Tag: dirty

The Top 10 dirty documentaries on Netflix

Posted on by victorfraga

We have reviewed more than 400 documentaries in our eight years of existence, so it was no easy task selecting just 10 of them exclusively for you.

The films below are listed in alphabetical order. Don’t forget to click on each individual film title in order to accede to our exclusive reviews. The availability of these films varies geographically and in order to watch them, we recommend that you use a VPN. A couple of VPNs that work well with Netflix and that we recommend include Cyberghost, Surfshark, and ExpressVPN. To find out which countries each title is available in, you can use the website Flixboss.

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1. The Biggest Little Farm (John Chester, 2019):

The year is 2010. John and his wife Molly are your average Californian urbanites. They dwell in a very small flat in Santa Monica, a coastal district of Los Angeles. John is a established documentarist, while Molly is a chef. One day they adopt a black pooch called Todd, saving him from certain death at local dog pound. But Todd won’t stop barking while his parents are away. As a consequence of the nuisance noise, all three get evicted from the building. They have just 30 days to find a solution and move out.

Giving Todd away isn’t an option because they are firmly committed to keeping the animal for life. Moving into a different block would probably see a similar closure. So they decide to move into the countryside near Los Angeles and set up a farm. They don’t have any money, but friends and investors promptly chip in. The farm isn’t just about Todd’s well-being. Molly always wanted to plant her own vegetables, while John is a also a environment lover, having worked in many nature shows for television. So they set the Apricot Lane Farms, where they grow a plethora of vegetables (from lemons and avocados to tomatoes and greens) and raise a variety of animals (chickens, goats and a pregnant pig called Emma, who succeeds to give birth to no less than 14 piglets). In total they plant 10,00 orchard trees in more than 200 different crops. Their farm is in stark contrast to the neighbouring establishments, mostly gigantic monocultures.

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2. Chavela (Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi, 2017):

Chavela Vargas was no ordinary singer, no ordinary woman and no ordinary human being. The “llorona” (Spanish for someone who cries a lot) had no crystal-clear and sweet voice, but rather a cannon-like lament that shattered hearts and quickly moistened even the coldest and most hardened eyes. The doc Chavela, which explores the singer’s life from her birth in Costa Rica to her rise in her chosen homeland Mexico and much beloved Spain, is certain to bring tears to your eyes.

Chavela’s explosive and passionate music was deeply rooted in her fiery and assertive temperament and unflinching desire to live. She loved women as intensively as she could, and she was entirely unapologetic of the homosexuality. Her relations were profound and yet dysfunctional (she could become violent), and she counts Frida Kahlo and the wives of many important politicians amongst those whom she loved.

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3. The Edge of Democracy (Petra Costa, 2019):

Brazilian filmmaker Petra is roughly the same age as Brazilian democracy. She was born in 1983, just two years before the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for more than two decades came to an end. She thought that herself and Brazilian democracy would be standing strong in their thirties. this, that did not materialise. While the filmmaker is now an accomplished filmmaker, now on her fourth feature film, Brazilian democracy has collapsed, and the country is was on the verge of authoritarianism when this documentary was made.

The Edge of Democracy is also pictured at the top of this article.

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4. Hating Peter Tatchell (Christopher Amos, 2021):

Stephen Fry succinctly describes Britain most (in)famous gay activist: “Peter is a performance artist. He deserves an award for his extraordinary contribution to the lives of those who never heard of him”. The 90-minute documentary that follows, narrated by Ian McKellen and exec produced by Elton John and and his husband David Furnish, provides irrefutable evidence that the English actor is indeed right.

Peter Tatchell was born in Australia in a neopentecostal family, which he describes as “close to fundamentalism”. His stepfather was particularly controlling and homophobic. He feared his parents would report him to the police, at a time when homosexuality was a crime punishable with imprisonment. Peter moved to Britain both because of his family and because he wanted to dodge the compulsory military service, which was at odds with his strong anti-war views. He joined the Gay Liberation Front within just days of arriving in London.

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5. Hope Frozen (Pailin Wedel, 2018):

Here’s a documentary with a difference about a family in Thailand. When their daughter Einz falls prey to brain cancer before her third birthday, her parents make the bold decision to have her cryonically frozen at death in the hope that she can, at some point in the future, perhaps in several hundred years’ time, be resuscitated and lead a normal life.

She has a devoted, older teenage brother Matrix who would do anything for her having waited over ten years for a sibling. Their dad Sahatorn is a working laser scientist who starts running experiments on his daughter’s cancer cells in an attempt to fund a cure before the condition kills her. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t find a cure. Eventually, he talks wife Nareerat and son round to the idea of having Einz cryonically frozen.

