My 2024 Watchlist Obsession!

When you hear Kris Kristofferson sing "Help Me Make It Through the Night" while you watch Stacy Keach (playing old, past his prime boxer Billy Tully) stumble around his bare boarding room in his underpants, you're getting an accurate reflection of what Fat City is all about. Broken dreams, busting your guts out for peanuts, drinking yourself into a stupor (short term) and the grave (long term) and the ridiculously tough sport boxing is. John Huston liked the idea of making this film about a young up-and-comer and an old boxer trying to make a comeback because he was involved with boxing as a youth. Leonard Gardner adapted his own novel for the screen. Joining Keach was Jeff Bridges, fresh off his breakthrough success in The Last Picture Show. Bridges plays Ernie Munger - young and talented, but inexperienced. He never sees the low blows coming, and you could say he lacks a little drive - despite his enthusiasm. Tully is like an old shoe - beat up, tired, broken down and nearly always drunk. Despite this he slugs things out, and goes through hell just to keep the impossible dream going - for his life to really mean something.

The boxing scenes in Fat City manage to be both understated and phenomenal at the same time. I'll be damned if I didn't ride every punch - and perhaps that's because I cared so much about the characters, who really need to do well in the ring for it all to make sense. Up there with the boxing scenes are the barroom ones - with the added presence of Susan Tyrrell (who is wonderful) as the constantly soused Oma Lee Greer, who Billy hitches his wagon to. "You can count on me," is his constant refrain - everything comes pouring out once Billy gets drunk, as does the sorrowful lamentation from Oma whose man is now in prison. We see them at their lowest - but is there any amount of training, conditioning and good luck that will lift them any higher than their present station? Billy picks up work in the fields, harvesting various crops for basically loose change. He seems attracted to the gutter. Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto) gets him a fight with an old pro whose name seems big on paper, but who has some devastating health problems of his own.

The world of boxing seems ludicrous when you see how hard it is, and the lives of all the characters in Fat City are hard all-round. It's push and effort - sometimes for nothing. A broken nose and no reward. Covered in mud and the car's still stuck. An unwanted marriage because of an unwanted pregnancy. A paycheck down the drain in exchange for a night of being deliriously drunk. All some characters have to show for it is a cardboard box full of stuff, and a middle-finger from an ex. To contemplate all of this could easily be overwhelmingly depressing, but Huston puts many human touches in which give every one of his characters a certain amount of humanity, spirit, nobility and honor. When Billy says "You can count on me," he means it, even if at times he can't fully live up to it. In the ring there are no cheap and easy ways to get by. Huston makes sure the camera captures every single moment of what makes all of these characters worth exploring in minute detail, even if their lives are heading straight for the drain. It has a solemn yet winsome edge to it with enough moments of catharsis to relieve the relentless sadness. Keach's performance is remarkable - and this is an extremely good movie.

Glad to catch this one - Susan Tyrrell was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Oma in 1973.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Fat City.

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I don't know if joining the 'Foreign Legion' is all it's really cracked up to be - nearly all of the men we meet in Beau Geste are desperate to escape once they're ensconced in the isolated Fort Zinderneuf. Michael "Beau" Geste (Gary Cooper), John Geste (Ray Milland) and Digby Geste (Robert Preston) have joined up to muddy the waters concerning who stole a near-priceless jewel belonging to their benefactor, who raised them as orphans. Isobel Rivers (a very young Susan Hayward) waits for John, who has just declared his love for her, to return. What we've got all up here is a pretty basic adventure story which is a remake of the 1926 silent version - itself an adaptation of P. C. Wren's 1924 novel. The beginning got my hopes up a little too high - it starts with a Mary Celeste-type mystery over Fort Zinderneuf being discovered full of corpses, lined up as if still defending the place - some of whom vanish while the fort is being examined. The bugler sent to investigate has himself vanished, and soon enough the entire fort is engulfed in flames. A tantalizing mystery that's set up - one that will be explained after we go back in time 15 years. I love mysteries like that - but they do lose their allure once you know exactly what happened.

