According to Wikipedia, Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (literally translating as “Sunless”) is ” meditation on the human nature of memory,” so it seems only fitting how little I can remember of this film. As such this a review I’ll be writing more to cross it off than to say I’ve seen it, as what little I can recall is not something I wish to experience again. 
Continue reading
I was all set to regale you this week with my latest arduous tale of woe. This past week I suffered a loss so fraught, so traumatising, that I found myself at a loss with what to do with myself. I wandered from room to room, occasionally looking forlornly into the far distance as if momentarily considering some past lover or long forgotten moment from my youth. I’d sign, subtly shake my head a little then proceed with my day, knowing part of me was missing, out there, in the great wide world.
And then I found my lost notebook, and everything was fine. It had the notes I’d made on some of the overdue reviews I’ve yet to write (The Wages of Fear, Traffic, A Little Chaos, La Jetee and Sans Soleil, to be exact), and in the upheaval required to redecorate our guest bedroom/my podcasting lair it had gotten lost in the shuffle, but low and behold if it didn’t turn up under a pile of other notebooks. Who’d have thought? Anyway that’s why today’s review of Koyaanisqatsi went up a little late, as I’d intended to write a few more reviews over the weekend but only found the notebook last night. Champagne all round.
The aforementioned redecorating has severely limited by cinematic intake this week, but I did watch a few things. Here they are:
Continue reading
What’s that? I’m supposed to write a plot synopsis for my opening paragraph? Well I’d love to. I really would. I just can’t seem to find one around here. Nope, I’ve looked everywhere, I’ve got nothing, sorry.
Continue reading
This review was originally written as part of my USA Road Trip for French Toast Sunday.
British secret agent James Bond (Sean Connery) has been assigned a mission to investigate a gold smuggler, Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe). However, as the investigation deepens and Bond becomes embroiled within the plot, Goldfinger’s plan leads to plans to break into the U.S. Gold reserve in Fort Knox. 
Continue reading
Spending my time catching up on pending reviews (Three more crossed off! Twelve still to go!) has seen me watching less review-necessary films in an attempt to prevent the pending list from growing ever further. However, I still have those gaps in my week that need filling with audio-visual content, so I’ve been watching more TV. Not just new stuff, I’m catching up on some older shows too. Specifically I’ve started watching Parks & Recreation, a show I’d heard was good but had never gotten to, mainly because I don’t think it ever made its way to UK TV. I’m three episodes into series 1 so far, and I hop it gets better. I’ve heard that it’s from series 2 onwards that the show finds its feet, and at the moment the characters and situations have potential, but just need to settle into themselves a little more. I could also do with perhaps a little less Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope, who so far comes off as more annoying than endearing, but there’s enough going on to make me continue with the series and move onto number 2 when the time comes.
Continue reading
The Freeling family – Steven (Craig T. Nelson), his wife Diane (JoBeth Williams) and their kids Dana (Dominique Dunne), Robbie (Oliver Robins) and Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) live in a large house within the new-build residential community Steven works as a real estate agent for. They lead a normal life dealing with everyday family problems, but shortly after work begins on the digging of a new swimming pool they begin to experience strange goings-on within the house. Carol Anne is found talking to the television static late at night. Chairs being to rearrange themselves in the kitchen. The tree outside Robbie’s bedroom window seems more menacing than usual. Then one day, when Robbie’s tree attacks him, Carol Anne is left alone in her room and, when her family goes to find her, it appears she has been sucked through a portal in her closet.
Continue reading
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a lonely, outcast 12 year old boy living with his mother in a small apartment in 1980s Sweden. He gets bullied a lot, but is too frail, weak and introverted to fight back. That is until Eli (Lina Leandersson) moves in next door with an older man assumed to be her father, Hakan (Per Ragnar). She hangs around outside at night, doesn’t seem to feel the cold and gives off a feeling that there’s more than a little different about her. Mainly because she’s a vampire.
Continue reading
Los Angeles, 1937. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a private detective specialising in domestic cases. One day a woman (Diane Ladd) shows up at Jake’s office and hires him to follow her husband, Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) who she suspects is having an affair. Jake tracks Mulwray and does indeed photograph him embracing a much younger woman. He gives the photos to Mrs. Mulwray, and soon sees them printed on the front page of the newspaper, only to discover that the woman who hired him wasn’t Mrs. Mulwray, and the real one (Faye Dunaway) is somewhat irked that her husband has been publicly humiliated and has now disappeared, and all this is just the start of a web on intrigue that leads further than Jake could have imagined.
Continue reading
This review was originally written as part of my USA Road Trip for French Toast Sunday.
A couple, Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) decide to spend their two weeks vacation at home working on their house, when quite unexpectedly they die in a car crash. They find themselves haunting their home and are tethered to it, unable to leave, and are appalled when new owners move in from New York, intent on renovating the house into a modern art spectacle. The Maitlands seem to have just one option – hire Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), a self-confessed bio-exorcist, to help them rid their home of these unwanted inhabitants, but unfortunately he turns out to be a little more than they bargained for. 
Continue reading
You know what my sin is? Envy. And also Pride. I’m also quite gluttonous, can be pretty lazy and have bouts of wrath now and then too, so I’m covering everything except greed and lust, so 5 out of 7 ain’t bad, I suppose. Mainly it’s the envy thing though. My life is controlled by list, and no more so than this blog. It’s entirely a product of of my own doing, I get that, but structuring my writing around a pre-determined selection of films that must be reviewed can lead to a lack of variety and motivation at times. That’s why I enjoy writing for other sites like French Toast Sunday and Blueprint: Review because, whilst I often still end up reviewing a List film, I also review other things that interest me, like new releases or pieces about a specific, non-List film or subject.
I heard Alex Withrow from And So It Begins (a site you should not check out if you hate amazing film blogs) on a podcast a few months ago. When it came to the end of the show he was asked what he had coming up soon, and his response was along the liens of “You guys don’t just come up with an idea and post it?” I found this whole concept of not planning ahead and posting on a whim to be utterly alien, especially now when I’ve mapped out a plan to get achieve as many of my goals before the end of the year. I’ve drawn up a list of approximately 120 tasks, some minor (“Watch a 2015 film”) some more time consuming (“Archive all the Lambcast shows” [though admittedly that’s been broken down into chunks]) with the aim of completing at least 2 a day from now until 2016. So far, three days into this mini-mission, I’m ahead of schedule, and finishing this weekly post will cross another task off the list. I get a spring of joy whenever I can highlight something in green, but I can’t help feeling envious of those other less restricted bloggers who don’t suffer my qualms of meeting deadlines. The ones who don’t beat themselves up for not writing a review on a film they don’t have much to say about.
Also, next year’s missions will be far less restricting. I’m still planning to aim for reviewing a lot of films – I’m currently thinking at least 100 off the List – but the break-down as to what each of those films should be will be far less strict, which should see me complaining on these weekly posts a whole heap less. Speaking of which, a busy week with two podcasts to edit and a bunch of DIY to do (redecorating the guest bedroom/my office) saw me watching not a great deal this week. Here’s what I saw:
Continue reading
Life Vs Film 