Upon Einz’ death, within 60 seconds her body has been frozen for delivery to a facility run by a company in Arizona called Alcor. We watch a representative of this company show the whole family round, which tour includes the cylinder at the bottom section of which Einz has been put into cryonic storage. For the family, it feels a lot like visiting a graveside. They’ll probably never see her alive again.

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6. The Last Forest (Luiz Bolognesi, 2021):

The Yanomami tribe have been living in the Amazon rainforest and mountains of the Venezuela-Brazil border region for over 1000 years. Today their total population stands at around 35,000. Over several decades, various Brazilian governments have disturbed their natural habitat for the sake of infrastructure development, bringing along outsiders who spread diseases to the natives. The biggest threat came in 1986 when the discovery of gold deposits in Yanomami land led to an invasion by 45,000 prospectors and the subsequent death of 1,500 to 1,800 natives. And, after the notorious Haximu Massacre in 1992, international support started pouring in for the Yanomami people, and their leader Davi Kopenawa got the Brazilian government to enforce a law that would keep the prospectors out of Yanomami land. But 25 years later, since Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, over 20,000 gold prospectors have penetrated their living environment, bringing with them Covid-19.

Brazilian filmmaker Luiz Bolognesi (Ex-Shaman, 2018) teams up with Davi Kopenawa to document the grave and dangerous situation in which the indigenous people are living, and through his ethnographic documentary, The Last Forest attempts to draw the world’s attention to a neglected community and their way of life.

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7. Moonage Daydream (Brett Morgen, 2022):

Afilm of chaos and mayhem, but also one that’s as poetic as anything I’ve ever seen. This might be the most accurate way to describe Moonage Daydream, a film that transports us to another realm where we become mere passengers in the journey of this arthouse anomaly. To capture the life of David Bowie as he would have wanted is no easy feat, a man who lived his life with so much vibrancy and creativeness, and with a need to enjoy life no matter what, because as Bowie says in this film “I worship life, I love living”. Brett Morgen (the man behind the acclaimed 2015 documentary Cobain: Montage of Heck) has created a cinematic marvel, this film is the embodiment of everything that Bowie professes; it is unhinged, it is not affected by a need for acceptance or tethered down by cinema’s restrictive ropes, nor should it be because it’s near to being perfect the way it is.

The film was created in a way that Bowie liked to think of himself: as a blank canvas of creativeness with no limits to what could potentially be achieved. Moonage Daydream features never-before-seen footage and performances of the man himself, while taking you on a journey of exploration to investigate Bowie’s creative, spiritual, and musical adventure.

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8. My Octopus Teacher (Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, 2021):

This Oscar-winning documentary film is produced, shot and narrated by Craig Foster. The story is told in a first-person confessional style interspersed with interviews carried out by the directors Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed. The film started as a love project by Craig with the directors, producer and Netflix coming onboard further down the line.

Craig’s explorations of the kelp underwater forests are very moving. His attachment to the octopus begins when there is very little else to inspire him in his terrestrial life. The octopus’s various adventures, from either hunting crabs or being hunted herself by a number of times by the sharks, to playing with fish and Craig himself, to her finally becoming a mother and dying are extraordinary.

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9. Retratos Fantasmas (Kleber Mendonca Filho, 2023):

Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho is best known for his three internationally-acclaimed fiction features: Neighbouring Sounds (2013), Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (2019; co-directed by Juliano Dornelles). Pictures of Ghosts is a documentary. Yet this is hardly new territory for the helmer. Few people are aware that the director had already made a string of non-fiction movies, and that – despite making his first feature at the age of 45 – he devoted his entire life to cinema as a movie-goer, a videomaker, a filmmaker and a film programmer. Mendonca Filho started experimenting with film during his youth in his hometown of Recife, a bustling metropolis located in Northeastern Brazil.

Blending shelf-shot footage, archive images, clips from his own movies, and narrated by the filmmaker himself, Pictures of Ghosts is divided into three parts: the filmmaker’s neighbourhood, the movie theatres and the churches. Images of the past are a regular occurrence in Mendonca Filho’s filmography: his three feature films open with archive pictures of Brazil in the early 20th century.

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10. The Sparks Brothers (Edgar Wright, 2021):

The documentary is from British director, Edgar Wright, who also directed Shaun of the Dead (2004), Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010) and the upcoming Last Night in Soho. This is Wright’s first documentary, and the result is a long but very entertaining two hours and 15 minutes, and one of the best music documentaries writer Ian Schultz. The outcome is an album-by-album story with every side project they’ve ever done. Sparks have made 25 albums in a career spanning five decades, hence the length. No fans will be able to say: “why did you leave this out?”.

Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM THE READ SEA

Love isn’t always a walk in the park. Particularly if you are a refugee and your lover is an economic migrant from an impoverished country, both living in Beirut. Ahmed (Ziad Jalad) left Syria because of the war, while Mehdia (Clara Couturet) left Ethiopia in order to work in order to provide her family with financial support. She works as a housemaid and carer for a middle-class woman and her elderly father. The old man often spooks and even attacks the hapless young lady, who barely speaks Arabic. She feels vulnerable and despondent, and only find comfort in the arms of her lover.

Lebanon is now home to 800,000 Syrian refugees, and it received more than 1.2 million people at the peak of the Syrian War. What soon becomes evident is that the Lebanese are deeply racist and have little desire to integrate with their fleeing neighbours. Syrians are expected to observe a curfew from sunset until sunrise. A security guard callously warns Ahmed that he will not be able to find a job. Mehdia’s predicament is even worse, perhaps because her skin is darker. Or perhaps because she is a woman. Or perhaps for both reasons. This haughty society is prepared to discard her without hesitation. In one of the film’s most crucial scenes, Mehdia’s boss threatens to deport her housemaid if she does to play by the rules. She reveals that she paid for Mehdia’s visa and travel expenses from Ethiopia in exchange for her labour, a situation that suggests working conditions analogue to slavery. And there are people even worse off than Ahmed and Mehdia, such as the Bangladeshi servant Kookoo, who does not speak a word of Arabic. These people belong to different layers of a well-established hierarchy of discrimination based on nationality, race, gender and the ability to speak the local language.

Ahmed shouts “iron, copper, batteries” as he walks down the street, an action that he repeats throughout the film. Yet he has no such items to sell. Instead, he is suffering from a very mysterious disease. Wounds expel metallic pellets from his body, his skin gradually turning into a thick metallic crust. The doctor has no explanation for his condition. Yet our protagonist suffers no pain. On the contrary: he develops supernatural powers that will prove very handy. Kornél Mundruzcó’s flying refugee of Jupiter’s Moon (2017) will come to mind. Both films blend the fantastic and absurd with the Syrian refugee experience. French-Lebanese director Wissam Charaf focuses on wacky humour in order to craft a genuinely eerie comedy. Jillar delivers the quietly powerful performance required for deadpan, while Couturet caters for the most emotionally-laden moments. She is determined to remain with her lover, despite being constantly reprimanded and threatened by her boss.

The strange symbolism of the metal is connected to warfare: Ahmed isn’t the only Syrian with the unusual chemical element in his body. Another man has a prosthetic leg made of a very similar material, his leg was presumably blown off by an explosion. These are the wounds of war that refuse to heal. The message is clear: immigrants in Lebanon have it very hard in cold. Just like metal.

The characters of Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous fail to integrate with Lebanese society on various levels: cultural, social and cultural. The film title presumably alludes to the racist perceptions bestowed upon these people. This isn’t the first time a film director uses the word “dirty” in a movie title is order to describe the predicament of immigrants.

Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous has just premiered in the Official Competition of the 2nd Red Sea International Film Festival. A simple a creative little movie, worth a viewing.

Inferno Rosso: Joe D’Amato on the Road to Excess (Inferno Rosso: Joe D’Amato Sullva Via Dell’eccesso)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TRANSYLVANIA

In a strange moment of serendipity, I caught Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005) the night before on my hotel television. It’s that weird mixture of boobs and gore that feels like it comes out of the imagination of a fourteen-year-old child, hitting me very definitely than when I was entranced by the movie as a teenager. But some directors never grow up, attracted to both eroticism and gore right until the very end.

It’s serendipitous because Eli Roth is also an executive producer and interview subject in Inferno Rosso: Joe D’Amato on the Road to Excess, a workmanlike documentary about the ultimate cinematic workhorse. Before his death in 1999, Joe D’Amato directed soft-core and hard-core porn, grotesque horror movies, adventure films and historical films; films for Italian cinema, films for foreign distributors and films in America starring big actors. He had his own production company and mentored others as well, making him the “Roger Corman” of Italy. All in all, he was involved in over 200 films, making him one of hardest working directors of all time, a man who made movies as if he was merely breathing.

He’s a fascinating character, his forays into the smartest risk-to-reward genres, telling typically low-budget porn and horror, making him worth of his own deep dive. We are treated to clips from his classic films, including mutilations, sexual violence, body horror, sacrilegious elements and lots and lots of topless ladies. In one of the few stylistic flourishes in the entire documentary, we are treated to rapid-fire montages of naked bodies in all their writhing, sexy glory, showing off just how far D’Amato was willing to push the boat out in the name of entertainment.