From there on we're introduced to the Geste brothers as kids, watch them suddenly grow up, and get to know how strong their familial bonds are. Lady Brandon (Heather Thatcher) looks after them, but frets about their future as her husband, Sir Hector Brandon, is ploughing through all the money they have. The only bright spot is a valuable sapphire called the "Blue Water", which she hopes will be able to provide for the boys when they grow up. When Sir Hector sends word he's coming home to sell the jewel for more cash, it suddenly disappears - the thief is unknown, but has to be one of the boys. To allay suspicion on each other, they all join the Foreign Legion. I really like Gary Cooper - so it wasn't an absolute chore to sit and watch Beau Geste, and Brian Donlevy puts in a really great turn as the evil Sergeant Markoff - fond of executing troops for desertion, or otherwise doling out pain and torture. He thinks one of the Geste boys actually has the jewel on him, and as such is planning to steal it for himself. In the meantime I get to feel conflicted about watching a film where I'm meant to cheer on colonialists killing people who are probably within their rights to want the French to leave.

Yeah, times have changed, and remakes of Beau Geste have faded out. There was another one in 1966 directed by Douglas Heyes, and then there was the comedy The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977) directed by Marty Feldman (which is still the last, if you discount the TV series which came out in 1982.) The 'adventure' aspect to the story comes at the end - but half of the film is actually a drama relating to the ad-hoc family which the Gestes are part of. It at least provides some balance and context. Once in the desert though it's desperate survival under a tyrannical Sergeant in command (when the Lieutenant dies of fever), and even more desperate survival as the fort they're in is constantly attacked by the Tuaregs (no, not the toe rags silly.) As more Legionnaires die, the more hopeless the situation becomes and we get to see exactly why all of the corpses were propped up as they are in the film's beginning. Suddenly we remember and realise that there were no survivors - so what hope do the Geste brothers have? Do any of them get to survive and come home? Surely they won't kill Gary Cooper! A quality film for it's time - especially if you like Gary Cooper.

Glad to catch this one - Brian Donlevy was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Sergeant Markoff, and the film also scored a nomination for Best Art Direction.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Beau Geste.

Chronologically speaking, amongst the films John Cassavetes made, Minne and Moskowitz comes before he made A Woman Under the Influence (I was going to say just before, but three years separates the two - probably as Cassavetes was finding it hard to get funding for his films at the time.) Funnily enough, if Peter Falk were playing the Seymour Moskowitz role instead of Seymour Cassel, you'd almost be able to call this a precursor to that film. Gena Rowlands plays the same kind of slightly neurotic, at times outright crazy, lady - Minnie Moore - here in love with married man Jim (played wonderfully by John Cassavetes himself) who beats her when in a jealous rage. Minnie though, is the type of girl who hits back, twice as hard and with twice as many blows. Her friend sets Minnie up on a disastrous lunch date with Zelmo Swift (Val Avery), and when Zelmo creates a scene, in steps parking attendant Seymour Moskowitz to save Minnie and instantly fall in love with her - a love Minnie will try desperately try to extricate herself from for most of the movie. Just like with Mabel and Nick Longhetti in Under the Influence, these two don't quite meet eye-to-eye or mind-to-mind.

I loved this film because it never went in any direction I was expecting it to go - the originality and complexity of it's characters a mainstay of Cassavetes' films. From how it was presented to me at first, I honestly expected a traditional kind of love story - where both the Minnie and Mokowitz of the film's title would be on the same page, and feel the same way for each other. You can totally understand Minnie's uncertainty about the man who is pursuing her - their first date ends with him kidnapping her after nearly running her down with his truck. Any first date that ends with the lady raining blows down upon the man has it's success in serious question - but Seymour is certain that the true potential of their feelings are being sold cheap by a lady who is simply far from her comfort zone. The two go out together, but their outings often end in some kind of unusual catastrophe brought about by hurt feelings and Seymour's frustration at the object of his love continually turning cold on him. I had no idea about where it could possibly go - but watching Cassel and Rowlands perform this strange courting ritual had me spellbound.

