philosophy in film

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521

[b]Note: Everything about this movie is explicit![/b]

Memento on steroids? No bullshit: The beginning of this film is the closing credits. And you know what direction that means. Even the words here are printed backwards.

The first 25 minutes? Good luck. But it’s nothing compared to the part in the middle.

Said by some to be one of the most raw, revolting, films ever made, this isn’t for everyone. But the question you have to ask is this: Is the whole point of the film just to be raw and revolting…or is there something more? That, well, each viewer will have to decide for him or herself. It’s saturated with sex. And who is to say where sex should fit into our lives?

How then are the parts here to be fitted together into a whole? Is it misogynistic? Homophobic? Pornographic?

The photography at times is a bit…vertiginous? If you are prone to dizziness, try something else.

This portrays S&M way, way down in the dungeon. Everything here reeks of brutality.

But never once have I ever felt attracted to this sort of thing. It is completely alien to me. To be aroused by pain? Nope, no way. It seems absurd.

Men are everywhere here. Those kinds of men. Sick, fucking beasts. The party animals, the hounds of lust. The despicable rapist.

IMDb

[b]Newsweek stated that this was the most walked out of movie of the year. The French DVD release proudly proclaims in the blurb on the back that of 2,400 people at the film’s Cannes premiere, 200 walked out. Three people fainted.

The entire story is told backwards which means that each sequence starts at that moment where the next sequence in the film ends.

The rape scene was shot a number of times and the only constraint on the actors, apart from the beginning and end, was that it didn’t run over twenty minutes.

Director Gaspar Noé only had a three-page draft before the movie was shot, so all of the dialogue was improvised.

The “Rectum” was in fact a genuine gay S&M club in Paris. The crew changed the name, redressed the set and added red lighting. The club was spread across the basements of three separate buildings and was so cavernous and confusing that many of the crewmembers became claustrophobic in it.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irr%C3%A9versible

trailer: youtu.be/hC3hdaw72xE

IRREVERSIBLE [2002]
Written and directed by Gaspar Noé

[b]Philippe: You want me to say it? Time destroys everything.

…

Phillippe: I was in the joint because I slept with my daughter.
Friend: Ah, the Western Syndrome.

…

Friend: Take it easy, man. We all think we’re Mephisto. It’s no big deal. We fuck up and they say it’s bad news. It’s tragic. Can’t forget the pleasure, the joy. There are no bad deeds, just deeds.

…

Bystander: All philosophers are faggots!! Ain’t no rubbers in prison. You’re gonna catch AIDS, faggot!

…

Pierre: You’re behaving like an animal. Even animals don’t seek revenge.

…

Taxi driver: What is the Rectum?
Marcus: A club for fags! Fags! Understand?

…

Mourad: You’re counting on the police? You know they won’t do shit. They’re gonna catch him, put him in prison, give him food, clothing, medical care. Your friend didn’t get a doctor.
Marcus: Who are you?
Mourad: Who am I? Until proof of the contrary, I can be your best friend. I can help you find him if you want…With a little money, we can help you get revenge. The assailant drew blood. Blood calls for revenge. Vengeance is a human right.

…

Mourad: This is a man’s business. No pussies allowed.

…

Woman on Street [to Alex]: Take the underpass. It’s safer.[/b]

Safer? Wait’ll you see the underpass.

[b]Le Tenia: You think the world revolves around you? Because you’re beautiful? Fucking sow!

…

Pierre: Why bring Alex here and then act like this?! You’re worse than an ape!

…

Alex: You know what people say? There are no women who can’t come, only men who can’t fuck.

…

Alex: You’re so lofty, lofty, lofty. But at the end of the day, when it comes to sex, you’re down to earth.
[she points to Marcus]
Alex: And then you say he’s an animal!
Pierre: His basic need is sex!. He says, Me want to fuck. Me want to eat. Me, Marcus.[/b]

522

Not like any prison movie I’ve ever seen. And I think I’ve seen them all.

She teaches classical piano in prison. Not many students. But often the whole point of films like this is to explore the relationship between the few exceptional people here there are. Exceptional however can be manifested in many different ways and in many different contexts.

And both have a tumultuous, crippling past. Which means they are now damaged psychologically.

In part, it shows the manner in which we see others as they are while having little or no understanding as to how or why they became that way. We can only react to them based on the manner in which we have become who we think we are.

This is set in German prison. Is it typical? You got me.

Is this a believeable story? You got me. But it certainly is an absorbing one…an emotionally draining one.

A dark past. Some have one, some don’t. And, unless you have, what the hell can you possibly know about the link between that and the present in those that did?

trailer: youtu.be/0aL1FWdoxAw

FOUR MINUTES [Vier Minuten] 2006
Written and directed by Chris Kraus

Inmate: You let her dangle, didn’t you, Jenny? You’re just the type. You’d steal the last smoke from a corpse.

That’s exactly what she did.

[b]Gertrud: You remind me of someone, warden.
Direktor Meyerbeer: Meyerbeer…
Gertrud: My first warden also refused to be called warden.
Direktor Meyerbeer: Head of penitentiary?
Gertrud: SS-Sturmbannführer.

…

Gertrud: You want to play piano with those hands?
Jenny: They’re the only hands I’ve got.
Gertrud [to guard]: Get her out.
Guard: But I think she is talented. It says she is musical.
Jenny: And my piano lesson?
Gertrud: I’m sure you can do without.
Jenny: What’s your problem?
Gertrud: Young lady, watch your manners.
Jenny: What? I can’t play because of my hands? Fuck that fascist shit!

…

Gertrud [to Jenny strapped down on a gurney]: I don’t know where you learned your skills…
Jenny: FUCK OFF!
Gertrud: …and I don’t really care. That Negro music is worthless. But…it was still…unusual. God must have given you something special. I think you’re despicable, you should know that…but you have a gift. And you have the obligation to preserve that gift…

…

Gertrud [to Jenny]: I can help you to become a better pianist. But I can’t help you to become a better person.

…

Gertrud: The words ‘sorry’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are missing in your letter.
Jenny: Sorry. Please. Thank you.

…

Jenny: Okay, I’ll be your whimpering slave.

…

Jenny: What’s in it for me?
Gertrud: Rule number five: this is not about you.
Jenny [looking over at a child]: When I was that kid’s age, I performed in New York and Amsterdam. At ten I had played numerous international contests. I won half of them. My adoptive father tried to turn me into Mozart. When I quit at 12, he fucked me senseless. He raped me. Repeatedly. So I don’t really feel like some stupid contest.
Gertrud: Then it might be best to go back to rule number one.

…

Gertrud [slapping Jenny]: Don’t you ever play that Negro music again!
Jenny: That is the music I like.[/b]

Jazz, she means. The irony being that, for many reared on pop, they may as well be the same thing.

[b]Gertrud: Today, you did something extraordinary, Jenny. And then you ruin it all. What is it with you?
Jenny: I knew the glass wouldn’t break. I ran into it before, when my baby was born. I was in labor for 16 hours. When I told the doctor that I…I couldn’t take it anymore, he said I was just a con trying to stay out of prison. They should have done a Cesarian. But they didn’t. They just let me tear. I blacked out. When I woke up the nurse said to me, “You’re baby is gone. It’s just gone.” Three hours later they took me back to jail.

…

Gertrud: Strange how hard it is for both of us to…
Jenny: What?
Gertrud: …to be friendly.

