My 2024 Watchlist Obsession!

She's Welsh too, So I'm naturally biased about her greatness.

Jawbreaker starts off with a bang - three popular, beautiful teenage girls, Courtney Shayne (Rose McGowan), Julie Freeman (Rebecca Gayheart) and Marcie Fox (Julie Benz) play a prank on their friend Elizabeth Purr (Charlotte Ayanna), tying up and kidnapping her while wearing disguises to hide their identities. They bundle her into the trunk of a car and drive off - but when they open said trunk down the road, they discover that Elizabeth has choked to death on the jawbreaker Courtney shoved into her mouth. They decide to take her body back to her bedroom and stage the scene to make it look like attempted rape, but the mousy, uncool Fern Mayo (Judy Greer) discovers them, and is offered the chance to be made-over and also become part of the cool clique if she keeps her mouth shut. We'd broken so many taboos by this point that I was expecting a bit more from Jawbreaker than what I eventually got. It turns into your typical high school teen movie from that point on.

If anything was to get me onboard with another one of these movies, it had to be something different, and I thought Jawbreaker was going to get crazy and do that. Not only did it not, but the only other risqué scene in the film - a sex scene with Rose McGowan (a 26-year-old playing a 17-year-old) and Marilyn Manson - was so heavily cut down to avoid an NC-17 rating that it's barely there at all. Then there's all the tropes - the most egregious being the "ugly" girl (usually a beautiful girl with glasses/braces on, unkempt hair and baggy clothes) being "beautified" and becoming popular, but discovering popularity isn't the be all and end all of life. There are the attempts to drag each other's reputation into the gutter through nefarious means - with the difference being the fact that Elizabeth's death is now weaponized and used as a means to seek revenge over Courtney. Rose McGowan does imbue Courtney with enough evil to get the audience to hate her (the film would fail completely if not for that) - hers being the main attraction performance-wise.

Jawbreaker has a soundtrack with attitude and a hell of a premise to start with, but in the end shied away from being a complete taboo-breaker, partly due to the ratings board in the U.S. I'm not sure why I had it on my watchlist, considering I'm not a huge fan of high school movies that focus on mean, popular and vacuous girls. I think it was because a bunch of girls accidentally killing their friend and trying to cover it up sounds like it might be interesting. Unfortunately, this is more intent on studying what the girls do to be popular, and how mean they are to each other - in the meantime not fussing much with the whole central idea of the movie - ie, the murder. The movie is very colourful, slick and full of catwalk moments, along with having the aforementioned music to show off some style and fashion. Unfortunately it sorely lacks in imagination, and I'd be much harsher with my rating if it weren't as well packaged, and if it didn't have as promising a premise. It has attitude, and has a cult following, but I'll need more convincing before I'm onboard with it.




Thanks to whomever inspired me to watch Jawbreaker.

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Through the ripples of time, vengeance can become a very complicated matter. That's especially true in this Götz Spielmann Oscar-nominated film where we ask the question - 'whose fault was the central tragedy in this movie?' The need for revenge is part of the grieving process for protagonist Alex (Johannes Krisch) - and as fate would have it, the target of his rage happens to be the neighbour of his elderly grandfather. This opens up a range of possibilities. Robert (Andreas Lust), is the man he wants to kill - a policeman wrestling with guilt and trauma. His wife, Susanne (Ursula Strauss), is unhappy and unable to conceive because of Robert, compounding his self-loathing. She hatches a plan to seduce Alex in the hopes he'll make her pregnant, not knowing that he's making plans to kill her husband. It's a tangled web alright, but through all of this Spielmann works through the issues related to the emotional complexity of the need for vengeance. Once you get to know the people you want to destroy, everything can change drastically.

The way Spielmann introduces all of the characters early, and draws them together, adds a 'fated' quality to the story. Alex's world is that of a much lower class to that of Susanne and Robert, which creates a contrast. Along with his prostitute girlfriend, Tamara (Irina Potapenko), he dreams of something better for himself - if only he had the money to go into a business venture offered by a cohort. How to get it? Rob a bank perhaps - as he reasons "Nothing can go wrong. I have a plan." His grandfather views him as a 'scoundrel', but we'll learn that Robert does have a heart - something that will become paramount at crucial moments in the film, but also something that makes his thirst for vengeance so powerful. He acts tough, but underneath there's an emotional layer which conflicts with this. The great thing about this film is that Spielmann highlights all of this very clearly, so that we know as the film advances what the characters are thinking and feeling.

