My 2024 Watchlist Obsession!

The Lady from Shanghai is pretty good, but I prefer The Stranger over it.

Man, I wish there was a Director's Cut of this somewhere.
I thought there was a truly great film lost here. And still very seriously worth seeing.

My thoughts exactly.

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Life in East Germany became a hot topic in the wake of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others, and Barbara's marketing leaned heavily into that. One thing you can tell when watching it though, is that this is being told on Christian Petzold's terms - and as such it is very evenly paced and sedate, without the powerful dramaticism of that earlier film. We see everything from the perspective of Barbara Wolff (Nina Hoss), and the only time we're outside of that point of view is at the film's very beginning, when fellow-doctor André Reiser (Ronald Zehrfeld) and Stasi officer Klaus Schütz (Rainer Bock) eye her up from a distance at the new small-town hospital she'll be working at since coming under stricter surveillance. To call that surveillance invasive would be an understatement - every time her flat is searched, Barbara herself gets a strip search and body cavity search. As one of her patients notes in succinct terms, this is a "scheiße land". There isn't anyone who doesn't want to escape their lot and live a life where they don't have to constantly watch what they say, who they socialize with, what they do, where they live or where they go.

Barbara's desire to leave means she's in no hurry to form new and lasting friendships at the place she's now working. André though, seems determined to break through her very hard outer shell - not knowing that all the while, Barbara's partner Jörg (Mark Waschke), who is now living in West Germany, is plotting her escape from the East. While a lot of Barbara's focus is on her relationship with André and Jörg plus the escape, there's another which deals with Barbara's relationship with the patients that come in for treatment - sometimes dragged in by police officers. There's pregnant Stella (Jasna Fritzi Bauer) - whose baby is destined to be taken away from her, and Mario (Jannik Schümann), who may well need surgery after a desperate suicide attempt. It's her compassion for these people that throw her whole quest for freedom into doubt and turmoil. That's the part of Barbara I found most interesting - it's more than Barbara suffering. A whole nation is. Those less fortunate than Barbara have no means of escaping - no lover waiting over the border. Is it right for her to just up and save herself - especially considering she's dedicated to helping people?

I remember Christian Petzold's Phoenix very well (that ending!) and while Barbara doesn't hit as hard, it's still very substantial and well filmed. It's full of scenes where we're just as stressed as the characters as to whether someone is watching at the wrong time. When Jörg's friend takes him to see Barbara, and the two are making love in a forest, the waiting friend is slowly approached by a car - and we all hold our breath. It's a harmless old man - or is it really? That paranoia is expertly created through careful editing, great cinematography and sound - working excellently together. Other than that, the screenplay (co-written by Petzold with Harun Farocki) is something to really admire. Life in the East is a slow drip of humiliation, drabness, fear, frustration and confinement. Petzold expands on it by having his characters tell detailed anecdotes, and quote novels - and those moments were also my favourite moments in Barbara. There's one about a horrifying mistake (helped along by East German scarcity) made by André that left two infants permanently blind - which is why he's practicing at this outpost. All in all, an excellent film about what escape really means for Barbara - one that can touch a nerve in anyone.

Glad to catch this one - winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival along with the "Reader Jury".




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

I haven't watched The Lady from Shanghai but did watch and really enjoyed The Stranger. I'm pretty sure his character was meant to but I think Edward G. Robinson stole the show.

Robinson was always so good in his roles, so effortless, that he tended to get overshadowed by his flashier co stars.

By "meant to" I just felt it was a really well written character. Welles' Franz Kindler/Professor Charles Rankin might have been the centerpiece but Robinson's Mr. Wilson made the movie. Which is exactly what he did in Double Indemnity.

Any tale about fraud and misrepresentation seems to be emblematic of our current age. The era of fake it till you make it, wishful thinking, cheating and the general assumption by many that this is simply how the world works. For years, one of the most famous art dealerships in New York City, Knoedler, were making the bulk of their incoming profits through the sale of forged and fake artworks. Made You Look : A True Story About Fake Art examines the various personalities involved - and what's interesting is how there's a layered element to the scandal. There are the crooks - Glafira Rosales, Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz and Pei-Shen Qian - who made the art, and sold it to Knoedler on false pretenses. Then there's the funny layer that really interests me - the people at Knoedler who must have known something was up, but hushed it up and kept the process going to keep the huge amount of money coming in. One, Ann Freedman, was president of the gallery at the time, and is interviewed extensively in the documentary. She presents a familiar portrait of narcissism, denial and blame-shifting, and looks absolutely terrible in the process.