…

Gerhard [Jenny’s father]: Jenny ended up on the street. There she met this cute little hustler. The cheapest kind. And then this boy killed his father.
Gertrud: According to the files your daughter did it.
Gerhard: That’s not true.
Gertrud: Then why is she in prison?
Gerhard: Because she was convicted, not because she did it. She incriminated herself to cover for this loser. Then he dumped her and got free.

…

Gertrud: Quit playing that Negro music.
Jenny: Negro music, huh?
Gertrud: I won’t let you ruin your technique. The concert is in one week. We had an agreement.
Jenny: You lost us three days. I do what you say. I play the pieces you pick. I work your fucking Schummann till my ears hurt. So don’t freak out when I play some good stuff.
Gertrud: It’s noise.
Jenny: It’s mine. It’s me.

…

Jenny [to Gertrud]: All you want is for people to curtsy for you. But I won’t do that ever. For no one.

…

Gertrud: Today is my last day. I just want to get my piano.
Kowalski: Tell me, Mrs. Krüger… What do those guys have that others don’t?
Gertrud: One’s a murderer and the other raped his niece.
Kowalski: I’ll miss you, Mrs. Krüger.

…

Gertrud: You think today was an easy day for me? Why do you think I’ve stayed here for 60 years?
Jenny: Because of a dead body? Great! A lesbian who likes corpses. You’re a perverted freak, madam.
Gertrud: How dare you! How dare you talk like that! I’ve worked very hard for this day. I’ve overlooked your respectless manners and your fits. I got you out of prison. I told you about the only person I cared about, and you walk all over me!!
Jenny: I didn’t mean…
Gertrud: You know nothing…nothing about the ease of annihilation!

…

Gerhard: I hope you win, Jenny.
Jenny: I hope you die, Daddy.[/b]

523

How close does it come to however close I come to understanding the manner in which wealth and power eclipse everything else in Washington? Pretty damn close.

We all know any number of films that make the connection between wealth and power. If there is a shitload of money involved people can be made expendable. And what is legal is often considerable more harmful to most of us than what is not.

In other words, as in China, state capitalism prevails here as well. Just not nearly as flagrant…out in the open. Most of it has to unfold behind the curtains. On the conveyor belts between Wall Street, K Street, Capital Hill and the White House.

The film almost goes right to the belly of the beast. The DOD and the military industrial complex. Here though the focus is on the increasing role played by the “private sector”. In other words, the likes of firms like Blackwater [Acidemi]. But it barely scratches the surface regarding the nature of defense contractors, the war economy and crony capitalism. The “system” apparently is okay…it’s the rotten apples trying to turn war into a “business”.

Here’s a snapshot from OpenSecrets: opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=D

Look for the remake of All The President’s Men.

STATE OF PLAY [2009]
Directed by Kevin Macdonald

[b]Cal: Mornin’…
Cameron: So? Where are we, was he nobbing her or not?
Cal: Morning, Cam…
Cameron: That’s funny about you. Every time your friend runs for re-election or conducts a hearing, you drop his name to me until we give him some coverage… but he finally does something that actually might sell some newspapers, you render mute. It’s, it’s - incongruous!
Cal: No, it’s not… it’s inconsistent.

…

Stephen [sarcastically]: I see you redecorated.
Cal: Yeah, I moved the couch over a couple of feet.

…

Stephen: Aren’t you going to ask me how I could be so stupid?
Cal: Yeah, in a minute.

…

Posted Sign [in restaurant]: List of who eats free at Ben’s / Bill Cosby / NO ONE ELSE / Management

…

Stephen: It doesn’t have to be a detailed statement. Short and dignified, and we’ll be out of here.
Anne: Dignified. Got it.

…

Cal [to Stephen]: Who might have wanted Sonia dead?
Stephen: What?
Cal: Is there something in her history? Something you haven’t told me about? Some commections she had?
Stephen: No. No. Wait, who am I talkin’ to here? Am I talking to my friend…or to a reporter?
Cal: Here I gotta be both.

…

Cameron [to Della]: I want you to do a complete rundown on this Sonia Baker: who she knew, who she blew, the color of her knickers.

…

Stephen [to PointCorp/Blackwater exec]: Strightforward question: Since the start of the war on terror was declared has your own personal net worth gone up by $250 million dollars.

…

Stephen: Putting war in the hands of mercenaries and those who consider it a business is a contradiction in terms in any langage.[/b]

But isn’t this exactly the same thing that happens when the government buys everything the military needs to prosecute wars from very, very big and powerful defense contractors—companies that pour millions of dollars into the election and reeclection efforts of the folks on Capital Hill [and on the White House] who decide when and where we go to war?

Stephen: May I remind you sir, that the wars this country fought that defined it, were fought despite what they cost, not because of it.

This is true…up to a point. But only up to it.

PointCorp insider: Do you have any idea what your friend the Congressman is threatening? This is $30 to $40 billion annually. That’s wrath of God money.
Cal: The hearings are saying 3 to 4 billion.
PointCorp insider: Overseas. The real money is what PointCorp stands to make in its domestic operations.
Cal: I wasn’t aware that they had any.
PointCorp insider: Who was sent in for crowd control after Katrina? Us. Who’s training Chicago police on new interrogation techniques? Soon PointCorp will take over from the NSA on phone taps, terrorist databases, all of it. It’s a fundamental restructruing of domestic intelligence policy. It is the privatization of Homeland Security. Billions and billion of dollars. Now, do you really think they are going to forfeit all that because some hero from the seventh district of Pennsylvania thinks that they should?

Hmm. How true is all this out in the real world?

[b]Della [referring to Foy]: And why do you think he’s gonna talk?
Hank: Because he’s scared.
Della: How do you know?
Cal: Because I’m gonna scare him.

…

Cal: Sonia Baker’s mother’s first name is?
Rep. Fergus: Pardon me?
Cal: You heard me, family friend.
Rep. Fergus: Do you really think that your new owners, these responsible corporate citizens, are going to allow you to publish this…this…this speculative drivel?

…

Cal [to Cameron]: Maybe you would like to explain to me how, when and why MediaCorp chopped off your balls. This is as big and connected as it gets. You follow any fissure of this, it’s a massive story. You got Fergus, you got PointCorp, and now you got MediaCorp all connected, all in collusion, all playing for the same country club.[/b]

Bingo! This is how it works. Wall Street, K Street, political power brokers, the corporate media. Just follow the fucking money.

524

A thriller. Good people. Wrong place. Wrong time. Go.

No CGI, no endless car chases, no explosions, no extraneous bullshit.

It’s one of those “do as we say so we can harm someone you don’t know or don’t do as we say so we can harm someone you do know” plotlines. Unless it’s more complicated of course. Good cops? Bad cops? Good crooks? Bad crooks? Really bad crooks?

Conflicting goods or conflicting bads. Depending on where you fit into it.

An Everyman becomes a superman film. Lots of them. They’re either poorly done or well done.

You watch films like this and you wonder: To what extent is this just art immitating life? How deep does this sort of corruption go, say, where I live? Where you live?

Corruption, for example, that actually results in innocent people dying.

trailer: youtu.be/wSV2_5TJiPM

POINT BLANK [À Bout Portant] 2010
Written and directed by Fred Cavayé

525

Based on historical events.

Back then – at the time of the actual kidnapping – I was right on the cusp between Marxism, Democratic Socialism and Existentialism. In other words, well before I fell over the edge into the abyss that is moral nihilsm.

Which is to say, had I been typing this back then instead of now very different words would be appearing on your screen. But that is the nature of dasein, isn’t it? We think about the particular world we are living in in a particular time in a particular way. But 33 years later it’s no more the same world than I am the same person.