In the end Revanche is a powerful film that's very straightforward narrative-wise, but at the same time complex and fascinating on a deeper level. It should strike every viewer that whenever a person thirsts for revenge, they should contemplate the fact that they never really know the bigger picture, and thus how justified the urge is. It's well written, and the performances make you feel like you're watching real people wrestle with their own personal torment. Eventually, you'll find sympathy for every character in the film - their humanity is highlighted and exposed to us. The film has a very nice pivot from the city to the Austrian countryside and forest as Robert becomes more isolated from other people - cut adrift by his own grieving process and troubled conscience. A very enjoyable movie that had me glued to the screen, surprised by every twist and turn in it's compelling story. Very much recommended viewing.

Glad to catch this one - #502 on Criterion and nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2009.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Revanche.

Just put this in my watchlist & will be after you if I hate it.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Another month full of surprise for me - 26 films all-up this time, which means the total count is at 62 films. That's one hell of a lot of watchlist movies to go through - and I've only caught up by 11, seeing as my watchlist tends to expand at about a film a day. Still, progress is progress, and I'm still surprised at how consistent the level of quality is here.


There were many not mentioned here that I enjoyed to the hilt, and came very close to making the round-up.

Deep Crimson starts with farce, and then becomes progressively more heartbreaking, sad and difficult to face. It's a devastating movie that is so strange, because it had me feeling sympathy for the two monsters at it's core. Coral Fabre (Regina Orozco) works as a nurse - she's sloppy, not all that clean, eats too much and is lonely despite having two children. One day she answers a 'Lonely Hearts' advertisement in the paper, and meets Nicolás Estrella (Daniel Giménez Cacho). Nicolás is a con man who fleeces older, lonely women for money - but even though he robs Coral, she keeps coming back to him, and becomes more and more obsessively in love. Determined to help him keep doing what he does so she can stay a part of his life, she pretends to be his sister while he seduces well-off ladies. Her jealousy leads to murder after murder though, as both Coral and Nicolás descend into a hellish nightmare land, the blood on their hands eating away at their souls as they approach near-madness.

I was not prepared for the way this film played out - it's so comedically funny at first that my expectations leaned towards it being a lark, but it just becomes progressively more and more dark. It's a dramatization of the story of real-life "Lonely Hearts Killers" Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who were known to have killed up to 20 people between 1947 and 1949. Coral Fabre is something of an unbalanced figure in the story - her disordered mind is something the screenplay makes amusing at first, but as soon as she gets her hooks into Nicolás she starts doing unconscionable things. Nicolás is a dirtbag, but he was never a murderer - his dominant trait is his narcissism. That's why his baldness is a trigger for unspeakable rage, or else fearful tears - every time he's discovered, it leads to a massive overreaction from him. These two people combined make for a dangerous concern for anyone unfortunate enough to come across them.

This movie left a deep impression on me - in the end I saw two sad characters that had gaping voids in their souls. These voids cannot be filled - not by anything, which is why they were both always going to be tragic figures. Regina Orozco and Daniel Giménez Cacho are both wonderful, with Orozco having comedic talent to match her drama. Although I found the opening quite funny, the movie gets so dark by it's end that it almost becomes too much to bear. Even the most horrifying monsters have a sadness to them - so much so you can feel pity for them even as you revile their crimes. Neither of these characters went out of their way to murder people - the situation, with one obsessive and the other greedy, simply led them down this dark alleyway of the soul. Arturo Ripstein and screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego light the way for us in this Mexican classic, taking us beyond the point of no return.

Glad to catch this one - won eight Ariel (Mexican Oscar) Awards, and was Mexico's official submission for the 1997 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Deep Crimson.