Despite all of this titillation, this film is oddly incurious. Only 70 minutes long, it feels made for television rather than the big screen. It’s curious how a director that made so many films wasn’t captured more often in archive footage, making me wonder if the team behind this didn’t do enough research or there simply wasn’t enough to go on. The same goes for the interview subjects, who are incredible knowledgable about distribution details or the technical details of filmmaking, but betray little emotion about the man himself. His daughter tearily tells us about how he was misrepresented as a mere porno director by the press, or how he put the house up as collateral so he could continue making movies, but the camera doesn’t linger, and we move on to more platitudes, reducing the emotional impact of the moment.

He is obviously a complex figure, but the complexity feels flattened by this tribute film, introduced by Nicolas Winding Refn. In one major misstep, we are told an actress tried to sue the crew of one of his films after she felt traumatised on set. This moment is basically treated as a joke by the men who remember it, who say it was all part of the way films were made back then. That might’ve been true, but a more interested documentary would embrace the different aspects of filmmaking back then, instead of just going down memory lane. If you’re just interested in a primer on a legendary filmmaker, then you’re in the right place. But there’s no genuine interrogation here, making for a flat experience. Horror and eroticism can benefit from a childlike perspective, but documentaries need to be far more grown up.

Inferno Rosso: Joe D’Amato on the Road to Excess plays as part of the Larger Than Life section at TIFF, running from 17th-26th June.

The top 10 dirtiest films of 2019

Posted on by victorfraga

Another year has gone by and DMovies is now nearly four years old. Since we started in February 2016, we have published 1,400 exclusive articles and reviews. We have attended both big and small film festivals and industry events of Europe, always digging the dirty gems of cinema firsthand and exclusively for you.

This year alone, we have published 400 articles and reviews and renewed our partnership with organisations such as Native Spirit, the Tallinn Film Festival, the Cambridge Film Festival, plus VoD providers such as Walk This Way and ArteKino. What’s more, our weekly newsletter has highlighted the best films out in cinemas, festivals, VoD and DVD every Friday to our 20,000 subscribers! We have up to 100,000 monthly visitors on average.

So we decided to pull together a little list of the 10 dirtiest films of 2019. And what better way to do it than asking our most prolific writers and also our audience for their dirty pick of the year? This is a truly diverse and international list, containing very different films from every corner of the planet, some big, some small, some you can still catch in cinemas, some on VoD and some you will just have to keep an eye for, at least for now!

Don’t forget to click on the film title in order to accede to the our dirty review of the movie (not necessarily written by the same person who picked it as their dirty film of the year). The movies are listed alphabetically. And scroll all the way to the bottom of the article for the turkey of the year (a film so squeaky clean that you shouldn’t be sad if you missed it)…

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1. Animals (Sophie Hyde):

Selected by Eoghan Lyng

The glorification of male companionship has been celebrated in tragicomedies such as Withnail & I (Bruce Ronbinson, 1987) and Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996). Animals, on the other hand, showcases the triumphant revelry between two young women, decadent in their communal taste for fermented depravity. Effortlessly translating Emma Jane Unsworth’s book from Manchester’s streets to the Irish capital, Animals zips with inspired zest, an energised exposition of elastic wit and inspirited storytelling.

Laura (the British born Holliday Grainger, complete with killer Dublin accent) fancies herself a writer, fancifully fantasising through voluminous bottles with the coquettish Tyler (Alia Shawkat). Their thirties fast approaching, the women see little reason to halt their precocious abilities to party, until love threatens to put these halcyon days to pasture. Minesweeping to Alphaville, Laura walks into the enigmatic Jim (Fra Fee), a precocious Ulster pianist whose scale painting conjures composites of satiated sexual desires. Between these silhouettes, a solitary fox walks, echoing the lonely poetry the film displays.

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2. Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler):

Selected by Jack Hawkins

Dragged Across Concrete may not be the best film of the year, but it’s certainly the dirtiest. With it, S. Craig Zahler cements his status as a leading genre auteur, which is no mean feat. Few other filmmakers could get away with a 160-minute crime film of such deliberate pace and odious content.

For example, half-way into the narrative we are introduced to a young mother named Kelly, who is returning to work after three months’ maternity leave. Performed with heartfelt angst by Jennifer Carpenter, Kelly has clearly dreaded this day, tearfully lamenting how she ‘sells chunks of her life for a pay cheque so rich people I’ve never even met can put money places I’ve never even seen. With some degree of tough love, her partner persuades her to leave for the bus; what happens when she makes it to the bank will have you shaking your head in disgust. It becomes clear that the sole purpose of the character is to make you feel terrible, and it is this – along with the film’s pervasively bleak vision – that makes Dragged Across Concrete the dirtiest film of the year.