But I have always admired folks who take an interest in the world around them politically. Almost anything is better than the political apathy our culture seems to mass produce now.

The Red Brigade. Considerably more sophisticated politically than the Symbionese Liberation Army and their ilk but still hard-core ideologues…authorirarian extremists. However well-intentioned. The rhetoric and the reality of revolution. The rhetoric and the reality of reaction. Almost everthing is on the surface here.

And yet “back then” I came so goddamn close to it myself.

Aldo Moro kidnapping at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Aldo_Moro

GOOD MORNING, NIGHT [Buongiorno, Notte] 2003
Directed by Marco Bellocchio

Mariano: What was that?
Charia: Nothing. A baby. A new born.

Jesus, I wonder if that actually happened?!

Ernestino: Why aren’t the people rebelling?
Mariano: Not everyone agrees with him.
Ernestino: Okay, but why is no one rebelling? Why? Everyone is applauding him!

Him being a government spokesperson. These folks really were convinced they were igniting The Revolution.

[b]Ernestino: What are they saying at work?
Charia: They are saying we are murderers.
Ernestino: Go ask in the factories who the real murderers are.

…

Aldo Moro: “Freedom or death”. Someone said that.

…

Primo [and eventually all of them]: The working class must command. The working class must command. The working class must command. The working class must command.[/b]

Repeat as necessary.

[b]Mariano: I remember as a child I was so fond of religion that I hoped to die so I could go to Heaven as soon as possible. How absurd!
Aldo Moro: Aren’t you scared of dying?
Mariano: Every man will die someday. But not every death has the same meaning. I believe that this is our superiority. We are willing to die for our ideal. The Communists are like that.
Aldo Moro: Christian martyrs, too. After all, yours is a religion, too, like mine. In fact, it’s much more strict. For example, it despises the body more than we Catholics do. Once upon a time, Christianity was like that. But it’s not anymore.

…

Chiara: We are soldiers.
Ernesto: Some soldiers.[/b]

Mostly, they sit around watching television.

Mariano [reading from a “document”]: “The proletarians, the workers and all the exploited know well what the Democratic Christian regime means because they suffer from it first-hand. The trial of Aldo Moro is just a stage of the greater trial of the regime going on in the country…the class war for Communism. Aldo Moro’s responsibilities are the same as those for which this nation is on trial. His guilt is the same as that for which the Christian Democratic Party and its regime will be completely defeated by the Communist fighting forces. With no doubt, Aldo Moro is guilty, and is therefore sentenced to death.”

All the more absurd given the politicos that govern Italy today. Does the name Silvio Berlusconi ring a bell? As for Italian Communism…not many Antonio Gramscis still around I suspect. But then successful revolutions had occured in Russia and China. And it seemed to be spreading across the globe. A dufferent world in other words.

[b]Enzo: They are crazy. And stupid. That scares me.
Chiara: I don’t understand you. You make me angry. You talk about the brigadists like they were demented. Accountants who masturbate with Playboy and go around killing people. But can’t you see the others? The faces of the Christian Democrats…and their slaves, their hypocrisy.
Enzo: The brigadists are worse than them because they want to imitate them. Their bulletins are frenetic. Think if people who wrote that way had to govern us.

…

Painted on wall: PEOPLE DIE OF HEROIN, PEOPLE DIE OF WORK, WHO THE FUCKS CARES IF ALDO MORO DIES?

…

Mariano: To free him without conditions would be a farce.
Ernesto: Chiara, they are not willing even to acknowledge us.
Chiara: Why should they acknowledge us when we do not acknowledge them?
Ernesto: Aren’t you with us?
Chiara: Yes, but I don’t understand why we should kill him. Nothing makes me think that is the right thing to do. Can I say that?
Mariano: This is the evidence that there must be no humanitarian limit in a revolutionary war. There is no deed we cannot do. For the victory of the working class, even killing one’s own mother is right. What today seems inconceivable, absurd, inhuman is actually a heroic action of supreme anniliation of our subjective reality. The best of humanity. [/b]

For better or for worse, it was existentialism that yanked me back from my own precipice.

526

More than once I tried to watch this [4 hour, 26 minute film] from start to finish. Never entirely made it. Don’t suspect I will now.

This is not a documentary so much as a docudrama.

From the introduction by the film makers:

The film not as much reflects the documental exact chronological order, as our subjective opinion regarding the events described. We did not set out to make and anti-Japanese propaganda film, we just intended to depict the facts the way they actually are.

Why did the Japanese do these things? They say it’s because the West [and The Soviet Union] were conducting the same sort of experiments with respect to chemical, biological and neurological warfare. Sound familiar?

That’s how it was rationalized: it’s nothing personal. People were tortured horrifically using all manner of ghastly methods but the point was not to torture them per se but only to gain valuable practical insights into human endurance so as to extract the information necessary in the development of weapons of war. They are “forced” to do this however because “the other side” is too. The enemies of their beloved “homeland”. And if the occasional sadist pops up from time to time? Well, that’s an anomaly, of course. It has nothing to do with the project intentions

IMDb

[b]The true history of Japanese Unit 731, from its beginnings in the 1930s to its demise in 1945, and the subsequent trials in Khabarovsk, USSR, of many of the Japanese doctors from Unit 731. The facts are told, and previously unknown evidence is revealed by an eyewitness to these events, former doctor and military translator, Anatoly Protasov. Part documentary and part feature, the story is shown from the perspective of a young Japanese nurse who witnessed many of horrors, and a young Japanese officer who is torn between his sincere convictions that he is serving the greater purpose, and the deep sympathy he feels for an imprisoned Russian girl. His life is a living hell as he’s compelled to carry out atrocious experiments on the other prisoners, using them as guinea pigs in this shocking tale of mankind’s barbarity. “Philosophy of a Knife” is truly one of the most violent, brutal and harrowing movies ever made.

The film contains about 13,000 special sound effects most part of which is never used twice.[/b]

wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_a_Knife

Unit 731 at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

article at cinema suicide: cinema-suicide.com/2008/06/1 … f-a-knife/

trailer: youtu.be/SNxqWvlntZ4

PHILOSOPHY OF A KNIFE [video 2008]
Written and directed by Andrey Iskanov

Title card: ALL EVENTS SHOWN IN THIS FILM ACTUALLY OCCURED AND HAVE BEEN CAREFULLY RECREATED AFTER STUDYING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS, LITIGATION EVIDENCES AND MEMIORS OF EYEWITNESSES.

527

My own short term memory is beginning to crumble so I can certainly empathize with another in the same boat. Even if I’m not a contract killer in a movie. Your whole sense of identity revolves around all the things you remember about yourself. What happens when you remember less and less? What of “I” then? All the more problematic for starters.

At least I haven’t reached the point where I am writing things down on my arm in order to remember them. But even he hasn’t reached the point yet where he has to tattoo them instead.

Right and wrong. Or what he remembers of it. But surely anyone can remember that pimping out your 12 year old daughter – that pedaphilia – is wrong. Wrong. But if you can get away with it in a world without God?

A film where you are manipulated into rooting for the cold blooded killer because he is out to avenge an innocent child…and to expose pedaphiles. And political corruption. It works for some but not for others.

trailer: youtu.be/wzUsj_PRlBU

THE MEMORY OF A KILLER [De Zaak Alzheimer] 2003
Directed by Erik Van Looy

[b]Ledda: Are you clever? Because if you are, you will know who sent me?

…

Ledda: She’s not even 13. I won’t do it. She’s a child.
Seynaeve: One quick call to Marseilles!
Ledda: You don’t understand. Nobody will do it.[/b]

Somebody will do it.