I've seen Harmony Korine's Gummo, and I've seen Dogme 95 films before, so that gave me some idea of what to expect with Korine's Julien Donkey-Boy, though I have to admit to being extra intrigued as to what part Werner Herzog plays in this. Well - this is about a dysfunctional family, in the most extreme way that term can be used, and woven in, despite the dysfunction, is the love you'd find in most families around the world. You quickly learn why Julien (Ewen Bremner) is called 'Donkey-Boy' in the film's title - it's his looks, and the way he bays like a donkey when he laughs. Unfortunately, the film opens with Julien murdering a kid over a trifling matter - and it's this murder that casts a pall over the entire movie, as Julien has to hide what he's done, and deal with his ill-considered act alone. As the film progresses we also learn that he's impregnated his own sister. If you narrow down your focus to these two facts alone, you'd probably get the wrong impression about this film - most of it sees Julien and his sister getting by. In fact, Julien does volunteer work helping blind individuals - and you can tell he finds this work rewarding. At times it's so easy to forget the underlying pain that these struggling people feel.

Werner Herzog plays the father - and it's his mental instability that causes a lot of the pain his children feel. He pushes Julien's brother Chris (Evan Neumann) to be a wrestler, and a "winner" - his toxic masculinity oozing from his pores as he runs ice cold water from the hose over Chris and berates him for being a wimp, and not a man. Herzog though, I found hilarious - his random soliloquies about historical facts and his rambling talk gave me a lot of light relief. When he does interact with Julien or Julien's sister, Pearl (Chloë Sevigny) he can get pretty cruel and nasty. Grandma (Joyce Korine) never says a word, and exists as a background figure. The film doesn't really have a narrative - it's just fly-on-the-wall stuff as this family exists from day to day, interacting and in various modes of conflict or conversation. Even in this worst of families, there are tender moments and love - but this is a well and truly broken unit. It may have started to fracture when Julien's mother died - or it may be that there's mental illness here that has been passed down.

The film is grainy - it was shot in New York on MiniDV tape before being transferred to 16mm and then blown up to 35mm film. It's pretty much the stuff you expect with Dogme 95 projects. I thought it really worked well in exposing what keeps families together in the absolute worst of circumstances. It also keeps getting at the conflict in a person's soul - Julien wants to be good, and does so much good in the community, but at the same time he's impetuously killed someone for little reason. Who is a person when they're essentially good, but commit horrendous acts during moments when they lose control? Julien is meant to have untreated schizophrenia, but it's covered up well in the community, and this isn't the type of family to notice this and get help. Julien Donkey-Boy is a mix of beauty, ugliness, love and madness - with every component hard to separate from the others. It's like an explosion of thought and feeling that creates tangled webs that are impossible to untangle - and the film's conclusion is both devastating and powerful. The compassion that Harmony Korine has for his characters says it all.

Glad to catch this one - the first non-European film to be made under the Dogme 95 "vow of chastity".




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Julien Donkey-Boy.

Another great film noir - another great filmmaker. Jules Dassin had just made Thieves' Highway, and would make Rififi after this - so he was in top form. He'd also just left the United States because he was about to be blacklisted, his name being mentioned numerous times at the Committee on Un-American Activities - and as such Night and the City was made in London, and also set in London - Dassin making great use of the city's dark corners and bombed out ruins from the blitz. The story involves hustler and con-man Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark), and his attempts to build his own wrestling empire after convincing legend Gregorius the Great (Stanislaus Zbyszko) and his son Nikolas of Athens (Ken Richmond) to work for him. What he doesn't realise is that his own financial partner, and many other London players, are all working against him - determined to bring him down.

The great thing about character Fabian is his child-like enthusiasm for whatever he's doing, and his crazily boundless optimism and self-belief. Fabian believes that every scheme he latches onto is a "sure thing" - if only someone would front the money for him, he'd be living on "easy street" and make a fortune. He's never aware of potential pitfalls and the various cul de sacs, and always takes various short cuts and cheats that become future land mines. Richard Widmark seems born to play this character, his expressive, pale face looking like a kid on Christmas morning when on the verge of a big score. I ended up watching the U.S. version of the film, but I did end up checking out some scenes that are only in the British version - the two are quite different, and have completely different scores along with being edited from scratch each time. Some of the scenes in the British version expound on Fabian's never-ending trail of get-rich-quick schemes, and how they've all blown up in everyone's face.