Made You Look is a lot of fun, because we get to see so many art experts in so many fields get egg all over their faces after authenticating various paintings that were in reality created by Pei-Shen Qian in a New York Garage. "Beautiful" and "Wonderful" are words that were bandied about, until the forgery was exposed - and we see that these same experts backtracked and denied saying what they did when their embarrassing errors were revealed in court. But before you think that those at the Knoedler Gallery were fooled by them - there were plenty of reasons to suspect the works were fake. When scientific analysis brought up all kinds of worrying questions, Ann Freedman was there to quash them, bury them and deny what was happening. I can understand that she was so invested in them being real that she could hardly face the possibility they were fake - up to a point. In the end this all proves that it's not about the creation at all - it's all about the creator. A work of great beauty and meaning from Fred down the street is worth ten bucks, while a splash and kick from Jackson Pollock is worth ten million. It's an eccentric game of fancy decorative autograph hunting.

In the end it spelled the end of a 160-plus year reign for a veritable institution, with the Knoedler Gallery's doors closing - shocking fallout from a shocking scandal. I really enjoyed the Netflix documentary about it though - access to Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, Ann Freedman, Domenico De Sole and his wife Eleanore along with many more experts and those involved with the criminal proceedings who have the chance to either look really smug, guilty or simply surprised. I'm amazed at the leniency shown to Glafira Rosales and I'm in absolute shock that Ann Freedman is still in the business. Those with money can slip and slide out of things monumental in scale, while a poor person can end up sitting in jail over a minor violation. I'm surprised we don't have a system of fairness when it comes to justice - because of what it's definition is. I almost come to expect the rich walking away from stuff like this nearly unblemished. In the end, the world of high-priced art is such a showy, "look what I've got" business anyway. I respond better to those who are more "look what I did" rather than "look what I bought" - except of course for what Glafira Rosales, Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz and Pei-Shen Qian did. A good documentary to make up a double feature with Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Glad to catch this one - 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.0/10 on the IMDb.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Made You Look : A True Story About Fake Art.

I absolutely loved Phoenix and quite enjoyed Barbara.

HERE'S the short review I wrote of it.

And I also enjoyed Made You Look, though I felt that some missing interview subjects made it harder to get an overall picture of what was happening. My review is HERE

It wasn't until fairly recently that I started watching Hirokazu Kore-eda's films - started off by the incredibly high esteem Shoplifters was held in, making it unmissable once I'd heard about it. I Wish followed, and Broker had it's release recently, meaning I could catch it in a cinema setting. Nobody Knows is one that has been much suggested, and on my watchlist for quite a while it seems. It is indeed worth all the encouragement and recommendations - in fact, I've never been as on board with his style as much as I am now - my expectations locked and loaded and ready to appreciate his area of expertise (obviously a point of fascination for him), which boils down to non-traditional modern Japanese family dynamics. This often means he's eyeing the dysfunctional and poverty-stricken ad hoc family - often at the point of disintegration, but always with a lot of heart and emotional resonance. Often it's broken homes, destitution and kids that have been left behind but are making the best of it. That's literally what Nobody Knows is about - a family of four kids whose mother has abandoned them, meaning they're fending for themselves.

Much of the film unfolds from 12-year-old Akira Fukushima's (Yuya Yagira) point of view - he's the one that's allowed to go outside and shop for the kids when mother Keiko (You) disappears for long stretches. The two youngest, Yuki (Momoko Shimizu) and Shigeru (Hiei Kimura), are forbidden to go on the balcony, because by tenancy agreement they're not meant to be there at all (in a really hilarious opening, the two young children are smuggled in via suitcases.) All four, including oldest daughter Kyōko (Ayu Kitaura), are not allowed to go to school, and are forced to look after the apartment, do the laundry, and feed themselves (often catering to an inebriated mother who staggers home late at night when she's there at all.) So we get a child's-eye view, but this is a child who has had to do some rapid growing up. As the film continues, the situation inside the apartment slowly deteriorates and we constantly wonder how bad things can get - always worse it seems. These kids are great - which is all the more shame they're being neglected the way they are. It feels like their hopes and dreams fade a little more, the longer they're adrift in the world. They don't want to report their situation to the authorities for fear they'll be separated.