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3. Echo (Rúnar Rúnnarsson):

Selected by Redmond Bacon

This film is basically Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003) directed by Roy Andersson. Comprised of only 56 static takes, Rúnar Rúnarsson calmly takes Iceland’s pulse during the Christmas season; delivering a panorama that is equal parts funny, sad, ironic and loving. Displaying a supreme confidence in direction and writing, this is a major step up in form and content.

It spans through the Advent season to the New Year, that time of year when families are reunited, stress levels are high, and wallets are strained. Everyone is in the mood to either try and enjoy themselves, or simply get through the darkest days in the year. Spanning from rich to poor, old to young, alone or surrounded with family, it feels like all of Icelandic life is contained within this film.

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4. Joker (Todd Phillips):

Selected by Michael McClure

The Joker looks on its poster as yet another quirky, all-American urban mythology film, that appeals to that predictable audience base – it is anything but. With its extraordinarily talented performance by Joaquin Phoenix, it is up there with the greats of the Weimar cinema such as The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930) and Nosferatu (FW Murnau, 1922) as an exploration of the human psyche, that is both prophetic and insightful. It is about that phenomenon that Nietzsche called “ressentiment” in which the weak, talentless and envious take out their anger on the talented and intelligent and turn it into an internalised ritual of cruelty.

It the creed of the “people” versus the “elite”, the Nazi against the Jew, the herd against the thoughtful and intelligent. The Joker is a useless, bitter clown who in his resentments takes on the right to kill those who show him up for what he is. As such, in this age of social media, trolling and glib public opinion, this film is very modern and very prophetic. Joaquin Phoenix is up there with Emil Jannings in the complexity and depth of his performance.

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5. Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck):

Selected by Jeremy Clarke

What is art? Why do artists make art? These questions lie behind Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s latest film, like his earlier The Lives Of Others (2006) a German story exploring that country’s history and identity. It clocks in at over three hours, but don’t let that put you off because it needs that time to cover the considerable ground it does. Never Look Away spans the bombing of Dresden by the Allies in WW2, the liquidation of people considered by the Nazis inferior and therefore unfit to live and the very different worlds of post-war art schools in first East and later West Germany. This means it also spans two generations: those who were adults during the war, and those who were children at that time and became adults in post-war Germany.

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6. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho):

Selected by DMovies’ audience and Lucas Pistilli

Our audience’s pick is our most read review of 2019, and the film isn’t even out in UK cinemas yet!

The latest Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, and the first Korean film to win the prestigious prize, follows a small family of four They live in a shoddy basement flat in an impoverished district of Korea. They face unemployment, and the future does not looks bright. They steal wi-fi from their neighbours. They panic when the password is changed, leaving them disconnected from the rest of the world. But that isn’t their one “parasitic” action. All four are con artists. One by one, they take up highly qualified jobs with a super-rich family, which also consists of four memebers. They are very well-spoken and manipulative. Their bosses never suspect that there’s something wrong with their highly “diligent” workers. These impostors are also extremely charming. Your allegiance is guaranteed to lie with them.

Furthermore, Lucas wrote: “A home invasion-social critique hybrid that exposes the malaise of late-stage capitalism with a Hitchcockian flair, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite is a film that rewards multiple viewings and is very deserving of every acclaim sent its way. The thriller establishes a sense of barely-contained mayhem early on and doesn’t let the audience go until the only way out is sheer chaos. A killer picture is every level”

Parasite is also pictured at the top of this article.

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7. So Long, My Son (Wang Xiaoshuai):

Selected by Patricia Cook

Across four decades of turbulent Chinese society, Wang studies a married couple, using the death of their son as a focal point around which to subtly explore the single-child policy and the impact of the Cultural Revolution.

The unconventional structure zips back and forth through different time frames, gradually moving along a central timeline. The story occurs in episodes which each have the feel of their own short story, but which fill in the details of the other things we have seen. Wang leans heavily on dramatic irony, raising the tension as we wait for truths to emerge. One wonders if he couldn’t have found a way to cut 15 minutes or so from the run time, so languid are the first two hours. It isn’t until the final 50 minutes that So Long My Son really pays off every beat he’s set up. Like a Koreeda film, revelation is piled upon revelation, disarming you with one bombshell and then slapping you with another. Wang even uses the flashbacks to abet this by undercutting the outcome of one scene with the reality of the past or present.

In addition, Patricia wrote: “A thoroughly engrossing film, beautiful to look at and outstanding in interweaving the personal and the political. It is an epic story covering the impact a tragic event has on a group of friends. Although long, it never fails to engage”.