[b]Ledda: You were right, Gilles. For guys like us there is no retirement.

…

Vincke: Is that legal?
Verstuyft: No… it’s Japanese.

…

Vincke: …traces of animal feces.
Verstuyft: Feces?
Vincke: Shit, Freddy, dog shit, cow shit…shit.
Verstuyft: Vincke…I know where he is…pigeon shit.

…

Baron de Haeck: This is ridiculous. I hired you. I paid you.
Jedda: I’ve come to reimburse you.

…

Jedda: We do have a problem, Chief. The tape is lost already. I don’t remember where I hid it. I don’t even know if I made a note where. If only you knew how empty my head is…

…

Jedda: Shouldn’t you disinfect first?

…

Jedda [to Vincke]: You know the difference between us? You believe people. That’s very dangerous.[/b]

528

Damage (1992)

Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche (Anna Barton)

Director:
Louis Malle

Anna Barton: Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being(1988)

Director:
Philip Kaufman

Stars:
Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche

“Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”

529

Les Enfants de Paradise 1945

Marcel Carne the maker of the film
Arletty is unforgettable as Garance, Jean-Louis Barrault as Baptiste, the pantomime artist (which he was in life), Pierre Brasseur as the romantic Lemaitre and Marcel Herrand as the criminal

Cinema and poetry are the same thing, Prévert said in an interview before the film’s first showing. Not always, alas. But it’s surely true here.


Garance: Not only are you rich, but you want to be loved as if you are poor.

530

Watch enough episodes on the Discovery ID Channel and you know there aren’t many cops like this out there. Mostly it’s do whatever it takes to close the case. And fuck it if they get the wrong guy. Just get it off the books. That’s almost always job one.

And how far away can God be from the nutjobs here?

There is a pervasive sense of “spooky” that runs through the film. Especially the last half. And the end is goddamned unhinged.

There are things going on inside the heads of other people we just don’t have access to.

Bottom line? Even if you are “right all along” about something that others believe you are wrong about what counts in the end is what finally does come out in the open. And what never does.

IMDb

The child murders depicted in the film were loosely based on actual cases that had been worked by Det. Joe Depczynski, the film’s technical advisor. However, the cases were not thought to be the work of a single killer, as the film depicted, nor did the real detective come to the same end that Det. Jerry Black did.

trailer: youtu.be/7Oh6Av_Z1Wk

THE PLEDGE [2001]
Directed by Sean Penn

[b]Duane Larsen: I want to see my daughter.
Black: I don’t think that would be a good idea. l know what l’m saying might sound cruel…but l think it’s better if you don’t go to your Ginny now.
Duane Larsen: WHY WOULDN’T THAT BE A GOOD IDEA?!
Black: Because we hardly dared to look ourselves.

…

Margaret Larsen: There can’t be such devils out there.
Black: There are such devils.

…

Margaret Larsen: Who did this?
Black: We intend to find out, Mrs. Larsen.
Margaret Larsen: Do you promise me that you will?
Black [after a pause]: Yes. Yes, Mrs. Larsen, l promise.
Margaret Larsen: By your soul’s salvation? Do you swear by your soul’s salvation on this cross made by the hands of our daughter?
Black: Yes. Yes, on my soul’s salvation.
Margaret Larsen: You’ve sworn by your salvation.

…

Black: He practically blew him.

…

Krolak: I thought you were supposed to be fishing in Mexico.

…

Black: I made a promise, Eric. You’re old enough to remember when that meant something…

…

Doctor: Have you always been a chainsmoker?
[Black seems to hear the voice of Margaret Larsen]
Doctor: You always been a chainsmoker?
Black: Recent. Recent.
Doctor: Are you still sexually active?
Black: Yes.
Doctor: Does that embarass you?
[Black seems confused]
Doctor: Have experienced any sudden fevers, perspiration?
Black: No.
Doctor: Or voices? Do you hear voices?[/b]

Oh, yeah.

[b]Gary Jackson [to Chrissy]: Has your mommy talked to you about the Word?

…

Chrissy: I met the Wizard today.

…

Krolak: There is no Wizard, Jerry.
Black: You don’t know what the fuck you are dealing with! The Wizard is real and I know it!

…

Black: She said it. She said it. She did.[/b]

531

Mystic River 2003

Directed by
Clint Eastwood

Cast

Sean Penn
Jimmy Markum
Tim Robbins
Kevin Bacon

“Happiness comes in moments, & then it’s gone until the next time. Could be years. But sadness settles it.” ― Dennis Lehane, Mystic River

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcdwykW28VY[/youtube]

532

Yeah, I felt that too.

But nothing like the feeling from “The Shining”, there is something about Jack…LOL

533

Incest and insanity. But then the whole fucking family is nuts. Fortunately, they are rich enough to be called eccentric.

This is what they call “a dark and twisted black comedy”. It’s the house of “yes” because the consequences of saying “no” can be dire. Almost as dire as being born and bred in the working class. Like being employed in a doughnut shop as a waitress.

What makes this particulaly enjoyable is how the actors are perfectly balanced between farce and something you could imagine actually happening…to one of those families. In other words, a family able to afford living right down the road from the Kennedys.

It’s hard to say exactly what you are watching here. It’s hilarious. Except the parts where it’s not.

scene from the movie: youtu.be/86PmGVKzSv0

THE HOUSE OF YES [1997]
Written and directed by Mark Waters

[b]Mother: Oh my God, I sounded just like a mother! Didn’t I sound just like a mother?
Marty: You are a mother.
Mother: I know, but I still can’t believe it. I look at you people and wonder, how did you ever fit in my womb?

…

Mother: All I know is Jackie and Marty belong to each other. Jackie’s hand was holding Marty’s penis when they came out the womb.

…

Mother: Men do not marry girls who smell like powdered sugar. They have a sweet little affair with them which they recall fondly in their twilight years.

…

Mother: Marty, just what are you trying to do?
Marty: Be normal.
Mother: It’s a little late for that, young man.

…

Marty: So, tell me, why shouldn’t this marriage take place?
Mother [getting up to leave the room]: If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go baste the turkey and hide the kitchen knives.

…

Jackie-O: What’s the wildest place you’ve ever made love?
Lesly: With Marty?
Jackie-O: Yes.
Lesly: I can’t talk that way about your brother.
Jackie-O: Pretend he is not my brother. I do.

…

Jackie-O: Marty and I tell each other everything.
Lesly: Everything?
Jackie-O: We’re twins.
Lesly: Did he tell you about his other girlfriends?
Jackie-O: Did he tell you about his other girlfriends?

…

Jackie-O: Men and their secrets.
Lesly: Not all men have secrets.
Jackie-O: We all have our secrets.

…

Jackie-O: Sorry about that scar, by the way, I didn’t mean to maim you. I only meant to kill you.
Marty: These things happen.

…

Anthony: I’m wearing a jacket because it’s Thanksgiving
Jackie-O: You weren’t wearing it before.
Anthony: I put it on after Marty got here.
Marty: I appreciate it. It looks nice.
Anthony: I think it belonged to a Kennedy.
Marty: Why? Is there a bullet hole?

…

Jackie-O [to Lesly]: Were you poor? Did you eat a lot of chicken pot pies?

…

Jackie-O: I suppose you think I’m going insane just to be fashionable.
Lesly: I don’t think you’re insane.
Jackie-O: You don’t?
Lesly: No.
Jackie-O: You don’t think I’m an eensie weensie bit insane?
Lesly: I don’t think you’re insane. I think you’re just spoiled.
Jackie-O: Oh please, if everyone around here is going to start telling the truth, I’m going to bed.