The film is also constructed in a very unusual way - with not only establishing shots, but anything which might establish where we've jumped forward to in the story abandoned. Instead we take blind leaps forward and find ourselves oriented by what's going on - and it takes a few moments to gather up whichever new direction we're going in. I can't say whether this was an artistic choice or not, but I liked it. Val Avery's small part in the film just blew my mind - a man you'd want to escape by any means possible, but at the same time it breaks your heart that this guy is like this. The cinematography involved three different guys - I don't know why, but I thought there were some very unusual flourishes in how quickly the camera moved and panned that interested me. As if the camera itself was a nervous participant in what was going on. Close-ups don't just fill the screen, but exceed it's limits - getting in so very close and overwhelming the audience. It all adds up to an extremely exciting first watch, because all of this works so well, and because I enjoyed it tremendously. Unusual people courting in a considerably unusual way - but most of us are a little weird to some sort of degree. To see it here is to experience something new, and quite amusing - the best compliment a film can get. Something totally unique and kind of wonderful.

Glad to catch this one - Cassavetes was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen. Gena Rowlands was nominated for a New York Film Critics Circle Award.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Minnie and Moskowitz.

I'm a huge fan of that one. From the Zelmo date on, I think it becomes one of the weirdest and complex love stories ever put to film. Minnie resigning herself to Moskowitz's advances (likely due to her age as she explains early in the film), while Moskowitz's mood swings and random frustration constantly test her patience time and time again, makes for a great character study. Minnie's date with Zelmo followed with her first encounter with Moskowitz is one of my favorite sequences in film. That said, Husbands is my favorite Cassavetes film.

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I'll try to make Husbands the next Cassavetes film I see.

Also, all this Cassavetes talk may summon crumbsroom.

Nagamawashi - low budget, one shot (or seemingly one shot) movies that push a concept to near-absurd lengths. The word means "long shot", but the term now stands for a subgenre that started with One Cut of the Dead in 2017. I remember being tickled by that long/single shot comedy, and the clever stunt involving a disaster plagued zombie film (and it's making) ended up being a huge surprise. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is an even more clever concept created by another director making his feature debut - and I'm kind of crazy about it. There's a warmth to the comedy in this which mixes with it's high concept premise and everyday people who carry the story forward - and it all feels very in-the-moment, infectiously funny, full of infinite possibility and brand newness. Of course, this wasn't filmed via one long shot (if you see it, you'll understand how that couldn't possibly be achieved) but like some big budget, big name 'one shot' movies like 1917, it's the fact that it appears to be one long shot that's more important than the actual feat of achieving the shooting itself. What happens, happens in real time - which meshes perfectly with how real everything else feels.

In this film café owner Kato (Kazunari Tosa) suddenly finds himself beckoned by his future self - talking to him via his computer monitor, which is connected to the television in the café. The café happens to be temporally displaced two minutes into the future, which means café Kato can tell the version of Kato watching upstairs in his apartment where he'll find his guitar pick, and advises him to come downstairs so he can fulfill his obligations of informing his past self that this is happening. Throughout the film, those involved with this sudden temporal displacement will feel the obligation to fulfill the timeline responsibility of doing what their future selves did - I mean, who wants to find out what happens if a paradox is created? It could be bad - disastrous even. Now, if you're like me, you might be asking yourself what possible use a window into the future affording 2 minutes of fortune telling is - which is where this film gets clever, and then brilliant. Soon you'll be wrapping your brain in knots as Kato's friends all get into the act, and immediately start to test the limits of what's possible with this incredible new gift they have.

What unfolds is absolutely hilarious - Kazunari Tosa plays his part in such a droll manner, eventually coming to the conclusion that messing with the future like this can only end badly. In the meantime, his friends are trying to turn their fortune into some kind of monetary value. This creates plenty of 'chicken or egg' time loops - always an interesting concept. Kato finds himself in a kind of 'time fight' with two hoodlums, knowing in advance the successful tactics and objects he'll need when his friends watch the fight ahead of time. All of the players are exceptionally spry, bright, enthusiastic and perfect for the kind of film this is. The movie itself is an expansion of Makoto Ueda's short film Howling (2014), which introduced the basic concept and went for 10 minutes - Ueda ended up writing the screenplay for Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, but directing duties went to Yamaguchi. It was made for around $25,000 American - which might be the most mind blowing fact associated with it. The budget for One Cut of the Dead was at the same level, and it ended up raking in $30 million at the box office. Nagamawashi might be a subgenre, but it's good business - and seems to result in great movies.

Glad to catch this one - Winner of the Special Mention, Best Asian Feature and Fresh Blood Award at the Fantasia film festival and Fantasy Filmfest.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes.