The film features Gene Tierney as Mary Bristol, Fabian's long-suffering girl, along with Francis L. Sullivan as nightclub owner Phil Nosseross - Fabian's partner, and in the end nemesis. Googie Withers plays Helen, Phil's wife, who Fabian cons and basically ruins. The film runs at a breakneck speed and includes a lot of action, movement and excitement. The cinematography is first-class, plunging us into the pitch-black dead ends and the shadowed dungeon-like cold spaces of London. There's no such thing as the 'easy money' Fabian dreams of, only the shifty cons he uses to make a buck, or working for Nosseross by fooling people into going to his nightclub. Watching the movie is like seeing a car crash in slow motion - but still praying it won't happen. I mean, I kind of liked Fabian - or at least I would of if he'd only wake up and not be so self-destructive. I really enjoyed watching Night and the City - it was exciting, and a great film noir classic from Dassin. It's the fourth film of his I've seen, and I'm surely going to watch more.

Glad to catch this one - #274 on Criterion, and preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2004.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Night and the City.

Never seen this. Will put it in watchlist.

There had never been anything like the married bliss that was promised to young people in the generations before the late 60s and early 70s - no "happily ever after" like children read in storybooks. It didn't exist. The excitement dies, a man and woman grow familiar with one another, and attracted to other people. The work needed to keep a home and look after children gets harder and harder as each year passes, and people wonder where all that promise of the future went. All of this is just hitting Mary Wilson (Jean Simmons) as she plans her escape - but where is she headed? What will she do when she gets there? Mary's nonplussed husband is Fred (John Forsythe) - supportive, loving, but no absolute angel. Fred's main job is finding the booze bottles, and admonishing his wife for escaping into alcoholism. She's already tried to escape life altogether, because once she realised that this was as good as it gets, she became hopelessly depressed and completely despondent. She'd been promised so much more.

Watching The Happy Ending was nearly enough to drive me to drink. Melancholy Mary is a difficult customer - I can commiserate, but her self-indulgence and drunkenness comes off like she's childish and spoiled. I wouldn't at all feel the same way if this were real life - I'd feel concern, and sympathy for anyone suffering from depression. This is a movie though - one in which we wallow with Mary for nearly two hours steeped with disappointment, regret, longing, anger and numbness. Around her, couples are hashing it out - either working through the marriage or breaking free and having affairs. Both of these options seem like they don't fit Mary, so as she flies to Nassau with an old college friend and sees firsthand what taking a lover looks like (Lloyd Bridges as the hunk of man), there's no spark that registers she's found what she needs. Only that continual look of feeling lost. Of being cheated. Of life not conforming to what it was supposed to be. There's no consolation for it all being untrue.

So, The Happy Ending was way outside of my comfort zone - a 60s marital drama focused on the longing and needs of Mary. As a whole, I did think that it really captures depression in a nutshell - and I bet there weren't too many films that had done that up to 1969. In that way, it's a very progressive film. The way it's all presented though, with so many scenes looking like those old advertisements for cigarettes (see the pic above), felt a little old fashioned and unimaginative. It's a movie that's well and truly rooted into the 1960s, and not as timeless as those great films that never feel old. The music is sad and depressing, which I guess is what it's meant to sound like. Melancholy is the perfect term. Jean Simmons is completely believable in what must have been a tough part to play - she completely convinced me that she was depressed in a way that made redemption and victory impossible pipe-dreams. The lie exposed, and the happy ending consigned to childhood imagination. Please don't watch this movie if you're feeling glum.

Glad to catch this one - Jean Simmons was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award (Maggie Smith won that year, for her part in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.) The song "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" was also nominated for an Academy Award.




Thank you to whomever inspired me to watch The Happy Ending.

I'm not supposed to like wuxia films, but A Touch of Zen is one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life - who knows, it might prove to be a gateway film for me. By the looks of this, King Hu is the Zen Buddhist of moviemaking, because he goes way out of his way to capture beautiful vistas and images that only appear on screen for a second at most - every moment of this film painstakingly perfected over 180 minutes. Some of the cinematography is awe-inspiring, and unbelievably inventive. The fight scenes and set pieces are no different - I haven't been on the edge of my seat for so long, and with A Touch of Zen I was falling off. The rhythm and speed is just right, and every move and countermove shows imagination and invention that I can only call inspired. Each stage of the film is entertainingly varied, and every plot twist a genuine surprise. The movie took 3 years to make, and that makes complete sense once you watch it - there has been careful attention paid to every second.