Nobody Knows turned out to be really sad and sobering, but it's not a film that dwells on misery throughout - instead every small victory for the children gives us enough to recharge our hopes for them. No doubt we understand the fears they have of being separated - who wants to be forever removed from the comfort, love and care of their family? At the same time, it's obvious that the current situation can only be maintained for so long - and that disaster will be the inevitable result if nothing is done. Having watched a few Hirokazu Kore-eda films now this is exactly what I was expecting, and as usual that helped immensely with being in the right frame of mind to take it on. Nobody Knows is an absolutely brilliant film in which his style works flawlessly - it's a film that makes me want to go back and watch Shoplifters again, which is a film which also mingles that intense warmth of family with the unbearable sadness of a family fractured. A family is filled with love no matter how good or bad it is, which is what makes life in a troubled family that much harder - that love will hurt when hardship strikes. All very well said in this film, which I enjoyed a lot and think is marvelous.

Glad to catch this one - Yūya Yagira won the award for Best Actor at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival (the first Japanese actor to win that award.)




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Nobody Knows.

kinda reminds me of the 90s tv show Harry and the Hendersons

The kids are definitely not alright in this 2008 Tom Shankland horror film, where some kind of cosmic goo infects a group of children - turning them into homicidal maniacs. Two couples are celebrating Christmas together at a secluded property - both have two young children each. The film has to bend over backwards giving the little ones the upper hand - but the most believable advantage they have is the fact that the adults continually dismiss the fact that this could actually happen. You see people behave stupidly in horror films all the time - but there's groan after groan in store watching this, as a mother or father gets duped into believing their little angel is fine after all - and not about to stab them in the eye (which they totally are going to do.) Parents are pushed on sleds down steep hills into spikes, and have their legs broken like twigs on a jungle gym - fighting back won't be easy seeing as it's really against human nature to do so (unless you're a paedophobe.)

It's pretty obvious that watching a horror movie that involves violence being inflicted by and on children is especially hard to watch, and an uncomfortable experience. I guess that makes it effective in a "makes you squirm" sense - and to the film's credit the kid-zombie deaths aren't too drawn out, despite the fact that they are kind of brutal. It makes the term "little monsters" almost literal, and it's pretty easy to think "Just kill 'em!" - but when you consider what it would be like in the character's shoes, pitting you up against children you love and want to protect with your very life, it's not so easy. Tying them up would have been my preferred way to deal with the situation - but the film invents scenarios where that's not possible. While only mid-level gory, the movie does involve uncomfortable injuries and bloody mayhem. Tom Shankland knows how to build suspense and gives us tiny little slices of what the world is like from the point of view of the children's minds - all horror and hell-like fire from the pits of every ashen cracked surface on earth they see in nightmare-vision. Looks like cosmic goo just went and ruined Christmas for these folks.

I liked how Shankland (who also wrote the screenplay, with a story credit going to Paul Andrew Williams) gives us a sense of that duality children have in the pre-carnage part of the film. Kids can be angels - so innocent, cute, nice and beautiful. Kids can also be devils - annoying, prone to tantrums, demanding and extremely histrionic. As a movie though, I though this was okay, but not something I'd return to multiple times - one of those horror films that are good enough for one go-around. There are no special performances from the adults, but the kids have been directed brilliantly - and it's quite a talented bunch that were picked out for this film. I was hoping for something more Village of the Damned but got something closer to The Crazies, with the kids more snarly than spooky. It's okay. This was a decent horror film. The reviews for it when it came out were all really positive - but I think it failed badly at the box office (not sure how it went rental-wise.) Includes a couple of deaths to character's who behaved so stupidly they had it coming.

Glad to catch this one - Tom Shankland won a Special Mention Award at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2009 for how well he directed those children.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Children. (Apologies to Takoma11 for another 'Evil Kids' entry.)

What a month (and a bit) of movie watching that was - 36 films all-up (plus a few incidental strikes), but only catching up around half a dozen spots on my watchlist - it seems that it's harder than I thought to make inroads, but I'm kind of excited about that. It means there'll always be great movies waiting on my watchlist to wade through - and doing this has led to what is probably my best ever hit/miss ratio I've ever known concerning me liking what I watch.


Here's hoping February will see me cross paths with some more that are up to this standard.