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8. Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach):

Selected by Victor Fraga, editor of DMovies

Ricky (Kris Hitchen) is a building worker with an impeccable CV, living with his family somewhere in suburban Newcastle. He persuades his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) to sell off her car in order to raise £1,000 so that he can buy a van and move into the delivery industry. A franchise owner promises Ricky that he’ll be independent and “own his own business”, and earn up to £1,200 a week.

The reality couldn’t be more different. Ricky ends up working up to 14 hours a day six days a week. He literally has no time to pee, and instead urinates in a bottle inside him own vehicle. His draconian delivery targets and inflexible ETAs (estimated time of arrival) turn him into a delivery robot. A small handheld delivery device containing delivery instructions virtually controls his life. Ricky has been conned. His “independence” is but an illusion. He might own his car, his company and his insurance, yet he’s entirely at the mercy of his franchiser.

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9. Uncut Gems (Sadfie Brothers):

Selected by Daniel Luis Ennab

Everything about Uncut Gems excites. A mythological sprawl that feels timeless, and tragic in its overall emptiness by the time Howard Ratner supposedly wins. I’m reminded of Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant with an ugly, repulsive enforcer addicted to chaos. Ratner is a study of desperation. An addict with nothing beyond his own stakes. Nothing to offer, nothing to redeem, a man always running even when he never actually has to. Everything that happens in Uncut Gems could’ve simply been avoided, and yet — the vile beauty of such a fact is that it wasn’t. It’s the story of a dreamer, a chaser, one for fool’s gold.

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10. The Vast of Night (Andrew Pattinson):

Selected by Paul Risker

Effusing the nostalgia of 1950s small town America, director Andrew Pattinson’s debut feature is a near-perfect film, a quintessential addition to genre cinema. Set during one night in a small town in New Mexico, young radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) and switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) set out to discover the origins of a mysterious frequency they hear over the radio. In those moments when strange incidents that may explain the mysterious frequency are recounted to Everett and Fay, Pattinson incorporates the oral storytelling and the literary traditions. He asks us to imagine for ourselves rather than to show us, and this makes The Vast of Night striking for its anti-cinematic shades. The stillness of these moments is effectively offset with the urgency of the pair to unravel the mystery before its too late, and an ending that effectively compromises on revealing versus preserving the mystery.

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and the turkey of the year is…

Vita and Virginia (Chanya Button):

Virginia Woolf has never been this dull and joyless before! And love has rarely seemed more anodyne than in this awful biopic, which has a miscast Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki playing the two lovers. Here one of the most important women to have ever put pen to paper is reduced to a wholly passive, sickly, and sad woman, devoid of any true emotion, inspiration or true internalisation. Her lesbian lover, Vita Sackville-West fares no better, Gemma Arterton more focused on her aristocratic mannerisms than her transgressive personality or desire to shake the system. Together they seem like they’re still reading through the script.

The dirty movie that changed my life: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Posted on by victorfraga

I am now a strong and resolute woman in her forties, but back in 1997 I was barely 20 years of age. I was as vulnerable and gullible as one can be. I had married my first boyfriend James*, who turned out to be psychologically and financially abusive. He was basically a nasty control freak. We got married when I was just 19. Despite his manipulative behaviour, it never seemed like I would be able to find another love. He was also kind and loving at times, and that’s all that seemed to matter to me.

Yet somehow I summoned the courage to file a divorce. But that was just the beginning of the end. The battle got ugly, very ugly, but that’s all you need to know. It isn’t necessary to go into the details. Plus, shortly I submitted the paperwork, I found out I was two months pregnant. Had I made a mistake? Was this a sign that James was the right husband for me? Should I turn things around and make up with “the man of my life”? How could I go on without him and yet with his child inside my womb? The answers right now are as easy as apple pie now, but back then they weren’t as straightforward.

The final answer came one Sunday afternoon when I went to the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead. That’s before it was refurbished. It was a charming repertoire cinema where they showed all sorts of old movies. Double bills, triple bills, all for a fiver. Yes, there were mice running past. But so what? It was so cosy and homely. I was devastated when they shut it down the following year for a major make-over. Yet I was lucky enough to watch Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) shortly before it shut down for the works. It was the final sequence of the movie that gave me the strength to proceed with the divorce.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg isn’t a film about an abusive relationship. It tells the story of 16-year-old Geneviève (played by a dazzling Catherine Deneuve, in her breakthrough role) who runs a small umbrella boutique with her mother in the coastal town of Cherbourg (in Normandy). She falls in love with the handsome car mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuevo). But Guy is drafted to serve in the Algerian War, and their future is uncertain. They pledge make a pledge of unconditional love before he departs, and Geneviève becomes pregnant. Reuniting with her lover seems to be the only way forward, until the final sequence of the film challenges the orthodox notions of eternal love.