Glad you enjoyed Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes! I saw it last year and also loved it.

Junta Yamaguchi's followup, River, is also timey-wimey as the kids say and is just as well-received.

River looks like a whole load of fun - straight into my watchlist.

Oh, no. Have I I been summoned again?

*rubs sleep from eyes*

Ya ya. Cassavetes is good.

Also, Fat City!


I don't have enough good words. Enough good words have yet to be invented.


I was initially turned onto this movie when I read Harmony Korrine's top ten movies list about 15 years ago. And there were two others there which I thought were equally great: Pixote and Out of the Blue.


I, just like Harmony Korrine, can't recommend these movies enough.

Double also, do you have Tender Mercy's on your obsessed over watch list?


Because that is one of those movies that just slips through the cracks, even though it was really well respected at the time.


It's a beautiful thing. It knocked my socks off. At least as far as a movie this quiet can knock anything off.

Here's a festival film if I ever saw one. I brought a certain mindset to Vigil that I could never shake. From the look of the images I'd seen, I thought it was a post-apocalyptic tale - and the film kind of held out that possibility to me throughout. Elizabeth Peers (Penelope Stewart) lives on an extremely isolated farm in rural New Zealand with her husband Justin (Gordon Shields), father Birdie (Bill Kerr) and daughter "Toss" (Fiona Kay) - and they talk of various calamities, like ice shelves melting, the land flooding etc. One day, while out traversing the property, Justin falls and is killed - but his body is immediately brought back home by a man named Ethan (Frank Whitten). It's not clear whether Ethan may even have had something to do with Justin's death, but soon enough he's insinuated his way into the Peers' lives. Birdie hires him to work on the farm in Justin's stead, and as Ethan starts to make inroads on a relationship with Elizabeth, Toss struggles accepting this "invader" into what was once a secure family unit. He may just be the key to her coming of age however, as he shares his spiritual insight and time with her.

Vigil has a doom-laden, dark colour palette, with all of the light drained from the various hues we see. It feels as though we're stuck in constant twilight. There's an oppressive feeling of extinction and isolation - a complete separation from humanity in a literal and figurative sense. Birdie and Ethan construct strange and absolutely useless contraptions while working on the farm, and there's little consistency in how everyone treats each other. That's why the film still had an apocalyptic feel to me throughout - it's hard to make any connection with how we commonly live our lives. Ethan and Birdie spend some time docking the sheep's tails - but that's the one and only time we see them doing anything that makes real sense. In the meantime Toss spends much time brooding, exploring and spying on what Ethan is up to - especially when it concerns her mother. The only indication we get that there are any other people out there at all is at Justin's funeral, which is attended by around a dozen other people. This is a film steeped in mystery, with a very strange soundtrack making everything feel even more awry.

This isn't the kind of film where there's a structured narrative playing out - it's a mood film. It's a film in which we see Ethan from the point of view of Toss - and how her opinion of him keeps evolving and changing. This also ties into her coming of age and puberty, and her isolation and lack of contact with virtually anyone other than her close family members and Ethan. There are no absolutes - even their time on the farm is constantly in question as Elizabeth wants to leave. Despite the ebb and flow of the various ways everyone is relating to each other, the somber, dark and almost morose feeling of loss and isolation pervades the entire film. Moments of joy are always quickly extinguished by the lonely sense of cold seclusion that permeates the trees and clouds. The ghost of Justin haunts the area, for Ethan's acceptance into the fold feels like the ultimate betrayal, despite the confused feelings of Toss and Elizabeth. Is this what coming of age was like the days before civilisation came to mankind? Is this the reason we felt compelled to create civilisation? Vigil doesn't answer any of those questions, but it very poetically poses them.

Glad to catch this one - the first New Zealand film invited to play in the competitive section of the Cannes Film Festival. Won Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Production Design at New Zealand's GOFTA Awards.




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

Pixote is already on my watchlist, so that's due up at some stage. I'm already a big fan of Out of the Blue (Kind of a shame, since a film like Out of the Blue would really fit in well on this thread.) I'm assuming you mean Dennis Hopper's directorial effort.

I didn't have that, but it's long been at the back of my mind as a film I must see at some stage, so it's in there now. I was too young to appreciate it when it initially came out.