…

Lesly: Does this happen a lot?
Jackie-O: Every goddamned hurricane!

…

Lesly: Boy, it’s been a long day.
Jackie-O: Not as long as yesterday. Yesterday was 24 hours.

…

Jackie-O: Don’t use that word. Love is for tiny people with tiny lives.

…

Marty: Excuse me Anthony, we’re talking about you now. We’re expressing familial concern.
Anthony: No, we’re not.
Marty: We’re not?
Anthony: No, you’re playing the familial concern game.
Jackie-O: Oh, don’t be so sincere, Anthony. It’s declasse.

…

Jackie-O: I watch soap operas. I bake brownies. Normalcy is coursing through my veins.

…

Anthony: I hear you crying at night alone in your room.
Marty: You cry at night alone in your room.
Anthony: Hey, don’t make fun of her! I won’t let you make fun of her!
Marty: I wasn’t going to make fun of her. I was going to ask what she cries about.
Jackie-O: What do you think? You want somebody for a very long time…and then you have them. And they love you. And they make love to you. But it’s not enough. This is the truth about sex.
Anthony: Is that why Peter was lousy in bed?
Jackie-O: I’m not talking about Peter, Anthony. Jesus, I’m talking about Marty.

…

Anthony: It’s like fucking a mirror!
Jackie-O: Fucking a mirror. That sounds painful.

…

Anthony: Lesly, about incest…

…

Jackie-O: Marty, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. There’s this thing I’ve heard, and if I thought for one second it was true I’d probably kill myself. Does your fiancee work - in a doughnut shop?

…

Lesly: So what if I slept with his brother? He slept with his sister!
Mother: I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.

…

Jackie-O: Don’t clean Mother. We have a maid.
Mother: Not any more.
Jackie-O: What happened to her?
Mother: She quit when you shot her brother.
Jackie-O: Oh, that’s right.

…

Mother: What’s that gun doing there?
Jackie-O: It’s not a gun. It’s a camera.
Mother: It’s a gun.
Jackie-O: It’s a camera that looks like a gun.
Marty: Relax, Mama, it isn’t loaded.
Mother: How do you know?
Marty: I checked.
Mother: What’s it doing there?
Jackie-O: Being gunlike, gunesque, gunonic.
Mother: Where did it come from?
Jackie-O: God?

…

Lesly: It was his first time.
Marty: Yeah. Right.
Lesly: You mean it wasn’t?
Marty: What do you think?
Lesly: Then why would he say it?
Marty: To get laid.
Lesly: Well, I’m sorry, but when somebody says something to me, I tend to think it’s the truth. It’s just the way I am, the way I was brought up. And if somebody forgets to mention something, I wouldn’t think to ask, for example, “Did you sleep with your sister?”

…

Jackie-O: One more time. That’s all I ask. Then you can go back to the land of the Doughnut King.[/b]

534

Double entendre: Guns are all the rage in movies. And it’s the rage that pulls the trigger more often than not.

Tall tales about the littlest weapons of mass destruction. But the ones most likely to have our names on them. The idea is that human emotions can spiral out of control and if there is a gun in the vicinity [when they do]]the odds are far greater that someone will wind up dead. It’s a volatile combination in certain [all too frequent] contexts.

The critics basically hated it. Rated 27% fresh at RT. But only on 11 reviews. So nobody watched it either.

Well, I liked it. And I’m not even close to being one of the anti-gun fanatics most folks of my political persuasion are thought to be.

Let’s just say the characters here are…memorable?

Look for Sid Vicious [by way of Travis Bickel].

trailer: youtu.be/1ruT-f5jOqs

IT’S THE RAGE [1999]
Directed by James D. Stern

[b]Helen [standing over a dead body]: You heard a noise and you came downstairs. But you put your watch on first?

…

Tim: The last thing we need is a gun in the house. My father used to say if there is a gun in the house the odds are someone will die. And often it is a horrible mistake.
Chris: Do you think I would shoot you by accident?

…

Morgan: My epiphany. It’s all too much. Delete everything.

…

Tennel: If I stay I will stuff a pillow over your face in the dead of night.
Morgan: Well, fine. Just find me some someone to replace you. I need someone to keep the input out.

…

Tennel [to Helen]: He’s not an amusing kind of eccentric…he’s another sort of eccentric.

…

Morgan [to Helen]: Your job would be to make sure that no one gets in.

…

Chris [to Tyler]: I’ll remember what you said. Squeeze…don’t pull.

…

Tim: Do you find me attractive, Annabel?
Annabel: Sure.
Tim: What do you find attractive about me?
Annabel [glancing over at him]: You look like money.

…

Morgan: Miss Harding…you sunk my battleship.

…

Warren [as Annabel walks out]: I’m gettin’ a venereal disease just lookin’ at her…

…

Warren [to Tennel]: A word of warning. Everything fades. Everything. Over time love turns to ashes in your mouth. To dirt. To shit. It rots. Remember that.

…

Morgan: THERE’S TOO MUCH INFORMATION!![/b]

535

Being a sex addict and a famous celebrity and a man? It’s a barrel of depravation…and one without a bottom. Yet, come on, for many men it still embodies the American Dream.

Crane had to play both parts. The loving family man and the fatuous stud. But the extent to which he was willing to hoist himself up on his own petard soon becomes…painful to watch.

The show gets cancelled. The work dries up. His life devolves into the simply pathetic. And that is saying something for him.

His life falls apart at the seams. But, by then, who cares?

And then there’s the business about his death. John Carpenter was eventually tried for murder but acquitted. They’re both gone now. And mostly long forgotten.

IMDb

The bald actor who plays a reporter interviewing Crane about midway through the film is Crane’s real son, Bob Crane Jr.

wiki

A.O. Scott of the New York Times said the film “gets to you like a low-grade fever, a malaise with no known antidote. When it was over, I wasn’t sure if I needed a drink, a shower or a lifelong vow of chastity … there is [a] severe, powerful moralism lurking beneath the film’s dispassionate matter-of-factness. Mr. Schrader is indifferent to the sinner, but he cannot contain his loathing of the sin, which is not so much sex as the fascination with images … To argue that images can corrupt the flesh and hollow out the soul is, for a filmmaker, an obviously contradictory exercise, but not necessarily a hypocritical one. There is plenty of nudity in Auto Focus, but you can always glimpse the abyss behind the undulating bodies, and the director leads you from easy titillation to suffocating dread, pausing only briefly and cautiously to consider the possibility of pleasure.”

trailer: youtu.be/w9jqevDoJ0c

AUTO FOCUS [2002]
Directed by Paul Schrader

[b]Bob [voiceover]: Eddie Cantor once said that likability is 90% of the battle. Well, that’s me. I’m a likable guy.

…

Lenny [chortling]: It’s set in a German prison camp!
Bob: It’s a drama?
Lenny: No! That’s it…It’s a comedy.
Bob: Oh, with the funny Nazis.
Lenny: It’s a POW camp.
Bob: With a laugh track?!

…

Bob: It’s something I’ve been working toward my whole career
Anne: You’ve been working towards Holocaust comedy?[/b]

To this day I’ve never understood how they pulled it off. I guess as long as it’s funny. And the Nazis are depicted as buffoons.