The story involves honorable outlaw fighters Yang Hui-zhen (Hsu Feng), General Shi Wen-qiao (Bai Ying) and General Lu Ding-an (Xue Han) on the run from an evil overlord - and the two powerful generals who command the armies looking for them. They meet a humble painter, who acts as the protagonist for the first segment of the film - Gu Sheng-tsai (Shih Chun), an average everyday klutz who nevertheless becomes the strategist for the outlaws. My favourite character though, is the insanely talented fighting monk Abbot Hui-yuan, played by Roy Chiao, who just happens to have played Lao Che later on in his career in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Those monks are so much fun, with their god-like fighting skills - but meet their match later on when the meet Commander Hsu Hsien-Chen - a near-invincible fighter that appears to have no weaknesses at all. The final half-hour is incredible - but really, this film has no real slow-down period throughout, and keeps impressing with visual rewards and filmmaking brilliance from start to finish.

Damn this movie was beautiful and entertaining - with artistry out of this world. It's obviously a complete masterpiece. Whatever I think of it's genre as a whole, I was captivated and moved - I had that feeling I have whenever I see cinematic perfection. That indefinable happiness I get from that unique human capacity to appreciate another person's creation. If you haven't seen it - then I can't recommend it enough, especially if you like this kind of stuff. I wasn't sure of where it was going at first, but then it opens up like a lotus blossom, and just as alluringly. I have to wonder what else is out there as far as King Hu is concerned - although I find it hard to believe that A Touch of Zen could be easily matched. It would make my Top 25 of the 1970s. I loved it's tribute to Zen Buddhism and feminism, and it's historical Ming dynasty setting. It's simply one of the best films I've discovered by inching my way through my watchlist.

Glad to catch this one - #825 on Criterion, #130 on Masters of Cinema, nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and ending up winning the Technical Grand Prize award.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch A Touch of Zen.

I should revisit A Touch of Zen someday as I feel I'd rate it higher now. I remember being blown away by how the film built to an increasingly epic scope throughout its runtime, even with the pacing being unhurried in the first hour. The final few minutes are about as incredible of a culmination which I could've asked for.

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Umberto D is one of my very favourite films. Hope you enjoy it.

I approached Umberto D. with as much trepidation as I would an extremely scary movie in the dead of night - Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves is one of my favourite films, and possibly my very favourite foreign language film, but it usually leaves me an emotional wreck. Likewise, Two Women got to me - and I wondered if I was ready to go through this again. I forged ahead regardless, and let this movie work it's way into my empathetic regions. Each De Sica film feels fundamentally different from each other, and yet reaches that same depth - and cries out loud for a lack of common decency and the theft of someone's dignity. This time it's old Umberto (Carlo Battisti), his dog Flike (Napoleone) and the landlady's maid Maria (Maria-Pia Casilio) - Umberto has racked up debts to his landlady, and is close to being thrown out onto the street. He struggles to find the money, and finds it hard to subject himself to begging after the utter humiliation of hinting to his friends that he needs the money - hints rebuffed in an awkward fashion when they pretend not to notice his 'between the lines' pleading. Some friends.

Umberto isn't alone in his suffering - Maria reveals to him that she's pregnant, and that the father of her child could be one of two people. Both want to have nothing to do with the matter, and when the landlady finds out she's expecting she'll be thrown out onto the street as well. It brings these two characters closer together - a kind of shared anxiety about the future. Speaking of which - De Sica knows the audience will be constantly afraid that something will happen to Flike. He flirts with this throughout the entire film - when Umberto goes to hospital, he asks Maria to look after the pooch and when he gets back the doggie is missing. Ultimately, the movie charted a course of it's own and doesn't use this to cheaply manipulate our emotions by killing his dog and having Umberto weep while holding it's limp frame to his chest. Despite this, I was pretty much moved as much anyway by how everything plays out.