Yes, the Dennis Hopper one.

Nice! I first saw Vigil two years ago. If I somehow influenced you (and Takoma) to give it a chance...

As if you needed your watchlist to be any longer, check out Vincent Ward's Map of the Human Heart and The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey.

Your mileage may vary on his most famous movie, What Dreams May Come. To me, the visuals are incredible, but the rest is a mixed bag.

I've seen What Dreams May Come and my opinion of it pretty much mirrors what you said. As for Human Heart and Navigator - in, and in! I should have a watchlist randomizer to at least give them a chance of showing up some time soon. Anyway - I'll get there.

There are a couple of good reasons to be excited about watching Bellissima - first the fact that it's directed and co-written by Luchino Visconti, and second it features the incomparable Anna Magnani, who appears as the main character. Anna Magnani is famous for that dramatic run through the streets of Rome, being gunned down by Nazis in Rome, Open City - and also for having to compete with Ingrid Bergman for the favours of filmmaker Roberto Rossellini. I was ready for some kind of upsetting drama, just because this was an old Italian film and every old Italian film I've ever watched has gone and ripped my heart out and stomped on it. I pretty much got that kind of movie, although I'd be loathe to give too much away here. The main body of the film involves Maddalena Cecconi (Anna Magnani) dragging her daughter, Maria (Tina Apicella), to film auditions, hoping that she'll become a child star. When Maria passes the first round and gets invited for a second audition, Maddalena gets carried away and starts to push Maria into dance lessons, a photographers studio and hair stylists along with allowing an acting coach to tutor her - unaware of the pressure and stress this is putting on her daughter.

Those parents - how we love to hate them. Pushing their kids to these limits for their own gratification, to some it qualifies as child abuse. Maddalena Cecconi doesn't quite qualify for that kind of judgement - she's a very excitable Italian woman (I hate to stereotype, but she's excitable in a very classically Italian way) who loves to talk and yell. When Maria passes that first audition she has stars in her eyes - everybody believes that their kid it the most beautiful, and this just confirms matters. As you see in the film, most of the other parents react in the same way. There's a lot of passionate conversation in Bellissima - nearly everything ends in yelling and argument. Even non-arguments end up with some passionate exchange. Anna Magnani turns Maddalena into a force of nature, with her poor daughter dragged around and very upset whenever trouble breaks out. She exists in the midst of a storm of activity and all of it because of her. There's no doubt though, that Maddalena cares for her daughter and loves Maria - it's just that the experience has been intoxicating for her. Her daughter is going to be a star.

Of course, the Cecconi family is struggling, finance-wise, in post-war Rome. Maddalena is spending much needed funds on hair styles, dresses, dance lessons, acting lessons and also giving money to one industry insider who is surreptitiously telling her he can pull strings (he's really after getting Maddalena into bed.) I could feel throughout that this was going to break my heart, because it was already moving me to feel so sorry for what celebrity culture and fame is doing to Maddalena and her family. In classic Italian neorealism fashion, many of the roles went to regular people, and not professional actors - film director Alessandro Blasetti also appears as himself. It has that classic look of neorealism as well. That's how I knew there was probably going to be a cruel twist - although I have to add that this twist might not be what everyone is expecting. Little Tina Apicella never appeared in any other film, and one has to wonder how she felt about having appeared in a Luchino Visconti film in her childhood days. Bellissima doesn't rise to the levels of Vittorio De Sica great neorealist classics, but it's a stirring effort, and well worth your time.


Glad to catch this one - it's included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved.




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

You certainly don't have to be Finnish to understand the working class, societal norms and justice system and the way they can kick a man who's down every time he tries to get up. For Taisto Kasurinen (Turo Pajala), there's only so much he's willing to put up with before he starts fighting back - from his jail cell after a precipitous fall that was no fault of his own. After the mine he was employed at closes down, Taisto travels south, and is robbed of his life savings. Struggling to find work, he has the good fortune to spark up a relationship with metermaid Irmeli (Susanna Haavisto) - and sees the fact she already has a son as a positive. A ready-made family. But on one ill-fated, frustrating day, Taisto runs into one of the men who robbed him and lost him a fortune. As he delivers his telling vengeance, he's spotted by police - and is sentenced to over a year in prison. He could sit tight and do his time, but along with jail chum Mikkonen (Matti Pellonpää) he plans to strike back by escaping and booking a passage to some place "over the rainbow".