[b]Mel Rosen: So this new show. It’s set in a concentration camp. A comedy?
Bob: Prisoner of war camp. Yeah. It’s got all your typical comedy elements: Gestapo, police dogs.
Mel Rosen: So I guess it’s fair to say that if you loved World War II, you’re gonna love Hogan’s Hereos.
Bob: Uh, no, let’s not…
Mel Rosen: Actually, I got what I want.
Bob: Mel, I thought you were a fellow entertainer.
Mel Rosen: I’m also a Jew.
Bob: It’s the same thing!

…

Interviewer: You’ve been married to your high school sweetheart for sixteen years.
Bob Crane: Fifteen, actually.
Interviewer: Fifteen years. How do you do it? What’s your secret?
Bob Crane: Three words: Don’t… make… waves. As every sailor knows, when one set of waves meets another set of waves, it can set up some chop. And when three sets of waves come together, it can make for some mighty rough sailing. It also helps sometimes to have a harmless safety valve. So when I get tense, I blow off steam. And so, when it comes to my own family, I don’t make waves.
Interviewer: That’s inspirational. You’re a fortunate man.
Bob Crane: Yes. Yes, I am.[/b]

All the while in the background he is having sex with every imaginable woman in every imaginable position.

[b]Bob [watching his videotaped orgy]: What is that on my ass? Freeze it. What the hell is that on my ass?
Carpenter: That is my hand.
Bob: Rubbing my ass?
Carpenter: So what?
Bob: Your fingers are up my cheeks. What you doing in there?
Carpenter: lt’s an orgy, Bob.
Bob: So you can just touch my ass?
Carpenter: I thought you liked it.
Bob: I thought it was her! God!
Carpenter: What’s the difference?
Bob: The difference? You got your fingers up my asshole!

…

Bob: I’m a normal, red-blooded American man. I like to look at naked women. I love breasts, any kind. I love 'em! Boobs, bazooms, balloons, bags, bazongas. The bigger, the better. Nipples like udders, nipples like saucers, big pale rosy-brown nipples. Little bitty baby nipples. Real or fake, what’s the difference? I like tits. Who’s kidding who? Tits are great!

…

Bob [in dream sequence]: All I think about all day long is sex. Having sex. Filmng sex. Watching sex.
Klink: Hogan, that’s all any of us really think about.

…

Bob: Hey, a day without sex…
Carpenter: …is a day wasted!

…

Lenny: Sex is not the answer.
Bob: I know that Lenny, it’s the question. ‘Yes’ is the answer.

…

Bob [voiceover]: What do they want from me? I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. Two out of three ain’t bad.

…

Bob: Whoa, whoa. All you’ve done for me? What are vyou talking about? How the fuck do you think you got those broads? You think you show up and say, “Hey, I’m John Carpenter. Fuck me.” Huh? No, they’re with you because of me. They don’t want you, they want Bob Crane.

…

Bob [voiceover]: …but then that’s how it is. Men gotta have fun.[/b]

536

We all know this: that how you look means everything in a world that puts how you look up on a pedestal and worships it. Or, for some, how big you are.

Why? Well, among other things, it let’s you get away with things that mere mortals would not even dream of. And in a culture where life imitates art [or what passes for it] it only gets all the more valuable, doesn’t it?

Second only to money in some quarters.

You’re thinking: What if he hadn’t slapped her? Like really, really hard? Would that have made any difference?

One thing though. Whatever bad things happen to them at least they deserve it. And as long as they do it to each other, fine. But when they start in on duping folks like us, I take umbrage.

In the end, you’ve just got to hope and pray you’re not the one she picks.

Hmm. Or maybe this is actually a romantic comedy. You’ll know what I mean if you’ve seen it.

IMDb

[b]Linda Fiorentino was widely lauded by critics for her performance in this movie but was denied an Academy Award nomination because it came out on TV before a theatrical release.

Linda Fiorentino was offered the option of letting a body double do the love scenes, but she chose to do them herself.[/b]

trailer: youtu.be/gvJFgixTAxM

THE LAST SEDUCTION [1994]
Directed by John Dahl

[b]Mike: Chris, these women are anchors.
Chris: Here he goes again.
Mike: How many guys in this bar have felt her up?
Chris: All of them.
Mike: Right. And how many have gone home with her, how many guys have slept with her?
Chris: None, including yourself.
Mike: Right, I rest my case.

…

Bridget: Could you leave? Please?
Mike: I haven’t finished charming you yet.
Bridget: You haven’t started.
Mike: Gimme a chance.
Bridget: Look, go find yourself a nice little cowgirl and make nice little cowbabies and leave me alone.
Mike: I’m hung like a horse. Think about it.
[pause]
Bridget: Let’s see.
Mike: Excuse me?
Bridget: Mr. Ed, let’s see.

…

Frank: I’ll tell you who does want to know where you are though. He’s called three times. Something about a loan shark and his thumb. Anyone check you for a heartbeat recently?

…

Bridget: You’re my designated fuck.
Mike: Designated fuck? Do they make cards for that? What if I want to be more than your designated fuck?
Bridget: Then I’ll designate someone else.

…

Mike: I’m trying to figure out whether you’re a total fucking bitch or not.

…

Mike: What do you want to pitch to cheating husbands?
Bridget: Nothing. I want to pitch to their wives.
Mike: What do you want to pitch to their wives?
Bridget: Murder.

…

Bridget: Commonality, Mike. We don’t like to have the same kind of fun.
Mike: This is fun?
Bridget: Yeah. It’s bending the rules. Playing with other people’s heads.
Mike: You’re sick. You’re really sick.

…

Mike: What do you mean you’re on the run from someone?

…

Bridget: Is it true what they say?
Harlan: What?
Bridget: You know, size?
Harlan: Is it true what they say about white women?
Bridget: What’s that?
Harlan: No ass.
Bridget: Oh, come on. I was wondering for real. Let me see it.
Harlan: Fuck you. Drive.
Bridget: I’m sorry.
Harlan: About what?
Bridget: About your shortcoming.
Harlan: I’m not gonna play this game.
Bridget: Is that why you carry a big gun?
Harlan: The Freudian mind-fuck isn’t gonna work either.
Bridget: Ooh, touchy. I’m sure your woman is very understanding.
Harlan: Exactly how is it that we end this phase of our relationship?
Bridget: By you showing it to me. Come on, let me see it. I’ve never seen one before.
[pause]
Bridget: I’ll show you my ass.
Harlan: What makes you think I wanna see your bony ass?
Bridget: Show me.
Harlan: Show me.
Bridget: I’m driving. You go first.
Harlan: No, you go first.
[pause]
Harlan: You’ll shut the fuck up if I show you?
Bridget: I’m sure I’ll be too stunned to speak.
Harlan: I don’t believe this. You’re crazy. Shit.
[he exposes himself]
Harlan: Okay, there, you happy?[/b]

Yeah. But for an entirely different reason.

[b]Mike: You’re talking about murder.
Bridget: Yeah, so? Oh, that’s right, it’s one of the Commandments isn’t it?

…

Clay: I had to borrow 100K from a man whose first name begins and ends in a vowel. I hired a detective for 50% but now that I know where you are I am perfectly willing to spend all of the money to hire a clinical sociopath to take it from you and fuck you through the eye sockets JUST FOR FUN!!!

…

Mike [aloud to himself]: I can’t do it Wendy! I can’t!!
Clay [muffled, gagged and bound]: WENDY?!!

…

Mike: No, I don’t think so.
Clay: Oh, she wouldn’t lie to you?

…

Bridget [to Mike]: You married a man!

…

Mike: There might be one thing…[/b]

Sorry, Mike, she thought of that.

537

Attica State in Brazil. So you know it is going to be a whole lot worse.