Move the clock many years forward. Geneviève returns to Cherbourg with a young girl in the passenger seat of her car, who happens to be her child with Guy. She stops at a petrol station in order to fuel her vehicle, where she accidentally bumps into Guy, who happens to work there. They have a very short conversation inside the station store, while their daughter waits inside the car. Geneviève asks him whether he wants to see his daughter for the first time. He turns the offer down. Geneviève returns to the car and drives off. It all looks like doom and gloom. It’s impossible to get over unrequited love, particularly if there’s a child involved. The pain is insurmountable.

In a split second, however, the movie and my life changed. Literally in a split second: just watch the extract below, at 5:59. Moments after Geneviève drives off, Michel Legrand’s magnificent I Will Wait for You explodes into the speakers and Guy’s wife and child arrive. He embraces them. Happiness is to be found despite the unrequited love. Despite the baby. Incidentally, the iconic French composer Legrand passed away two months ago at the age of 85.

Geneviève’s story and mine are very different. In my case, my husband was mean to me. In her case, the circumstances (the war, the forced separation) were mean to her. What we both had in common is that we both loved our men profoundly and couldn’t see life beyond that. And that we had a baby. In both cases, life moved on and happiness prevailed. That baby is now 21 years of age and she’s expecting a baby herself. I couldn’t be happier!

* All names in this article have been changed, in accordance to the wishes of the writer.

Do you also have a story to tell about a movie that changed your life? We’d love to hear it! Just write to us at info@dirtymovies.org!

Our 10 mega-filthy picks for the BFI London Film Festival 2018

Posted on by victorfraga

The largest film festival in the UK is about to begin. The event programme has already been announced. There are 225 feature films from 77 countries being shown in 14 cinemas across the British capital in just 12 days (from October 10th to October 21st). It’s difficult to decide where to begin. That’s why we have done the homework for you, and unearthed the top 10 dirtiest gems. That’s because we caught these films earlier this year in Berlin, Cannes and Venice, and so we can recommend them to you with confidence!

Don’t forget to click on the film title in order to accede to the review of each individual dirty gem on the list below:

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1. Touch Me Not (Adina Pintilie, 2018):

his is as close to a tactile experience as you will ever get from a moving picture. Touch Me Not starts with the extreme close-up of a male body, so close you could even count the body hairs. The camera navigates through the unidentified entity: legs, penis, stomach and nipple. This is a suitable taster of incredibly intimate and human film that will follow for the next 125 minutes.

Romanian director Adina Pintilie establishes a dialogue with several real-life characters, in what can be described as a documentary with flavours of fiction, in a roughly congruent arc. Laura, Tómas, Christian and Hanna and Hanna have a very different relation to their sexuality and bodies, and they are all working together in order to overcome their fears and and claim control of their lives.

Touch Me Not premieres in the Festival and it’s out in UK cinemas immediately after on Friday, October 19th.

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2. U: July 22nd (Erik Poppe, 2018):

On July 22nd 2011 500 young people attending a summer camp in the idyllic island of Utøya, near Oslo, were attacked by 34-year-old right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. The attack claimed the lives of 77 people, left 99 severely injured and a further 300 profoundly traumatised. It shocked a nation not used to crimes of such dimension. It was the deadliest event in the wealthy and pacific Scandinavian country since WW2.

You would be forgiven for thinking this is an exploitative film trying to reopen painful wounds and to capitalise on fetishised violence. But it’s not. This is an overtly political film, and the Norwegian director Erik Poppe sets the tone in the very beginning on the movie. Kaja talks with her friends, immediately before the shooting begins, and after they hear about the explosion in Oslo. They speculate that the bomb may have been planted by al-Qaeda in response to Norway’s involvement in Afghanistan. They have no idea that the attack is in fact being conducted by a white Norwegian man.

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3. What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire (Roberto Minervini, 2018):

They have been neglected and abused throughout the past five centuries. They are men and women of various generations and with all types of professions, and they share the same burden. The government and the society intended to protect them instead scorns them. They have been hunted down by neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. Their walls have been graffitied with the N-word, swastikas and calls for ethnic cleansing. But they’re still alive! Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini captures the apocalyptic scenario that many Afro-Americans from the Deep South have to confront daily.

What you Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? is shot in black and white using with an Arri Alexa camera with a large depth of field (deep focus). In other words, the images in the foreground, middle-ground and background are all in focus. In a way, this is reminiscent and nostalgic of the neo-Realism aesthetics.

