Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Posted on January 31, 2016 by jaycluitt

Best friend singing-dancing double act Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) and Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) have very different approaches to love. Dorothy is looking for a penniless hunk for a night of passion, whilst Lorelei is content settling down with her bookish but extremely wealthy fiancé Gus Edmond (Tommy Noonan). When Gus’ father imposes upon the upcoming wedding, Lorelei and Dorothy jump aboard a cruise ship to Paris, with the intention that Gus will join them at a later date and they will have the wedding in France. However, once aboard the ship the wealth-obsessed gold-digging Lorelei soon finds her attention drawn to Sir Francis “Piggy” Beekman, the owner of a diamond mine.
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Kiss of the Spider Woman

Posted on January 31, 2016 by jaycluitt

This review was originally written for Blueprint: Review.

In a prison in Brazil, two cellmates – cross-dressing homosexual Luis Molina (William Hurt) and aggressive political prisoner Valentin Arregui (Raul Julia) – form an unlikely friendship as Luis recounts one of his favourite films to pass the time.
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Heaven and Earth Magic

Posted on January 31, 2016 by jaycluitt

I’m not going to waste any more time on this than I have to. Heaven and Earth Magic is, to quote John Cleese, a senseless waste of human life. It’s 66 minutes of crude, jerky, 1950s stop motion that pieces together to form not one single iota of sense. It’s the kind of film where trying to decode the nonsense and assemble some kind of coherent narrative would drive you utterly insane, because it’s nothing but objects and outlines, interacting with one another in increasingly bizarre ways. Any such plot that could be assigned to the goings-on would do so via great leaps of metaphor, and many threadbare external references applied.

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The Hangover

Posted on January 31, 2016 by jaycluitt

Doug (Justin Bartha) is getting married in two days, so his buddies Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms) take him to Las Vegas for his bachelor party, with Doug’s soon-to-be brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis) tagging along too. They have a wild time on Friday night, but come Saturday morning Phil, Stu and Alan wake up to a trashed hotel suite, a baby in a closet, a tiger in the bathroom and Doug nowhere to be seen. They’ve got just 24 hours to sort everything out and get Doug back in time for his own wedding.
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The English Patient

Posted on January 29, 2016 by jaycluitt

A disfigured English-speaking man (Ralph Fiennes) is being cared for by a nurse (Juliette Binoche) in Italy during World War 2. Whilst being moved his condition worsens, so she cares for him in the ruins of a monastery where they are joined by some bomb disposal technicians (Naveen Andrews and Kevin Whately) and a thumb-less Canadian (Willem Dafoe). All the while the man struggles to remember who he is, recalling his past sharing an affair with a British woman (Kristen Scott Thomas) married to one of the man’s colleagues (Colin Firth).
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Blind Spot: The Producers (1967)

Posted on January 26, 2016 by jaycluitt

Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) used to be a hit Broadway producer, but a string of flops have left him hard up, forced to woo old rich old women to fund his latest endeavours. That is until easily agitated accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) shows up to go over his books, and strikes upon the idea that a devious producer could make a great deal of money raising funds for a show that is bound to flop. This sends Max on a mission to produce the worst show in town.
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Rashomon

Posted on December 31, 2015 by jaycluitt

Whilst waiting out a storm in a run-down gate, two men who have recently appeared as witnesses in a case before a court recount the case to a third stranger as they attempt to make sense of the various contradicting accounts.
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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Posted on December 31, 2015 by jaycluitt

In the town of Shinbone, Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) have returned for the funeral of Tom Doniphon, a man who evidently meant a great deal to them. When asked by the local press, Ransom recounts a tale of his youth, which began when he arrived at Shinbone an idealistic young lawyer intent on bringing a sense of law and justice to the west, a quest intensified after he is assaulted by vicious bandit Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Continue reading →

Brazil

Posted on December 31, 2015 by jaycluitt

Somewhere in the 20th Century, the world has become an Orwellian dystopia of farcical proportions. In a world where no mistakes are acknowledged, a random swatted fly falling into a typewriter causes a man named Buttle to be arrested in place of rogue terrorist heating engineer Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro). Tasked with tying up the error’s loose ends is Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a menial yet essential worker within the Department of Records who his boss Mr. Kurtzmann (Ian Holm) would be lost without if he were ever promoted. Sam finds his quest to rectify the situation exacerbated by the likes of his plastic surgery-obsessed mother (Katherine Helmond), less than efficient government-employed heating technicians (Bob Hoskins & Derrick O’Connor), executive desk trinkets and his own dreams which see him flying around saving his literal dream girl (Kim Greist) from monstrous demons.
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Shaft (1971)

Posted on December 31, 2015 by jaycluitt

John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is a private detective in New York City. Apparently he’s cool, tough, a sex machine with all the chicks, he doesn’t take orders from anybody, but he’d risk his neck for his brother man. People talk about him, and ask others if they can dig it. I’m not entirely sure what “it” is in this scenario, but whatever. A Harlem crime boss named Bumpy (Moses Gunn) tries to recruit Shaft to track down his kidnapped daughter, whilst the police, primarily Lt. Vic Androzzi (Charles Cioffi), needs Shaft to get information on a burgeoning gang war between the African American gangs and the Italian mobs.
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