So, Italy was just about to experience it's economic miracle, good for Bicycle Thieves' Antonio Ricci in but I doubt there was a place for Umberto when it came - it's the bourgeoisie (which attracts so much scorn in this film) who will reap the benefits, and pensioners in debt will still get thrown out or forced out. I mean, how about the scene in this where another old man is at the dog pound, and finds out his best friend will be killed unless he can pay the 450 lira needed to have it released? I don't know if he was a pensioner - but there ought to be some relief for the poor so circumstances like that don't happen. How about some kind of rent relief for pensioners? The entire film starts with a demonstration of old people demanding an increase to their pension - and what's telling is the way this demonstration is broken up with force. There's not even any pretense to those in power listening. All of it feels relevant to any time period - and Umberto D. a classic that hits as hard as De Sica's other great neo-realist greats. I was once again left an emotional wreck.

Glad to catch this one - #201 on Criterion, in Stephen J. Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and included in TIME magazine's "All-TIME 100 Movies".




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Umberto D..

Whenever the collection isn't staring me in the face, I forget how many terrific films Woody Allen has made. Midnight in Paris, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Blue Jasmine, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Irrational Man, Zelig, Love and Death, Deconstructing Harry, Radio Days, Sleeper, Husbands and Wives, Bananas, Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, Stardust Memories, Wonder Wheel, Take the Money and Run, Interiors and more. It's a ridiculous film resume, and with his 50th film, Coup De Chance, out now you can obviously discern that he's made so many there are bound to be a few absolute clunkers that don't really work. Not every single one can be brilliant. Well, Everyone Says I Love You certainly isn't brilliant. It's a film made from Allen's comfort zone - his narrative familiarity with wealth, high society, and love combined awkwardly meshing in this musical that not only has Allen slurping lips with a much younger woman, but using information gleaned from her therapy sessions to trick her into bed with him. All's fair to Allen - he's not exactly a "Me Too" icon.

This film came out in-between Mighty Aphrodite and Deconstructing Harry, both of which I'm familiar with - but I was completely unaware of it's existence. It had passed me by. It has a stacked cast - Alan Alda, Woody himself, Drew Barrymore, Goldie Hawn, Edward Norton, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts and Tim Roth are the A-listers, but they have talented backing. They all sing (unrehearsed) to varying degrees of success (Woody whispers - an adroit tactic, in the meantime poor tuneless Julia Roberts falls flat. At the other end of the spectrum, Woody had to demand Goldie Hawn "sing worse" to match the everyday quality of singing - she was too good a warbler), but the master filmmaker's taste in music is simply far too old fashioned and way too staid for me. At times this music choice works, but at others the needed contrast is missing. Dennis Potter turned this kind of musical into a high artform, while Woody is simply Woody. The one big tick for me was his developing love affair with European cities, and as such we see plenty of Paris and Venice - two wonderful locations for this kind of film. The big negative was Allen's penchant for his characters to be ostentatiously, filthy rich in the most vulgar fashion possible.

The story, as loose as it is, revolves around an extended family unit, and the various romantic relationships that both blossom and die among it's many members. As already noted, the one with Woody is the one that made me the most uncomfortable - but as an added bonus we have Tim Roth's Charles Ferry, the only non-wealthy character in the film. Just out of prison, and obviously hopelessly corrupt and corrupted, he forces himself upon Barrymore's Skylar which prompts her to fall in love with him and dump fiance Holden Spence (Edward Norton). Look, it's all lighthearted and silly - but often there's an undercurrent in Allen's films that raise little red flags. I'd have much preferred to see Skylar beat Ferry up - which would have been funny (little fancy, demur rich girl beating up hardened crim) and more appropriate. I know - it's all about love in it's many guises, but it's love through Woody Allen's eyes. I can't afford to jet around to Paris and Venice on a whim, and if I force myself on somebody they probably won't fall in love with me. Using information gathered by snooping on therapy sessions to seduce someone is creepy. I do, however, have a song in my heart - so when Allen shows us what this could have been with the song and dance at the end - by the Seine - it's a little too late, but still appreciated because that's magic.

Glad to catch this one - nominated for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the 54th Golden Globe Awards.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Everyone Says I Love You.

I always cry when he loses his little dog.

