Second Chance: Jurassic Park 3

Posted on February 13, 2011 by jaycluitt

Jurassic Park is one of those films that really should have stopped at just 1 film. As much as I do love the second film, adding an all-star cast of Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Peter Stormare, Richard Schiff and Pete Postlethwaite (R.I.P.) to the already spot-on casting of Jeff Goldblum, and with the addition of Compsognathus, one of my favourite dinosaurs (get over it, I’m a nerd), I feel that lifting the curtain on the mythology behind the parks sullies the memory of the original film, which I still deem as near-perfect cinema (major failing point: not killing the kids).

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Black Narcissus/An Education

Posted on February 13, 2011 by jaycluitt

Nearly finished the list! Just editing out the duplications. Fortunately, I seem to own a good couple of hundred of the required films, but I feel I may be re-joining LoveFilm pretty soon, and learning how to set my VCR (yes, VCR, what’s the weather like in the present?) for the random daytime gold that is Film4. I’ve also discovered the library of DVDs at the university my girlfriend attends, offering up to 3 rentals at a time, for free! Alas, she is only there for a few more months, so I’m going to be renting as many as I can whilst she’s there.

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Second Chance: Sex and the City the Movie 2

Posted on February 8, 2011 by jaycluitt

I must have done something wrong. I’ve no idea what it was, but believe me I’m sorry, as the punishment for this unknown wrongdoing was a viewing of Sex and the City the Movie 2. I’ve never watched an episode, and certainly haven’t seen the original film, but I knew of the characters, their names and basic cliche stereotypes (Charlotte = prim and proper, Carrie = whiny clotheshorse, Miranda = businesslike, Samatha = whore) from pop-culture. I’ve never had any desire to watch anything even vaguely related to this show, and this viewing has only furthered this mission.

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Is 3D killing cinema?

Posted on February 6, 2011 by jaycluitt

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I wanted to see Tangled. We want to see it in 2D, as I refuse to pay an extra £2.00 per person to see the exact same film (£3.00 if you include the glasses), with an added third dimension. I don’t care if it’s more immersive, it’s the same film, I don’t care. It’s just another way of draining my hard earned money out of my pocket, where it’s busy keeping the moths warm. However, the optimum times for watching the film were only showing in 3D, so we didn’t go, we went home and watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer instead. I may never forgive cinema. We’re going to see it tonight instead, in 2D, but if we weren’t such social outcasts that we didn’t have two consecutive weekend evenings free, we wouldn’t see it, and the Gods of Movies would never see our readies.

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The King’s Speech/12 Angry Men

Posted on February 4, 2011 by jaycluitt

I’m still working on the full list, its quite long so may take a while to sort through any duplications, but suffice to say I’m thinking I’ve bitten off slightly more than I can chew, as I haven’t heard of many of the 1001 Films to See Before You Die, let alone seen.

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The Challenge Part 1

Posted on January 31, 2011 by jaycluitt

One day, I’m going to die. So are you. I was reminded of this at Christmas, when I was given the latest edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. I love making lists of films to watch, tracking them down and crossing them off gives me the kind of pleasure most people only experience in bed, bungee jumping or finding out they have superpowers. But, as this book clearly points out in the title, I’m going to die. There is a finite amount of time I have left to watch these films, films that I must watch before I die, else my life be not deemed worthy of the cinematic Gods.

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Second Chance: P.S. I Love You

Posted on January 31, 2011 by jaycluitt

For every good film, there must be an equally bad film (Newton’s Third Law of Motion Pictures). Like most people, I tend to not watch a film if I hear that it’s bad, even more so if this opinion comes from a review. But a review is merely one person’s opinion, and I’m not going to agree with them all the time, surely? So in this column I’ll be providing badly reviewed films with a second chance, seeing if they are as bad as everyone seems to think.

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Exam

Posted on January 19, 2011 by jaycluitt

Last night, I experienced the long-awaited and highly anticipated joy of watching Exam, the 2009 writing and directing debut of Stuart Hazeldine. Looking at his earlier work, dabbling in the scripts of such cinematic highlights as Knowing and the remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still, expectations should not have been high, yet due to word of mouth and some decent reviews, I had been looking forward to watching the film for quite some time.

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R.E.D.

Posted on November 10, 2010 by jaycluitt

Do you want to see Morgan Freeman beat up Richard Dreyfuss? John Malkovich take out a rocket with a single bullet? Helen Mirren threaten to bury someone in the woods before unleashing Hell with a sniper rifle? Of course you do, so you should go and see RED. This movie is all about playing against type, with almost all of the principle cast not being well known for action roles. Bruce Willis, obviously, is the most well known for out-and-out balls to the wall action, and Karl Urban, perfecting his unemoting suit with balls ready for his next role as Judge Dredd, has done his fair share, but personally I’ve never seen Brian Cox unload an uzi on someone.

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2012

Posted on November 9, 2010 by jaycluitt

Say what you will about Roland Emmerich, and many have and I’m sure many more will, but the man knows how to abuse a landscape. Given that within his back catalogue, the guy’s unleashed a giant reptile around New York, had aliens destroy all the major cities of the world and frozen the entire northern hemisphere, you’d think he’d be looking for something new, to stretch his horizon a little beyond the tedium of landscape desecration. Well now it looks like he may be doing just that, but before he goes, he wants to make sure he’s remembered for the disaster movie to end all disaster movies. So, in 2012, which historical landmarks are being reduced to so much dust in the wind? The Washington monument? The Sistine chapel? Christ the Redeemer? If you answered d) All of the above, congratulations, you’re correct, as Emmerich has had enough of humanity, and is blowing all of civilisation sky high. He even has a pop at Mount Everest, and we didn’t even build that.

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