Blue Velvet

Posted on March 3, 2025 by jaycluitt

Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns from university to his smalltown home of Lumberton to look after the family hardware store when his father is hospitalised from a heart attack. After visiting the hospital, Jeffrey discovers a severed human ear in the woods, and begins investigating into its origin, leading him to team up with policeman’s daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) and lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) who seems connected in some way. Also connected is local gas-huffing psychopath crime lord Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) and his crew of cronies, but how deep is Jeffrey going to delve into the seedy world beneath the perfect veneer of suburbia?

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1941

Posted on February 25, 2025 by jaycluitt

Okay folks, strap in. Six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States of America was concerned about another attack on US soil. 1941 follows a bunch of people in and around California over the course of one day, including:
– The crew of a Japanese submarine searching for something honourable to destroy, commanded by Akiro Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune) alongside German officer Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt (Christopher Lee), and eventually kidnapping Christmas tree salesman Hollis P. Wood (Slim Pickens).
– US Air Force captain “Wild” Bill Kelso (John Belushi) apparently chasing Japanese aircraft in his Warhawk.
– Captain Loomis Birkhead (Tim Matheson) attempting to seduce old girlfriend Donna Stratton (Nancy Allen), now the secretary of General Stillwell (Robert Stack), complicated by the fact that Stratton can only become aroused in a flying airplane, and Birkhead is not a qualified pilot.
– Civilian couple Ward and Joan Douglas (Ned Beatty and Lorraine Gary) are presented with an anti-aircraft gun due to the coastal location of their home.
– The Douglas’ daughter, Betty (Dianne Kay), wants to go to the jitterbug dance with newly-unemployed former-dishwasher Wally (Bobby Di Cicco), which becomes a problem when the dance becomes only available to enlisted men, much to the joy of the aggressive Corporal Sitarski (Treat Williams), who has eyes for Betty, whilst Betty’s friend Maxine (Wendie Jo Sperber) very much has the hots for Sitarski.
– Two members of the Ground Observer Corps (Murray Hamilton and Eddie Deezen) are posted atop a Ferris wheel, keeping watch for any approaching enemy forces.
– And finally, devoid of any real through-plot, there’s a tank crew comprised of Sergeant Tree (Dan Aykroyd) and Privates Foley (John Candy), Reese (Mickey Rourke), Henshaw (Walter Olkewicz) and new addition Jones (Frank McRae).

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The Sugarland Express

Posted on February 15, 2025 by jaycluitt

With only four months left on her husband’s prison sentence, Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) near-spontaneously springs Clovis (William Atherton) from imminent release and the two set out to retrieve their fostered child Langston from his new parents. Things inevitably go awry, leading to the couple taking Patrolman Slide (Michael Sacks) hostage in his patrol car and lead one of the slowest, and silliest, car chases across Texas.

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2024 Movies Ranked

Posted on February 1, 2025 by jaycluitt

Here it is, my annual ranking of all the films I saw from the previous year. As always this is based on UK release dates, and I gave myself until the end of January to circle back on some of the films I wasn’t able to see first time around. There’s a list at the bottom for films I’ve still not seen but would like to, and feel free to leave more suggestions in the comments.

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2024: What Kind of Year Has It Been?

Posted on January 7, 2025 by jaycluitt

They say it’s a bad idea to compare yourself to others, especially the lives others share on social media, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. For reasons I won’t go into just yet, I could describe my 2024 as having been pretty terrible, but when I put it into perspective against the year some of my friends have had, it starts to look not all that bad. What do you mean you’ve had a year filled with hospital trips and chemotherapy? You’re living in an active war zone? Too many of your weekends were spent attending family funerals? My current living situation is temporarily a little uncomfortable and now I have to take a tablet if I want to eat cheese!

So yes, my year could have been better, but it also could’ve been a whole lot worse, and I’m grateful for just how bad a year some of my friends had, so mine may appear better in comparison. So, how did my year go? If you’re new to these annual posts, I’ll be taking a look back at the plans and resolutions I made this time last year, laugh raucously at how few of them I accomplished, and then make some more wildly implausible plans for the coming twelve months. Let’s get to it!

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2023 Movies Ranked

Posted on January 25, 2024 by jaycluitt

Remember when I’d have this list and my new year’s resolution post published on the first few days of the month? What blissful days they were, sat up typing on New Year’s Eve with my wife scrolling Instagram next to me, Interstellar playing in the background turned up loud so the dogs wouldn’t get terrified by the surrounding fireworks. Alas, things change and time marches on, but it brings with it a whole load of new films every year. Here’s my ranking of all the 2023 new releases I’ve seen so far (a significant selection have been watched in 2024). As always, as I’m in the UK I’m only counting films that were released in the UK in 2023, hence why some of these films might count for earlier years for some of you and, whilst I have seen the likes of Poor Things, American Fiction and The Holdovers, they weren’t released here until 2024, so you’ll find their placements around this time next year. Let’s go!