I know Paolo Sorrentino from his Oscar-winning Felliniesque (and you could say complete opposite of minimalist) film The Great Beauty, but I don't know much about him apart from that. I've seen Youth, but it hasn't stuck in my mind - and I've heard about This Must Be the Place, featuring a gothed-up Sean Penn - I'd like to see that, regardless of the mixed reviews it received. Well, this 2021 Best International Feature Oscar-nominee - The Hand of God - is an autobiographical piece for Sorrentino, although I'd never have guessed that to start out with. Much like Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths and Sorrentino's own The Great Beauty, this film ventures into the surreal and absurd, which is the last thing I'd equate with something that's autobiographical. Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti) stands in for Paolo Sorrentino - and the film starts with Fabietto's sexy aunt coming into contact with a divine person called the "little monk" (The munaciello) - legendary to Naples, which is where Fabietto's story takes place. We later learn that this aunt has psychiatric problems - so perhaps the encounter was all in her mind. I'd love to know if Sorrentino had an aunt that claimed she did have it though.

We meet the rest of Fabietto's family, a large one which includes his father Saverio (Toni Servillo) and mother Maria (Teresa Saponangelo) - and learn from the film the tragic fact that Sorrentino lost both of his parents in an accident when he was only 16. It's an event which has a jarring effect on the young boy - but one that makes him determined to follow his dream and become a filmmaker. The antics the rest of the family get up to are hilarious, and they make this a really entertaining feel-good story for the most part. One almost religious matter of importance to the boy is the soccer team that represents Naples - Napoli, and the fact that they manage to buy the greatest footballer going around at the time - Maradona. "The Hand of God" refers to a famous goal he once scored which was controversial at the time, for it looked like he may have used his hand to help score it. Family drama often clouds football games though, and although Maradona helps guide Napoli to glory, the death of Fabietto's parents means he's not the least bit interested anymore. It's all background noise to him by that stage.

There's a lot more to the film than that central, emotional core to the story. Like I said, the characters have real depth to them, and the way they behave makes for no end of amusement for us spectators. While Fabietto's aunt Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri) fills him with sexual yearning, it's the ancient upstairs neighbour Baronessa Focale (Betti Pedrazzi) he loses his virginity to (she considers it a gift she bestows on him - and considering the fact she's an old lady, the scene is surprisingly erotic.) I felt the film all-up was fantastic, and enjoyed it far more than I thought I would - you could almost call it magical. It's someone's life story writ large, with beautiful Naples the perfect backdrop to a story of this make-up. Fabietto has to build new relationships when his parents - his only true close friends by that stage of his life - depart the scene, and apart from smuggler and petty criminal Armando (Biagio Manna) he finds film director Antonio Capuano (Ciro Capano). The rest is history. Recommended film - I loved it.

Glad to catch this one - won the Grand Jury Prize at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. Nominated for that Best International Feature Oscar in 2022.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Hand of God.

You don't see it very often, but The Beat That My Heart Skipped is actually a French remake of an American film - it's usually always the other way 'round, but the original was a movie called Fingers (1978), directed by James Toback, and starring Harvey Keitel. When the film started I assumed Thomas Seyr (Romain Duris) was a gangster - but he's actually a very (very) shady real estate broker. They introduce rats to tenements, chase squatters away and purposely smash up properties - all the while skirting French laws concerning property development. His father, Robert (Niels Arestrup), is in the same business, and occasionally gets his son to beat the hell out of tenants who aren't paying their rent. All of this changes when Thomas has a chance encounter with the person who managed his late mother's career as a pianist - who tells him that he had real talent himself, and offers to set up an audition. This has Thomas desperately brushing up on his skills, and neglecting all other areas of his life - in the meantime falling for his best friend and business associate's wife.

What I found different about this movie was the sense that Thomas was heading for disaster despite the fact that he wasn't doing much wrong as far as his life was concerned. Taking piano seriously at first seems like something of a pipe dream, but as he takes lessons with virtuoso Miao Lin (Linh Dan Pham) we see that he does indeed have great talent, and the lessons themselves have him open up more than he was when just working on the edge of criminality - he becomes a better person. I unexpectedly found myself on his side, and rooting for his success - but his ties to his father and his crooked real estate colleagues make this very difficult, which produces a lot of the tension we feel as the narrative beats become more pronounced and severe. We've all seen movies like this before, so we sense that something dramatic and monumental is going to come between Thomas and his dream. All he can do is keep fighting, and all we can do is keep watching.