When I hear about the Jim Jones saga from beginning to end, I keep hoping there will somehow be a different ending to it. That I won't be confronted with those horrifying pictures of hundreds of bodies laying in rows - mostly face-down, and crammed together. Still. Dead. Gone. So many bodies lined up together. This documentary, which tells the story of Jones from his childhood on upwards to what was basically a massacre, relies on the testimony of those who were right there amongst it all. Those who got away, and managed to reach the safety of the jungle without being cut down by the armed guards at Jonestown. Their haunted and haunting words - when the documentary ends, we're told who these people lost when it happened - sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. Some saw their babies die in front of them, saw their wives frothing at the mouth after drinking poison. By the time Jones ordered his followers to die with him, he'd long crossed over into complete madness - spending his days broadcasting his wild, unhinged thoughts to his fellow community members in what was meant to be a paradisiacal place.

I have to say, this is a very good documentary for the way it covers the life of Jim Jones so comprehensively, and doing it via people who were direct witnesses to it all. Of course, it can only touch on some matters briefly, giving the impression that reading a book about all of this would be very interesting and much more informative. The interviews are excellent, and there's plenty of photographs and footage with gives us more insight into the man and his preaching - an oddball since childhood, it seems he liked performing services for dead animals he'd find, being obsessed with death itself. At first, when we learn about the congregation he gathers and the way he touched people - breaking down barriers regarding race, poverty, disability etc, he sounds positively wonderful. All love. Then, the first hint we get that something isn't quite right is when he's propositioning the young men of his congregation, and espousing certain sexual theories which seem odd at best. Pretty soon he's handing out punishments which consist of beatings, and forcing women to strip naked in front of everyone to teach them a lesson.

Although Jones was no doubt paranoid, I expect he really did have his enemies in the U.S., because you can't espouse socialism there so fervently without alarming some people. It was his crazy practices that led to scathing stories about him in the press - and this is what caused his flight to Guyana, to "Jonestown", which was under construction there. He was fleeing the country before he could be further investigated. The rest is history. Some of the accounts are amazing - such as the one from Congressman Leo Ryan's legal adviser, Jackie Speier - she played dead as the delegation sent to Jonestown fled, but a gunman walked to her and shot her at point-blank range. She survived to tell her tale. The audio from the mass suicide is still chilling - it never loses it's effect to absolute shock you. These people didn't want to die. They didn't want their children to die. Why, oh why, didn't Jones let whoever wanted to leave leave? Probably (and this is no doubt true) he feared a mass exodus. By this stage he was crazy, and his punishments and harsh regime meant what at first seemed a paradise had become a concentration camp. Sad stuff - but a great documentary.

Glad to catch this one - won an award for Outstanding Achievement in Documentary, 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and the Golden Gate Award for Best Bay Area Feature Documentary, San Francisco International Film Festival.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple.

Around a year and a half a go I came across Ulrich Seidl's Paradise : Faith, and only then realised that I'd bumped into the 2nd installment of a trilogy - it was good enough though, to have me intrigued. I should have really started here, with Paradise : Love, because it's the perfect introduction to Seidl's examination of humanity from a unique German point of view. In this film we travel with middle-aged, overweight Austrian mother Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel), who has gone on something of a sex holiday to Kenya. Now, I don't know if that was the whole purpose of Teresa's trip - but for some of her friends, it is. They talk about their exotic lovers, and you can tell they're thrilled - but what it boils down to is male prostitution in the end. Teresa is hoping for something more, and because she's so willing to believe in the various overtures of the men plying their trade on the beaches, she tends to get suckered into thinking there's love in the air. With virile young men throwing themselves at her, it becomes intoxicating - and the lines between fantasy and reality blur.

The longer Paradise : Love goes, the more uncomfortable I get - and I mean that in a good way. There's a certain dynamic between these white German ladies and the desperately poor Kenyans that lends an air of servitude - so with them willing to do anything for the cash rewards that are coming, it becomes a horrifying spectacle. But my empathy also found cause to feel sorry for Teresa, who is so willing to believe that these men are seducing her because they find her attractive, and not because of the potential cash rewards that come with taking on these tourist "sugar mamas". Seidl has very purposely found the least attractive ladies for this film just so we know for sure that virile, attractive young men wouldn't ordinarily be fighting each other to get into bed with them. At one stage Teresa teaches one, step by step, how to be tender and loving when it comes to physical lovemaking, and then via that process fools herself. You can't buy love, or find it by ordering someone to gaze into your eyes.