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2023: What Kind of Year Has It Been? Plus Plans for 2024

Posted on January 25, 2024 by jaycluitt

I’m still here! And so are you! That’s awesome, welcome back. To give you an idea of time, I’m starting writing this on Sunday 7th January, fully a week into the new year. It’s unlikely I’ll finish it today, and with the aim of posting this as soon as possible (before February would be great) I’m going to keep things comparatively brief this year. As years go, 2023 wasn’t the best. In my personal life there were some massive dips (the only grandfather I’ve ever known passed in February, the first truly significant death I’ve experienced in well over two decades) and I don’t think my year ever fully recovered, but we’ve all kept going, life goes on, and the rest of the year saw us take some wonderful trips back to Scotland, see some shows (Back to the Future and Groundhog Day are both excellent) and welcome a new nephew into the family. None of this sounds like it has anything to do with the resolutions I set this time last year, or my plans for the future, so let’s curtail this and move things along, shall we?

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The Lighthouse

Posted on March 19, 2023 by jaycluitt

Two men must spend 4 weeks together maintaining a lighthouse on an isolated island in the late 19th century. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? There’ll be some butting of heads as their personalities clash and cabin fever sets in, but eventually they’ll either become friends, lovers, or they’ll kill each other, but however it turns out, the story will be clear and everything will be resolved, yes? After all, the film is called The Lighthouse, and the primary job of a lighthouse is to reveal what would be otherwise hidden and dangerous, so calling a film The Lighthouse when it’s actually a near-impenetrable sack of confusion would be ludicrous!

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2022: What Kind of Year Has It Been? Plus Plans for 2023

Posted on January 30, 2023 by jaycluitt

Hi there, reader! Happy New Year! Or Happy one-twelfth of the way into the New Year! Wait, January can’t already be almost over, right? Bloody hell. OK, see, this is what I’m going to talk about. I’ve had the majority of this post written, images and links set up, just waiting for me to finish it for a couple of weeks now, and I just haven’t been able to kick it out of the draft airplane and let the… the… the parachute of publication open up? No? That doesn’t make sense, but so be it. I could’ve posted this and moved on to edit a podcast or write an actual damn review, but instead I’ve kept thinking about how to finish this one or, more accurately, how to start it with this ultimately inconsequential opening paragraph. So that’s what I’ve decided is going to be the theme of my 2023, getting on with it. Not sure what to do on a morning where I’ve got lots of things that need doing? Just sodding pick one and start. Even less sure what to do on a rare day where there’s nothing urgent? Go for a run. Watch a film. Read a book. Go back to sleep. Whatever, just do it. None of this undecided, introspective nonsense, that just leads to stressing out and panic attacks. As such, here’s my update on how 2022 went, and my plans for 2023, compared to last year’s post, which can be found here: 2022 goals post. Not sure what to do now? Read it, silly!

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2022 Movies Ranked

Posted on January 14, 2023 by jaycluitt

Hey, remember me? I used to write here from time to time, but haven’t been very active (on here at least) since I transcribed the lyrics to the end-credits song of a bad shark movie you’ve probably never seen. Well I’m back for my annual new year posts, starting off with ranking all the new releases I saw in 2022, and I’m keeping up the tradition of being a little late, and seeing a few more 2022 releases since I started this post, and the longer I leave finishing this post the more films I’ll need to add to it, and so on. Anyway, also as always there’s a bunch of new films I didn’t get to for various reasons that I’ll hopefully get to in my 2022 wrap-up post, but currently I’ve seen 70 new releases from last year (up from 57 in 2021). Here’s a list of some of the films I haven’t seen yet, but hope to soon, although many of them are available streaming to me right now, and have been for a while, so the fact that I still haven’t seen them yet doesn’t bode well: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Troll, The House, The Northman, Studio 666, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Bones and All, Elvis, The Woman King, Decision to Leave, Brian and Charles, Triangle of Sadness, Aftersun, Living, Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, The Worst Person in the World, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Emily the Criminal, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Violent Night, Vengeance, Bros, Avatar: The Way of Water. That’s enough of the films I haven’t seen, here’s the ranking of the 70 I did, starting out with a couple that I actually haven’t. You’ll see what I mean. Oh, and as always this ranking is true as of today, and will almost certainly be different tomorrow. That’s the case more so this year than ever before as 2022 had a lot of films I really liked, but no particular one that was immediately deemed better than all the rest.