Main star Romain Duris has a bad-boy Liam Gallagher feel to him which works for this Jacques Audiard film, and Audiard himself would go on to make what is probably his most renowned film after this - A Prophet (2009). Overall the director's output has been maintained at this high level for the majority of his career. He seems like the kind of filmmaker to have a stab at seeing every film he's made. Rust and Bone looks like it might be good, and I've already heard about Dheepan (it's on my watchlist.) This one was an enjoyable watch - I got to see Mélanie Laurent in a small role (she was in that 'minor roles' early stage of her career) and found main character Thomas a fascinating and complex mixture of good and bad. It seems that he's been led astray by his father and compatriots, but decides for himself to do something greater than be a lowly crook. Whether he can or not, it's a change that slowly wins us all over and provides the dramatic context for the shocks to come - making for interesting viewing.

Glad to catch this one - won the BAFTA for Best Film not in the English Language at the 2006 awards ceremony, and 8 César Awards.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Beat That My Heart Skipped.

"Get up!" - "Get down!" - "Get out!" - "Get moving!" The constant barked orders demand a rebuke, but Emmett Myers (William Talman) has the gun, and experience with killing. Roy Collins (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Frank Lovejoy) are just two guys who wanted to go fishing - and had the misfortune of picking the hitch-hiking Myers up. So it's "Be quiet!" - "Fix the radio!" - "Give me the keys!" - "Take off your clothes!" Okay, that last one was because Myers wanted to switch so the authorities might misidentify who the killer is if spotted - but it led me to some uncomfortable thoughts about the smell and discomfort of three guys in close proximity in the hot desert for so long. The last thing you'd want to do is put Emmett Myers's clothes on. Talman is uglyed up (props to the make-up team on this film) and when he sleeps he reminds me of a guy I once knew who had a glass eye. Whenever he slept it looked like he was still awake, because that one eye would be open - staring at you. It used to look freaky - just like Myers does.

All the way though The Hitch-Hiker I really wanted one of these guys to go for the gun. I know, it's so easy for me because my life isn't on the line - but Myers keeps on rubbing their nose in it. Chiding them for being inferior - for not taking what they want, like he does. He keeps pushing it - and the audience as well. There's no outlet for us - and it's like Myers is also disparaging the audience, whom I assume mostly participate in society and don't run around like maniacs robbing, taking, punching and killing. Every moment they do what this guy tells 'em to do is another moment he feels justified in crowing about how he's the smart one. "Change the tire!" - "Go to sleep!" - "Hide!" - "Give me that!" It exhausts us even though we only spend an hour with him - the endless hot desert we see making us really think of what it'd be like on the run across the hot, dusty miles with this guy constantly ordering us around - all the while having the power of life and death over us.

One of the most interesting aspects to The Hitch-Hiker is that contempt Myers has for his two victims, seemingly because they're not willing to risk their lives attempting to disarm him and take him on. You know at some stage the tables will probably turn, and it'll be interesting to see how Myers himself reacts. Will he still be the smart one? In the meantime this film (thankfully only 70 minutes in length) has a constancy which wears us down - Myers barking orders nearly non-stop through most of this film's running time. There's a tiny bit of police procedural to the moments we spend away from the threesome, but mostly we're watching these tense interactions - and waiting for any move Roy or Gilbert might make. There's a target practice scene which exemplifies all of the qualities I've defined - that tension, utter defeat and superior attitude from Myers. He doesn't promise the two guys freedom or reward either - being quite open about the fact that at a certain stage he might not need them anymore! On the way to Santa Rosalía, the game plays out in this edgy film noir classic - the first ever directed by a woman.

Glad to catch this one - it holds a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 43 reviews - not too bad at all.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Hitch-Hiker.

I feel quiet. I feel depressed. I just watched Conspiracy - a film about the Wannsee Conference, which didn't make the decision to murder all of the Jews in German-occupied Europe but made it clear this was to be done - each person attending in charge of a branch of government which would see it done. Reinhard Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh) tops the list of awful conspirators, Branagh winning an Emmy (he was also nominated for a Golden Globe) because his performance feels too real. A mixture of hatred and "pfft, so we're killing them? So what?" Treating the murder of innocent civilians on about the same level as killing chickens - the industrial scale that this was being done on almost comparable. Stanley Tucci brings us a taciturn and dour Adolf Eichmann - his only sense of positivity one in which he relishes doing his job well. Colin Firth is the practical and lawyerly principled Wilhelm Stuckart - annoyed because this Final Solution of the Jewish Question means the Nazis will be operating contrary to their own laws.