An Aki Kaurismäki film is one of the more distinctive types of movie you can watch - his straight-faced, deadpan style and constant cheeky comedic proclivity when it comes to his screenplays is something you don't find with any other filmmaker. His actors keep it very reined in, to the point of winding their emotions back to 'absolute zero' and simply sticking to the lines. A glance, an hilarious aside, a dry remark - there's a specific kind of working class poetry at work here. A moderation specific to anything that isn't focusing on the basics of the story. The basics are what are most important. Actions. Reactions. Decisions. Outcome. That's where the surprises come from in this film. You wouldn't expect someone like Taisto - with so little time to serve - to stage a daring escape, but he's found someone he wants to spend the rest of his life with. If he waits, he might lose her - and in any event, Mikkonen, his friend, needs to get out. Taisto's emotional expression comes through his deliberate actions, and not any soliloquy or passionate exchange of words.

I've seen a few Kaurismäki films now, and here he seems to have been entering what I find to be his most enjoyable phase of filmmaking (The Match Factory Girl came just a few years after this.) Kaurismäki himself seems to agree, calling Ariel the "best film in his career", even though I consider Match Factory my personal favourite. One element I haven't mentioned regarding this one is the kid, who serves as a reminder that the actions of Taisto and Irmeli have more than their own personal gambles and hopes in consideration when it comes to risk and outcome. It adds a much greater sense of gravitas to everything that happens, and at times keeps the viewer on edge. That small, quiet kid and the way he tells his mother to not even think of leaving him behind makes his precarious situation clear. As far as all of these characters go, I was backing them to the hilt, and I wanted to see them get the breaks that they so richly deserved - no matter how they got them. It made Ariel compelling, on top of the fun and wry amusement that's guaranteed from this filmmaker.

Glad to catch this one - released as part of a trilogy by Criterion, and in Steven Jay Schneider's '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die'.




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

I liked that one quite a bit. Here are some thoughts I wrote on it some time ago:

"The Match Factory Girl" is the only other film I've seen from Aki Kaurismäki and, while I wasn't quite sure what to make of it at the time, this film helped me to get a better grasp on his style of dark and deadpan comedy. In the first 15 minutes, Taisto loses his job, his father commits suicide, and his entire life savings are stolen from him. And that's only the beginning of his troubles! While Robert Bresson has a similar style of depicting characters suffering/being hurt repeatedly, both directors are able to depict this without wallowing in misery. From a stylistic standpoint at least. Throughout this film and "The Match Factory Girl", Kaurismäki mainly focuses on the reactions, or lack thereof, of the main characters. Taisto is stuck in a low-paying job, he's constantly on the move, and it's unlikely he'll ever dig himself out of his rut. In spite of every adversity he goes through though, he emerges from them seemingly unharmed. Which isn't to say he's devoid of emotions by any means (his dreams of finding a better future are made clear at a few points in the film), but that he's no longer 'impressed' by them. His misfortunes, though they clearly pile up and weigh on him, are an everyday reality for him. One scene, for instance, shows Taisto lying on a beach while his jeans and leather shoes are resting right smack in the water. It's a weird and uncomfortable position to rest in for sure, but he had already been through much, much worse at that point, so what's the big deal of getting his clothing wet? Given this, one could watch the film and laugh at Taisto's misfortunes, but I would argue this misses part of the film's point. Because Kaurismäki also displays a great deal of empathy for his struggles. He's stuck in the lower class, has little hope of improving his social status, and (like most people, I would imagine) wants to live a good life. Except bad decisions and misfortunes constantly ruin his dreams time and time again. Regardless of whether you've experienced the same misfortunes as him, his dreams and worries are all too relatable to not feel sympathy for his plight. But Kaurismäki never goes overboard with this since Taisto's stoicism prevents the film from dipping into sentimentality. I imagine Kaurismäki will be an acquired taste for most people since the contradictory elements of his style won't gel with everyone, but I think the tonal clash between the onscreen misery and Taisto's stoic reaction throughout it pair very well together.