a super-powered flying metal suit Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is not in a good way. Despite being in a loving relationship with his former assistant and the now-CEO of his company Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), and with his best friends, Colonel James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes (Don Cheadle) and former security guard Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) both doing rather well for themselves, Tony is suffering from severe insomnia and having heavy panic attacks. This may have something to do with him recently almost dying after delivering a nuclear bomb through a portal into space, through which aliens were attempting to invade and take over the world, after which he was literally scared back to life by the Hulk screaming at his face. This isn’t helped by the arrival of two figures from Tony’s past – former one night stand Maya (Rebecca Hall) and rejected scientist Aldritch Killian (Guy Pearce) – and the Mandarin (Ben Kinglsey), a terrorist unleashing multiple bombs onto the American public. When the Mandarin’s latest bomb puts Happy in a coma, Tony is forced to take matters into his own hands. Continue reading →

Zero Dark Thirty

Posted on February 18, 2013 by jaycluitt

After the events of September 11th 2001, the priority of the CIA understandably became apprehending Osama Bin Laden, the leader of the terrorist group behind the attacks. CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain) joins a team involved with this, whose initial job is the interrogation of potential leads by any means necessary, but she soon becomes more involved with the bigger picture, and ultimately becomes the only person absolutely certain of the whereabouts of Bin Laden, culminating in a U.S. Navy Seal attack on the house he is believed to be staying in, some twelve years after the search began.

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Lincoln

Posted on February 3, 2013 by jaycluitt

Four Years into the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis), the 16th King of the United States of America, has his eyes set on not just ending the conflict, but abolishing slavery – over which the war is being predominantly fought – in the process. In order to do this he must pass the 13th amendment to the United States House of Parliament, which would outlaw involuntary servitude, but there’s two problems. One, he’s twenty votes short, and two, he needs to pass it before the war ends, or else it may never happen. And on top of this he’s got some familial woes too – a nutty wife and bull-headed son who wants to go off and fight for his beliefs.

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Django Unchained

Posted on January 28, 2013 by jaycluitt

Bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) frees a slave called Django (Jamie Foxx), who has information on the Brittle Brothers, Schultz’s next targets. After Django helps him find them, Schultz agrees to train Django to work alongside him as a partner, with the intention of saving Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). But to save Broomhilda, the pair will also have to get past Candie’s ruthless housemaster Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).
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Les Miserables

Posted on January 15, 2013 by jaycluitt

Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) has worked his last day of nineteen years of slavery, all for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, and subsequently trying to escape. Upon his release he is informed by policeman Javert (Russell Crowe) that he will be on parole for the rest of his life, so Valjean flees and tries to make a life for himself anew. Some years later, Valjean has become a successful businessman, but Javert remains on his tail, which distracts Valjean at a key moment, which in turn dramatically affects the future of one of Valjean’s employees, Fantaine (Anne Hathaway), and her young daughter Cosette. Some years later, and on the eve of the French Revolution, Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) becomes the object of affections of Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a young but prominent revolutionary, who is himself adored by Eponine (Samantha Barks).

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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Posted on January 3, 2013 by jaycluitt

Bear with me here, this may sound a little strange. There’s these things called hobbits, which are basically people, but they’re quite a bit shorter than humans, with big hairy feet, and they live in the ground in houses with big round doors, and they have a penchant for pipes. One of these hobbits, Bilbo Baggins, is paid a visit by a wizard – stay with me – called Gandalf, who arranges for said hobbit to go on a quest with thirteen dwarfs – kind of like hobbits, but a little taller, bulkier, hairier and grumpier – to travel a really long way in order to break into a locked mountain and kill the giant dragon that’s sleeping on a huge pile of gold that rightfully belongs to the dwarves. Oh, and one of the dwarfs, Thorin (their king), chopped off the hand of a giant pale orc (a kind of, um, ogre?) after the orc (called Asok the Defiler, of course) killed Thorin’s grandfather, and understandably Asok is out for revenge. Oh, and there’s a mass of caves full of goblins, some giant wolf-creatures called Wargs, great big problem-solving eagles and another wizard called Radagast the Brown who keeps birds under his hat, their faeces in his hair and rides a sleigh pulled by big rabbits. Actually, now I think about it, there’s nothing all that weird about any of this.
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