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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Pink Flamingos

Posted on December 28, 2015 by jaycluitt

This review was originally written as part of my USA Road Trip for French Toast Sunday. It was also suggested for me to watch by Lindsay Street of French Toast Sunday, and is amongst the supposed “Bad” movies suggested by Chip and Steve.

In northern Baltimore, Divine (Divine) is living under the alias of Babs Johnson after being heralded with the title of the Filthiest Person Alive, which evidently in this work is front page news. She lives in a trailer with her son Crackers (Danny Mills), her mother Edie (Edith Massey) and their travelling companion Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce). More on them later. Upon learning of Divine’s notoriety a couple, Connie and Raymond Marble (Mink Stole and David Lochary), who believe they are the rightful recipients of the award, set out to prove they are far more filthy than Divine, and aim to bring her down in the process.
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The Thin Blue Line

Posted on December 28, 2015 by jaycluitt

On Thanksgiving weekend, 1976, policeman Robert W Wood pulled over a car for driving at night with no headlights on in Dallas, Texas. The car was stolen, which Wood had no knowledge of, and sadly he was shot and killed, with the car peeling away as Wood’s partner, one of the first female officers in Dallas, fired shots after it. The police investigation led to 16-year-old David Ray Harris, who had reportedly stolen the car from his neighbour and later bragged to his friends about committing the crime, but he pointed the finger at 28-year-old Randall Adams, a man new in town planning to start a new job, whom Harris had given a ride to and spent the day with.
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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 →

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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Lolita (1962)

Posted on December 26, 2015 by jaycluitt

Professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) has a job as a French Poetry teacher lined up in Ohio in autumn, but until then he plans to spend the summer in New Hampshire, staying in the spare room of the widow Mrs. Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters). It’s clear Charlotte takes an instant liking to Humbert, but he is instead infatuated with Charlotte’s 14-year-old daughter Lolita (Sue Lyon), who relishes this sudden influx of attention.
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The Smiling Madame Beudet

Posted on December 23, 2015 by jaycluitt

Madame Beudet (Germaine Dermoz) lives an unhappy live being mocked and tormented by her husband (Alexandre Arquillière). He works all day as a cloth merchant and ignores his wife when he comes home. He arranges tickets for them for the theatre to a performance of Faust but, when she declines to go, he pretends he will kill himself with a gun he keeps in a top drawer. Evidently he keeps the gun unloaded and uses this trick often to mock his wife. However, when he goes to the show with his associate and his wife (Jean D’Yd & Madeleine Guitty), Mrs. Beudet loads the gun in the hope that the next time he pulls the stunt he’ll follow through and kill himself.
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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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Traffic

Posted on December 20, 2015 by jaycluitt

Two Mexican police officers (Benicio del Toro and Jacob Vargas) become embroiled in a corrupt drug investigation. Meanwhile a judge in Ohio (Michael Douglas) is tasked with heading the Office of National Drug Control, whilst his daughter (Erike Christensen) becomes more experimental with her own drug use. Even more meanwhile a DEA investigation (led by Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) arrest a dealer (Miguel Ferrer) and keep him in custody to testify in court against a drug lord, whose wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) suddenly finds herself having to deal with her husband’s way of living with the help of her lawyer (Dennis Quaid).
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