Many a reviewer has written a sterling, impassioned review of this film that says it all so very well. It's a daunting film to talk about, because to do so you're having to acknowledge one of the greatest crimes in human history - and there are no words that can do the feeling of horror justice. The way some of the conference members snort, snicker and chuckle as if this were some ordinary council meeting discussing adding a lane to a highway or requisitioning a park. The way some argue because the Final Solution is going to drain their slave labour workforce (I'd have them admit - for the Nazis there was never any shortage of slave labour when you consider those they found to be unworthy of being free.) The way they serve dinner mid-conference, at which point I felt sick - stuffing their faces while discussing death, disease and murder - all of which is of their own doing. I don't know how the actors all did it - maintaining that level of animalistic nonchalance at the thought of murder and general hubris must have been difficult.

So - this is really required viewing. We usually see the Holocaust at the point of the terrible work being carried out - but it's ideation is an important moment to study because listening to these guys talk makes me realise it could happen again. There are factors I recognize. The arrogance is one. The excessive pride and narcissism another. The lack of empathy, and embrace of nationalistic ideals. All it takes is for the wrong people to have the power to do it. Before it happened, the average everyday German never would have thought it possible that their own government would commit such terrible crimes. It's very interesting to note, at the end of the film, how many of those at the conference ended up free to participate in West German governance after the war ended. Not every participant in the Final Solution received the punishment they probably deserved. Thanks to Undersecretary Martin Luther (Kevin McNally) the minutes of the meeting weren't destroyed - so we know exactly how it played out. For conspiracy theorists - here's one that actually happened, and doesn't need to be dreamed up and spread online.

Glad to catch this one - winner of a BAFTA, Golden Globe and Emmy for Best TV Drama, Stanley Tucci and Kenneth Branagh respectively.




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

Heh. A Miike film up next, huh? His films are generally hit or miss. Audition is great though.

Yeah, I love Audition.

The fact that Takashi Miike made The Happiness of the Katakuris around the same time he did Visitor Q made me a little nervous - not that I found the latter film unendurable, but it transgressed boundaries in a way that was extreme even for this director. The Katakuris has a much better balance of weirdness, horror and fun - it doesn't go for taboos as hard, instead injecting as much of the bizarre as it can while never straying too far from it's central theme about family. The Katakuris consist of a grandfather, mother and father, son and daughter and granddaughter - all living together while running the ‘White Lover's Inn' - situated on a former garbage dump near Mount Fuji. The bed and breakfast hasn't quite got on it's feet yet - the road that will be passing by hasn't been constructed, and whenever the Katakuris gets new guests they find some kind of way of dying. Afraid to taint their business by having to acknowledge these deaths, the Katakuris decide to bury the bodies nearby in an ever-expanding graveyard. (I have never seen The Quiet Family, so was unaware that this was loosely based on it.)

While not always even, or having any kind of rhythm, this film manages to mix together a concoction of styles that'll make your head spin. There's claymation which takes the place of what's going on at any random moment (a lot of fun), and when it's not claymation it's a musical number - all the while Takashi's sense of humour (and I'm almost afraid to admit this) pretty much lines up with mine, making a lot of the funny stuff 'laugh-out-loud' for me. The film is never serious, but at the same time it's beating heart - the love of family - is it's one truly profound and resplendent feature. As a refreshing change, the Katakuris aren't a completely dysfunctional unit but instead a loving family that has it's problems but overcomes them because the love between them all is never questioned or weakened. Whenever it comes time for one to make a sacrifice for the whole, most of them will put their hand up. One other thing I'm thankful for is the fact that none of them are sick or perverted - just unlucky.

Yeah - they all have their problems. The daughter (recently divorced) is the type who falls in love at the drop of a hat - and indeed she swoons over an audacious con-man, "Richard Sagawa" (Kiyoshiro Imawano) who claims to be a member of the British royal family. The son was troubled and a thief, but is trying to make a better go of it. The bed and breakfast might turn out okay - but the fact that the Katakuris are burying so many dead bodies makes this situation deliriously funny. As each one shows up we slip into musical territory which just increases that feeling - and that's where the film is at it's strongest. Sometimes we slide over into absolute lunacy, and that's where the film almost loses me here and there. The film starts in an absolutely bizarre manner - and as I watched I wondered if the entire film would be completely inscrutable - but everything waxes and wanes in The Happiness of the Katakuris. A bright and very Japanese mixture of music, comedy, horror, claymation and positivity. I liked it very much.

Glad to catch this one - won a Special Jury Prize for its director at the 2004 Gérardmer Film Festival and has received generally positive reviews from critics..




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Happiness of the Katakuris.