This is a true story about events that unfolded in an actual prison “down there”. Not many headlines about it “up here” though.

Carandiru was [at the time] the biggest prison in all of Latin America. It had a maximum capacity of 4,000 inmates. But the actual prison population was more than double that.

It was a hellhole. It was a shithole. Dark and dank. And it had lots and lots of rules.

And lots and lots of sex. And lots and lots of AIDS. This is the story of a doctor who went into the prison to try and deal with a disease that had just begun to take its terrible toll around the globe.

In some ways though it was actually better [more humane] than being incarcerated in an American prison. The part about “vistor’s day” for example.

IMDb

The real Carandiru prison was demolished in 2002, it was to be transformed into a park with arts facilities. One block (#2) was left intact to be used as a museum. The film was the last thing they used the prison before demolishing 90% of it.

wiki

[b]Roger Ebert, critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, appreciated the realism of the drama, and wrote, “Hector Babenco’s Carandiru is a drama that adds a human dimension [a] …Dantean vision. Shot on location inside a notorious prison in São Paulo, it shows 8,000 men jammed into space meant for 2,000, and enforcing their own laws in a place their society has abandoned. The film, based on life, climaxes with a 1992 police attack on the prison during which 111 inmates were killed…[the film] is a reminder that although Carandiru has disappeared, prison conditions in Brazil continue to be inhuman.”

Stephen Holden, film critic for The New York Times, liked the film and its social message, and wrote, “Despite its confusion and the broadness of many of its strokes, the movie belongs to a Latin American tradition of heartfelt social realism in which the struggles of ordinary people assume a heroic dimension. The film is undeniably the work of an artist with the strength to gaze into the abyss and return, his humanity fortified.”

Critic Jamie Russell wrote, “Making his point without resorting to liberal hand-wringing, Babenco charts the climactic violence with steely detachment. Brutal, bloody, and far from brief, it’s shocking enough to make us realise that this jailhouse hell really is no city of God.”[/b]

The carandiru massecre at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carandiru_massacre

trailer: youtu.be/0fKI6uwZbxM

CARANDIRU [2003]
Written and directed by Hector Babenco

[b]Dagger [to Lula]: Your mother paid me to kill your father.

…

Warden: So, Lula, what brought you back in here?
Lula: I left here, went home and found my wife in bed with someone else. The son of a bitch had the nerve to tell me, “That’s life”. I shot him three times just to prove the contrary!

…

Apolio [to the doctor]: I got AIDS from all the ass I’ve had in jail. Plenty of ass.

…

Inmate [to doctor]: I’m a junkie and a dealer here. In my business, if a guy doesn’t pay up, I can’t take back what I sold him. The bastard’s already smoked it, snorted it. I take whatever he’s got. If he’s got nothing, I kill him.

…

Guard [to doctor]: Don’t take it personally. It’s their job to escape and mine to not let them.

…

Doctor [voiceover]: I knew many of those men hadn’t shown their victums any mercy but society has its judges. And I wasn’t one of them. At the same time what did I have to do with all that? I had two choices: Forget or go back.

…

Fatso [in the tunnel]: I’m stuck!

…

Doctor: And partners. How many?
Lady Di: About 2,000.

…

Zico: What’s wrong with selling dope to folks who want to buy it?

…

Matias: You’ve had over 2,000 men and you’re clean!

…

Chico [to the doctor after 30 days in the hole]: It’s all right, doctor. So many years locked up the mind learns to control the body.[/b]

And this may as well have been an actual hole in the ground. No ad-seg units here. Think Papillon.

[b]Ebony: How dare he kill without our permission.

…

Ebony [to Chico on the day of his release]: Go in peace.
Chico: Keep it. You need all the peace you can get in here.

…

Dagger [to doctor]: How can you tell for sure if you are going mad?[/b]

The riot.

[b]Inmate: Some say it got started because of a debt for five packs of cigarettes. Others say that it was a fight over the soccer game. One or two say it was about a pair of underpants. Like they say: “Jail’s no home for the truth.”

…

Ebony: By then, no one could hear a goddamn thing. Through the bars we could see a bunch of masked cops. All you could see was their eyes, the dogs, guns and a helcopter flying real low, pointing a machine gun at us.

…

Inmate: They came in to kill us, shouting we all had AIDS…that they’d catch it if they touched us.[/b]

The riot squad just gunned them down. As depicted here, it was cold blooded murder.

Title card: “On October 2, 1992, 111 men died at the Sao Paulo Detention Center. There were no police deaths. The only one who knows what really happened are God, the police and the inmates. I only heard from the latter.” Dranzio Varella

The final scenes are of the prison buildings imploding from a controlled demolition that brought it all down.

538

Sex and religion. A rather conservative bunch so the narratives can be especially surreal. And here at least the young girls are as preoccupied with it as the boys are. However much they connect the dots to love. And to God. And [sometimes] to each other.

Out of the blue he rubs up against her sexually in a crowd. She is 16 years old. Is this the sign from God she’s been told to watch for?

So now she has to save his soul.

She is both sexually naive [and thus vulnerable] and sexually aware [and thus provocative].

Things can become quite, uh, peculiar watching these two worlds cross paths.

Thinking with his penis, a man does something very, very stupid; and then his whole can come crashing down around him. Over and over and over and over again these things happen in “real life”. What then does that tell you about human sexuality in a culture saturated with it; and one where sex is turned into a commodity?

The ending here is absolute perfection.

wiki

[b]The screenplay of the film was written by director Lucrecia Martel.

The picture while not exactly autobiographical was based on Martel’s memories. Martel said, “The film isn’t strictly autobiographical, but what I put in it is my personal experience in life, my memories. When I was in my teens, I was a very religious person. I thought I had a special relationship with God, or anything that was up there. Now, I don’t believe in miracles, but I do believe in the emotion you feel in front of a miracle - the emotion of something unexpected revealed to you.”[/b]

trailer: youtu.be/BY6M-Datddg

THE HOLY GIRL [La Niña Santa] 2004
Written and directed by Lucrecia Martel

Here is what these young girls are meant to [and most do] buy hook, line and sinker:

[b]Inez: The important thing is always to be alert for God’s call. God calls us and that is a vocation. He calls us to save and to be saved. And that is the only meaning our existence should have. What do I have to do? What is my role in the Divine Plan? Is it this? Is it that? What matters is to always be alert for the call…and not lose hope.

…

Inez: : God sends us signs. That’s what’s important.

…

Josefina [after a naked man falls onto her patio and stumbles through the sliding door]: He’s dead. Those are just reflex movements.

…

Head doctor [to Dr. Jano]: This morning I saw one of the Iab girls coming out of a room, one of the rep girls, I think. This is a congress, not a casino. And it isn’t the first time this week. This is a medical congress. We’re only asking for a week of decent behavior. It isn’t that much.

…

Helena: Dr. Jano, this is my daughter, Amalia.[/b]

Uh, oh. Maybe that is his sign from God.

[b]Josefina: Is that him?

…

Helena [to Freddy]: Have you noticed that Dr. Jano is becoming withdrawn?

…

Josefina [to parents…trying to wiggle out of her own sexual predicament with Julian]: Something horrible happened. I was telling Julian about it. He’s the only one who listens to me. It’s horrible. A doctor at the conference molested Amalia.

…

Dr. Jano [to Amalia]: I’m going to tell your mother everything.

…

Amalia: I have something to tell you.
[she whispers it in his ear…he shakes his head in consternation][/b]

My guess: “God forgives you”. Then he goes to confess to Amalia’s mother. Only she has sex on her mind too.

