My 2024 Watchlist Obsession!

I'm a huge fan of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Everything about it - the experimental visuals, the folk music, the customs of the village, the frenetic camerawork - it's all amazing. Speaking of which, I still need to revisit The Color of Pomegranates.

The first thing I did when considering Leave Her to Heaven was pick up Danny Peary's book Alternate Oscars, because I thought Gene Tierney really had a chance of nabbing his pick for 1945. Alas it wasn't to be - but nevertheless, this was one of the more interesting turns I've seen considering that her character in this, Ellen Berent, isn't some batty madwoman running around with wild ideas in her head. She's just really intense, and in the end her jealousy has her commit a few crimes that earns her 'monster' status. For that, her startling icy blue eyes might be one of the reasons this film simply had to be shot in Technicolor (so interesting that during her big murder scene she's wearing sunglasses - the only time in the film she appears to be dead cold.) Ellen's sister, Ruth (Jeanne Crain), describes her as someone who "loves too much" (a polite way of calling someone a bunny boiler these days), and while there's no excuse for murder and the other crimes she commits, the film often sets events up in a manner where she does have genuine reasons to feel hurt and aggrieved. Leave Her to Heaven has a real complexity to it.

Ellen falls in love with Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) when they 'meet cute' during a train journey. She happens to be reading one of his novels, and his remarkable resemblance to her father gets us off to an early start understanding that her obsessiveness was once directed at this paternal figure. We see her scatter his ashes in one scene, looking like a figure from Greek mythology on her steed - urn placed at her side. I've heard that there are many references to that kind of folklore in Leave Her to Heaven - one thing I don't think I'd have figured out on my own is the fact that this is considered film noir. I won't even get started on the many differences this has with your typical noir outing. The colour is dazzling - I love the old Technicolor films, and the vibrant way yellows and reds glow with such soft intensity. Whatever reasons there are for calling this noir - it's not how the movie looks that swings it. (The film won a Best Color Cinematography Oscar for Leon Shamroy, and although the art direction is worthy of making a special note of, it was only nominated in that category, Frenchman's Creek taking away the prize there.) I think the movie is stunning in a visual sense.

Adding to the film in my eyes is the fact that a little bit of courtroom drama is added to the mix - and here the prosecuting attorney is Ellen's former fiancé Russell Quinton (Vincent Price). I like Vincent Price, so that kind of doubles the enjoyment - even if he's a little shrill when pushing points home while questioning his witnesses. I'll forget him, and Wilde, and Crain eventually however - this is Tierney's film performance-wise, and a high point for veteran director John M. Stahl. My expectations were that Tierney's character would be more unhinged, and disconnected from reality - but the truth is that a sociopath needn't be someone who shows outward signs of being mentally unwell. Sometimes a sociopath also has grievances which are genuine, and sometimes they are hard done by. It doesn't excuse what they do, and it doesn't mean they're any less monstrous - but sometimes you need to acknowledge everyone's actions. In the end though, whenever I think of Leave Her to Heaven, I'll immediately think of that one scene were Tierney sits in her boat on the lake with those sunglasses on - cold, calculating, murderous, jealous, conniving and intense. By the end we're dead against Ellen, but when I look back at this movie as a whole, there's a sadness to her, and I do feel some sympathy for the monster here.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #1020. Twentieth Century-Fox's highest-grossing film of the decade. Nominated for the Grand International Award at the Venice Film Festival.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Leave Her to Heaven.

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For the most part, as each item on my watchlist crops up I have absolutely no memory of putting it on the list, and only a general idea of what each film is. Getting up to The Most Hated Man on the Internet, it wasn't until I went to watch it that I discovered it was a limited series. Luckily, it only stretches out to 163-minutes - so I can treat it like a feature documentary, but still, this doesn't feel like a bona fide entry. The subject is Hunter Moore, his revenge porn website www.isanyoneup.com, and how he was brought down by a concerned mother, a dedicated journalist, an anti-bully activist and the FBI. There was a time when Moore appeared to be untouchable - another beneficiary of "I can't control what users post on my site" deniability. But when Charlotte Laws (the concerned mother of the story) discovered that many of the girls being exploited on the site had had their devices hacked, it opened the door for criminal charges. If it could be proved that Hunter Moore had actually been a part of illegally gaining access to people's private material, he'd suddenly find himself looking at prison time.

As far as entitled, chauvinistic, narcissistic, sociopathic douchebags go, you can't get any more of a villain for your documentary than Hunter. He's a special breed who crawled out of an emo/screamo bro culture which celebrated misogyny, and his typical response to the ruined lives and pain he caused was "LOL". As the media started picking up on the phenomenon of his website he started to become something of a celebrity, appearing on shows such as Anderson Cooper, brushing off complaints about what he was doing. The Netflix documentary begins, however, with the moment Charlotte Laws' daughter Kayla discovered there were nude pictures of her online - pictures she'd never shared with anyone. The quest to get those pictures taken down led to the beginning of a crusade for Charlotte, so as Hunter became more and more famous, the infuriated people who wanted to take him down were beginning to formulate their plans. We get interviews with all of these people, but Hunter Moore himself refused to be a part of the documentary, despite initially agreeing to be on it. Jail was only a small fraction of the blowback this young man was about to experience - especially after the group 'Anonymous' took this issue up as a crusade.

As it turns out, Hunter Moore was living with his parents - and by all appearances seemed to be spending the money he was earning on lavish parties, drugs, and limos. We learn about what that side of his life was like by listening to the various investigative journalists who spent time with him while getting a story. His whole "ruining lives is so much fun" attitude gave him a dedicated, if twisted, fanbase - but anyone watching would be able to tell that this was unsustainable. The story is a typical 'rise and fall' kind of narrative where the protagonist becomes more and more of a risk taker, and gives those who oppose him more and more impetus to stop him. In the end, his address was leaked, his accounts hacked, his money stolen and his life ruined - and that's all before the FBI finally charged him and dragged him off to prison. He didn't get a really lengthy sentence, but he was barred from social media - not that his power hadn't already waned to the point where his usual boisterous loudmouth self had fallen completely silent. He wanted fame and adoration, but had found infamy and hatred a much greater force. In the end though, his very existence depresses me.