JFK

Posted on August 25, 2015 by jaycluitt

On November 22nd, 1963, President John F Kennedy was killed, supposedly by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was killed by a man named Jack Ruby before the case could go to trial. Despite several other theories, the case was dropped for three years, until Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, picked it up again after noticing some discrepancies within the Warren Report, written to document the details of the assassination. Garrison and his team re-launch the investigation, certain that there is more to it than simply one man and his gun.
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Apollo 13

Posted on December 27, 2011 by jaycluitt

In 1969, man landed on the moon. This man was not Tom Hanks’ Jim Lovell, then first reserve for Neil Armstrong, but later he was given his own shat at the big floating wheel of cheese aboard the ill-fated Apollo 13. Hanks displays his greatest talent of evermanisation in this film, managing to make even an astronaut seem like a regular Joe, suffering from everyday concerns with young kids and a daughter dressing inappropriately on Halloween, coupled with the hours of arduous practice and training required for his profession and the worrying endured by the families left behind. Director Ron Howard evokes the feel of the late 60s well – the excitement of new scientific endeavours coupled with the period details, fashions, chain smoking and news reports, and Hanks is well supported by Gary Sinise, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon as his fellow astronauts, Ed Harris as the waistcoat wearing mission control and Kathleen Quinlan’s distraught wife, the latter of the two were Oscar nominated for their roles.

Choose film 8/10

Diner

Posted on July 31, 2011 by jaycluitt

Overshadowed by the more successful, identically plotted yet inferior St. Elmo’s Fire for its starrier cast (back then anyway), this follows six friends as they joke, laugh, date and above all talk through their situations and lots in life as one of their number gears up to get married in a few days time. The cast of then near unknowns includes Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Paul Reiser, Tim Daly, Kevin Bacon and Ellen Barkin, most of whom are fine in their roles, particularly Guttenberg as Eddie, the highly-strung groom-to-be who insists his fiancé must pass a football test or he’ll cancel the ceremony, and Stern’s Shrevie, the sensible, married member of the group who has discovered he has nothing to talk about with his wife (Barkin). Only Reiser is left without much of a character of story arc, left merely to pop up now and then with a well timed joke or put-down, something the comedian is more than equipped to do. Some of the dialogue seems to have been lifted from an unused Steven Seagal script (“I’ll hit you so hard I’ll kill your whole family”), but the 50’s soundtrack, featuring such artists as Bobby Darin, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry help to make this an 80’s classic, even if it’s set in December 1959.

Choose film 6/10