Dr. Jano’s wife [to Dr. Jano]: I think there is going to be a scandal. They’re going to report a doctor who molested the girl from the hotel.

Of course he doesn’t know it’s actually another doctor!

539

There are blind folks who insist they develop heightened senses to compensate for it. But that is just what this monster is looking for.

Going blind. Being blind. For some that is horror enough.

The things we see. The things we can’t see. Scary being a matter of perspective. What do we see that in not seeing wouldn’t scare us? What of things you can’t see you can still hear.

Do we believe what we see? Do we believe what we hear? Do we believe what we think? Well, which makes you the least scared? But seeing, hearing and thinking something doesn’t it make it true.

Then there are the things that get stuck inside our heads that scare us most of all.

In the dark, things can get scarier. There are just many different ways you can be in the dark. But one way to keep [at least some] frightening things at a distance is to choose the dark. And to stay there.

trailer: youtu.be/nbLk_gI5Vdw

JULIA’S EYES [Los Ojos de Julia] 2010
Written asnd directed by Guillem Morales

[b]Soledad: Lately, Sara hardly spoke to me. She’d made new friends.
Julia: What new friends?
Soledad: Younger people, you know, from the Baumann Center. A center for the blind, not far from here. One of those places where they tell you you can still do anything you like despite being blind. If you can’t hear, you’re deaf. If you lose your arm, you’re armless. If you can’t see, you’re blind. And nothing is like it was before.

…

Julia: How come you remember my sister but not the man?
Waiter: It was hard not to notice her. You know, because of the bandages.
Julia: Bandages?
Waiter: From the operation.
Julia [more to herself]: My sister had an operation?

…

Julia [After Isaac tells her Sara committed suicide because the operation did not work]: What else are you not telling me?
Isaac: I wanted to protect you.
Julia: From what?
Isaac: From the truth, Julia.
Julia: And what is the truth?
Isaac: Sara committed suicide because she couldn’t bear to be blind.

…

Julia: My sister was with a man, wasn’t she
Crespulo: The invisible man.
Julia: Pardon?
Crespulo: The man who came with your sister, nobody remembers him, right?
Julia: Just because no one remembers him doesn’t mean he’s invisible.
Crespulo: Some people have no light. Do you know what it is to enter a room and have nobody look at you? Or to walk down the street and have people bump into you? Or to ask something three times and nobody answers? That’s the man you are looking for. A silence, a void, an absense.

…

Julia: If the operation doesn’t work, I couldn’t complain. I’ve already seen all I wanted to see. I’ve spent my life looking for invisible planets. My eyes have seen amazing things. But nothing compares to the night sky over the Sahara.

…

Julia: Monsters aren’t real, Lia!
Lia: This one is. He collects images. He has a wall filled with photos of you and Sara.

…

Man: You don’t know what fear is! You’ve no idea what fear is! Real fear! Fear of being ignored or rejected, fear of indifference. Julia, look at me! You don’t know what it is to be condemned to darkness and to have to hide in another world, a silent world without looks, getting used to life counting your steps, always wearing the same clothes, using your voice, one voice and no voice; and the eyes, some eyes and no eyes. It’s been so long, Julia, that in the end, you become a shadow, until one day, you discover that blind people know you’re there, that you’re breathing, that you’re still alive. And you can offer them your eyes for theirs.

…

Julia: If you’re not Ivan, who are you?

…

Angel: Mama. Mama. I asked you a question. How long have you been able to see?

…

Julia: What happened to his eyes.
Dr. Roman: He donated them.
Julia: And where are they?
Dr. Roman: Where he would have wanted them.[/b]

540

Never watched the original and I only watched this one because I have never not watched something put out by the Coen Brothers. So it was okay I guess. Parts of it even better than that.

Another Dirty Harry more or less. But a colorful cuss no doubt about it.

And then there’s Marshall Cogburn…

Mattie is somewhat…unbelievable? For one thing, she’s 14 years old and sounds like she graduated from Harvard Law School. But grit for grit she’s right up there with Calamity Jane.

Besides, you make allowances when this stuff is coming from the Coens.

TRUE GRIT [2010]
Written and directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

[b]Title card: The wicked flee when none pursueth. Proverbs 28:1

…

Stonehill: I do not entertain hypotheticals, the world as it is is vexing enough.

…

Lawyer: Mr. Cogburn, did you find a bottle with a hundred and twenty-five dollars in it?
Cross-examining Lawyer: Objection your Honor, Leading
Judge Parker: Sustained. Rephrase the question.
Lawyer: What happened then?
Cogburn: I found a bottle with a hundred and twenty-five dollars in it.

…

Cross-examining Lawyer: Mister Cogburn, in your four years as US Marshal, how many men have you shot?
Cogburn: Shot? Or killed?
Cross-examining Lawyer: Let us restrict it to killed so we may have a manageable figure.

…

Cross-examining Lawyer: You sprang from cover with revolver in hand?
Cogburn: I did.
Cross-examining Lawyer: Loaded and cocked?
Cogburn: Well, if it ain’t loaded and cocked, it don’t shoot!

…

Cross-examining Lawyer: So, you say that when Amos Wharton raised his axe, you backed away from him.
Cogburn: That’s right.
Cross-examining Lawyer: In what direction were you going?
Cogburn: I always go backwards when I’m backing up.

…

LaBoeuf: You give out very little sugar with your pronouncements. While I sat there watchin’ I gave some thought to stealin’ a kiss…though you are very young, and sick… and unattractive to boot. But now I have a mind to give you five or six good licks with my belt.
Mattie: One would be just as unpleasant as the other.

…

Mattie: And “futile”, Marshal Cogburn, “pursuit would be futile”? It’s not spelled “f-u-d-e-l.”

…

Mattie [cutting the rope on the tree]: Why did they hang him so high?
Cogburn: I do not know. Possibly in the belief it’d make him more dead.

…

Bear Man [tilting his head to indicate the corpse behind him]: I have taken his teeth. I will entertain an offer for the rest of him.

…

Quincy [to Mattie]: Who worked you over with the ugly stick?

…

Cogburn: That didn’t pan out.

…

Mattie: We promised to bury the poor soul inside.
Rooster: Ground is too hard. If these men wanted a decent burial they should have got themselves kilt in summer.

…

LaBoeuf: As I understand it, Chaney… or Chelmsford, as he called himshelf in Texas… shot the senator’s dog. When the senator remonstrated, Chelmsford shot him as well. You could argue that the shooting of the dog was merely an instance of malum prohibitum, but the shooting of a senator is indubitably an instance of malum in se.
Cogburn: Malla-men what?
Mattie: Malum in se. The distinction is between an act that is wrong in itself, and an act that is wrong only according to our laws and mores. It is Latin.
Cogburn: I am struck that LaBoeuf is shot, trampled, and nearly severs his tongue, and not only does not cease to talk, but spills the banks of English!

…

Cogburn: That Chinamen is running them cheap shells on me again.
LaBoeuf: I thought you gonna say the sun was in your eyes. That is to say, your Eye.

…

Mattie: Do you need a good lawyer?
Lucky Ned Pepper: I need a good judge…

…

Cogburn: I mean to kill you in one minute, Ned. Or see you hanged in Fort Smith at Judge Parker’s convenience. Which will you have?
Lucky Ned Pepper: I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!

…

Mattie: Does Mr. LeBoeuf survive?
Rooster: He does—even a blow to the head could silence him for only a few short minutes.

…

Cogburn: I have grown old…[/b]