John Ruth “The Hangman” (Kurt Russell) is a bounty hunter known for bringing in his bounties alive, regardless of the difficulty in doing so. His latest conquest is Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), but whilst transporting her by stagecoach through a brutal winter storm, he is forced to stop off at Minnie’s Haberdashery to wait out the blizzard. On his way there he picks up a fellow bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and the new sheriff of the town they’re heading for, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). Upon arriving at the haberdashery, Ruth and the others find Minnie nowhere to be found, and four strangers (Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Demian Bichir and Bruce Dern) holding the fort instead.
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
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
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
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
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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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 4
You may have noticed I haven’t posted my 2015 in Review or Most Anticipated for 2016 posts. This is correct, well done on being so observant. I’ve got both saved in draft and am about halfway through the 2015 in Review (I’ve hit a stumbling block in that I can’t remember anything that happened in American Sniper so lost my momentum) so that’ll come out eventually. What probably won’t is my Anticipated list for 2016. The reason being is that there’s not all that many incoming films I’m terribly excited about.

We did a recent Lambcast episode on this very subject, and I found myself at a loss. There’s one film I’m really, really looking forward to in 2016, and that’s Shane Black’s The Nice Guys. Other than that I’d honestly be fine if everything else coming out this year just… sort of… didn’t. Granted there’s films I’ll see because they look fun – Captain America: Civil War, Deadpool, Finding Dory – and others I’ll be obliged to for podcasting reasons – Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice springs unfortunately to mind – and of course there’s the batch of late 2015 films that are only just getting released in the UK – The Revenant, The Big Short, Spotlight, Room – which I’m sure will be more than worth a watch, as long as I get to them before the Oscars. It’s just that nothing is getting me excited. It’s probably a comparison to last year, when I was all stoked for the new Star Wars, Avengers, Spectre, Jurassic World and, most regrettably, The Good Dinosaur. After a few disappointments in 2015, maybe I’ve lowered my expectations for 2016 so low that I’d honestly be OK if the cinemas all took a break for a year. Heck, it’d give me a chance to save some cash and make some more headway watching the films I need to see. Speaking of which, here’s what I watched this week:
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The English Patient
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)
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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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 2 and 3, plus China trip
We are twenty two days into 2016. Three weeks and one day. And so far I haven’t watched a single film in my own home. Not only that, I haven’t reviewed a single film either. Needless to say, I’m getting more than a little behind. You see, whilst my TV and my blog have been gathering dust, my January has so far been rather eventful.

Two weeks ago I went to China for a week on business. China is, in a word, terrifying. Specifically the roads, which alas we had to traverse multiple times a day, and during each journey I could be found clutching desperately to that pathetic little ceiling-mounted handle like I was 20,000 feet in the air and it was my only parachute. Driving in China is very different from in the UK, in that the drivers don’t actually turn their heads. Their eyes may flit to the mirrors from time to time, every half an hour or so, but manoeuvres, which are often made without the aid of a blinking indicator, are ploughed into with an amount of confidence I found more than unnerving. If, mid-lane-change, it turns out there’s another vehicle already in the way, horns are beeped and drivers return to their lanes until that car has passed, at which point the change is attempted again. The cyclists didn’t help matters either, heading in whichever direction they wished, oblivious to any kinds of traffic lights and bereft of head protection, with up to four people for every two wheels. The strange thing is, there weren’t all that many accidents. The occasional car had a scratch or a dent, but for the most part the automobiles were in pristine condition and we only saw maybe two or three cars sat at the side of a road awaiting assistance.

Food-wise it wasn’t exactly the Chinese takeaway I’m used to (and which I’m enjoying tonight), with the suppliers we met with taking us out for all manner of local delicacy, including sea snails and chicken feet. I tried the former but not the latter, because well, they’re chicken feet. That’s not supposed to be eaten. The worst thing I ate was actually tofu, mainly because it’s even less like food than chicken feet. It’s like eating gelatinous clouds. It’s albino pond scum. Bland, soggy soap. Blurgh. Also, tea. Lots and lots of tea. You’d think being an Englishman I’d jump at the chance for a nice cuppa, but in reality I’d never actually tried tea before in any form, and having now tried some I won’t be rushing back to any.

Since arriving home from China (we also spent a couple of days in Hong Kong, where it just pissed it down with rain) my sleep schedule has been rocked so much that I’ve had difficulty staying awake in the evenings, hence the lack of viewings and reviewings. I did, however, watch some films on the flights to and from the East, so let’s get into those shall we? Here’s what I’ve watched over the past couple of weeks:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 1, plus 2016 Plans
2016 has not begun well. I never had a pet as a child. I remember asking my parents for a hamster for my birthday and Christmas every year until, when I was about fourteen, they gave me a battery-powered chipmunk in a plastic ball which, evidently, was not designed to roll down a flight of stairs. That ended my quest for domesticated creatures until six-and-a-bit years ago, when I began dating my lovely girlfriend Aisha. She’d always had pets, so it was inevitable that someday we would too. She always wanted a dog, but that seemed like a giant leap for a non-pet-owner such as myself, so we began small with my first pets, the relatively easy to care for mini lop rabbits, mother and son Goldie and Copper. Copper was my favourite, by virtue of Goldie occasionally being somewhat aggressive and escape-happy, whereas Copper just loved hopping round the garden sniffing and tasting everything. When we got Murphy, our labradoodle puppy, last year, he took priority over the rabbits purely because of how time-consuming taking care of him was, but feeding the rabbits twice a day and letting them hop around now and then was always something I looked forward to, because I’d get to interact with Copper who, I should point out, was the softest thing in the world, and remained my favourite pet in spite of Murphy’s uncontrollable fluffiness. Sadly last Sunday Copper passed away. He was my first pet, my first to die, and the first I’ve had to bury, and I miss him a great deal. If you’d told me years ago that there’d come a time where I’d spend much of a day – literally hours – crying over a dead rabbit, I’d meet your comments with bemused derision, yet here we are. Goldie remains unphased and Murphy is now top of the adorable list, but Copper will always hold that place as my first pet.

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