I found this combination of race, age, beauty, money, power and the obsessive need to be loved, or have love in a person's life really intriguing. When we meet Teresa we see that she cares for a group of intellectually disabled people, and has a combative relationship with her daughter - there's no sign of a husband or lover. She's emotionally parched, only getting the love she needs through her work - which obviously isn't enough. Taking a character like that on a sex holiday to Kenya opens up all kinds of avenues to explore - and Paradise : Love explores them without fear of making us uncomfortable, surprised, shocked or a little repulsed. The whole system - with the men standing on the beach as if they're being bought and sold, while the wealthy white women sun themselves in the foreground, is a visual disparity that's unforgettable. It's this image that usually adorns posters for the film. This was a film that took me places I hadn't been before, and for that I enjoyed it a lot. I look forward to catching up with the second film in the trilogy again, and then finally watching the last - Paradise : Hope.

Glad to catch this one - it competed at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, along with various others such as the Toronto International Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival and New Zealand International Film Festival.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Paradise : Love.

I felt more for than anyone else, despite her intentions. A broken bicycle can be fixed, a broken heart, probably not. While I was watching, I wanted to "save" her.

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https://www.youtube.com/c/LoyalOpposition

Two things I had to look up after watching this movie were what the War in Abkhazia (1992–1993) was all about and whether clementines were the same thing as tangerines. The first part of that equation is terribly complicated - there's no easy way to describe why the people in Georgia and Abkazia were fighting, which really suits this tale about war and killing. Who can ever tell why wars have to be fought? The second part is that clementines are kind of like tangerines - that one was pretty obvious. The farmers in this film grow 'clementines' which we're not as familiar with. If this film was called Clementines people would be confused - but Tangerines immediately register with English-speaking people. Given both to eat, it's doubtful we'd tell the two apart. Anyway - on to the actual movie. This film is about two wounded soldiers recovering in the isolated home of Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak). The worst of enemies, the Chechen mercenary swears vengeance on the Georgian soldier in the next room, who has killed his friend and compatriot. For the moment though, they are both too weak to get up.

Ivo is an old Estonian and last of his family to stay on in Georgia while the rest have returned to their home country. He's determined to see these two foes recognize each other as human beings, and will be tested to the utmost as other combatants pass through the area. The fighting is nearby, and as luck would have it the crucial time in which to pick the clementines is at hand - if he doesn't manage to scrape up around 50 or so helpers, he and Margus (Elmo Nüganen) - his neighbour and fellow farmer - will see the entire year's crop go to waste. Ahmed (Giorgi Nakashidze), the Chechen, has sworn to Ivo that he won't kill Nika (Mikheil Meskhi) in the house - but beyond that is fair game as far as he's concerned. The situation is charged with tension, but Ivo is determined to meet this with good humour, humanity and good old fashioned common sense. On the other side of all this though, to a Chechen a blood debt is not something that can be just shrugged off. It seems that the war has come to Ivo's house.

This film was made in Georgia, so there's a definite immediacy and authenticity to everything we see in it. This was a conflict that included "ethnic cleansing" and led to the departure of Georgia's Estonian population, who had immigrated there a century ago. There's a complexity to Eastern European conflict and migration that can quickly baffle - I still don't understand how the Chechens fit into any of this, but that's far from the point of this movie. Instead it wants to show us the transition of two men who have been turned into murderous maniacs back into what we'd consider two normal human beings again - but what will the results of this transformation be in an area where the conflict is red hot? That's where the surprises of Tangerines come in, any revelation of which would spoil the film. It's a film that I found a little nerve-wrecking, considering how close we get to the characters in it, and how dangerous their situation really is. Civilians and soldiers from both sides of the conflict living under the one roof is crazy - and Tangerines is just a brilliantly written film that's so impressive considering where it comes from.

Glad to catch this one - Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2015 (the year Ida won) as well as the Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe (won by Leviathan.)




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Tangerines.