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4. Yomeddine (Abu Bakr Shawdry, 2018):

This is probably as close as you will ever get to a leper. Leprosy has been eradicated in most parts of the planet, but still persists in some of the most impoverished countries. The highly contagious disease is immediately associated with removal from society and seclusion. Yet you won’t regret you came into contact with these adorable human beings. Yomeddine gives you the opportunity to embrace, look into the eyes and deep dive into the hearts of these outcasts.

The story starts out in a colony of lepers somewhere in South of Egypt, where Beshay (Rady Gamal) was abandoned 30 years earlier as a child by his father. He has a wife and lives happily with the other members of the colony. There is a real sense of community, and they seem to lead a relatively peaceful existence despite their condition and the abject poverty. Their main source of work and entertainment is a nearby landfill, which they nicknamed Garbage Mountain. Just like the contents of the site, these people have been discarded by society.

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5. Daughter of Mine (Laura Bispuri, 2018):

Vittoria (Sara Casu) is about to turn 10, and she lives with her doting mother Tina (Valeria Golino) in a happy and and stable household. She befriends Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher), a dysfunctional and promiscuous alcoholic who’s about to be evicted from her own house unless she can raise 27,000 to pay off her debts. At first, it’s not entirely clear what bonds the adult and the child. They seem to have very little in common except for a vague physical resemblance.

Daughter of Mine is set in the barren and oppressively hot Summer of Sardinia, one of the poorest and most remote areas of Italy. Their fishing village looks very precarious and primitive, and untouched by tourists. The houses are old and most of the buildings are derelict, few roads have been paved, and a heavy and brown cloud of dust is lifted by passing cars and motorcycles. The landscape is very arid and golden-hued, just like Vittoria’s hair. This is a sight many people would not associate with a European country, but instead with a developing nation in Africa or South America.

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6. Pixote (Hector Babenco, 1980):

Possibly the dirtiest Brazilian film ever made, Pixote is now nearly 40 years old.

Pixote isn’t just a denunciation of poverty. It goes much deeper, revealing the sheer cruelty of a system that legitimates and perpetuates violence. Drug lords hired minors to sell drugs or rob banks because they would not face criminal action. If caught, they would spend some time in a police or a Febem reformatory, being freed at the age of 18 without a criminal record.

Pixote opens with intense music and no imagery. The symbolism of darkness continues throughout the film. Nothing is lighthearted: boy rapes boy, prison wards are corrupt, Pixote smokes, sniffs glue and kills. The colours of life in the margin are not bright. Even the brothels are somber. There are no red neon lights. The prostitutes Silvia and Debora are unstylish and downtrodden. They are cheap.

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7. The Image Book (Jean-Luc Goddard, 2018):

The Image Book was shot for almost two years in various Arab countries, and it is being marketed as “an examination of the Arab world”. In reality, the film is a collage of film and political references, some easily recognisable and others completely random and bizarre, with some voice-over. You will see extracts from Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932), Pasolini’s Salò (1975), familiar faces such as Joan Crawford and Gérard Depardieu, allusions to the Bolshevik Revolution, to Rosa Luxembourg, and so on – all in line with the director’s left wing convictions. There is no narrative whatsoever, and the Arab theme is only addressed in the final third of this 82-minute movie.

The jump cuts, the faux raccords, the cacophony and the many other devices crafted by the director himself half a century ago are used in abundance. English subtitles suddenly disappear, and often don’t even entirely match the original in French. Dialogues in German, English and Italian are entirely devoid of subtitles. Text on the screen is illegible, very much à la David Carson. Colours are inverted, and negative footage is conspicuous. The image size switches back and forth to various shapes and formats. The French film itself (“Le Livre d’Image”) is a pun suggesting that the image is free. It all makes Alexander Kluge seem square and boring. Exactly as you would expect from Godard.

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8. Happy as Lazzaro (Alba Rohrwacher, 2018):

The story starts in the impoverished and aptly-named rural town of Inviolata (Italian for “inviolable”), where a group a group of peasants work as sharecroppers in conditions analogue to slavery for the pompous Marquise De La Luna and her son the eccentric Marquis De La Luna. The decrepit buildings and working conditions suggest that the town is in the South of Italy, although its exact location is never revealed. Lazzaro helps both the peasants and the bosses without drawing much attention to himself. He’s prepared to do anything for this people. He will offer his very blood is asked to do it.

Suddenly, De La Luna’s “great swindle” is uncovered. She’s arrested and the farm abandoned. The peasants move to the city in search of pastures green. Then the film moves forward several years. The actress Alba Rohrwacher, who happens to be the director’s elder sister, plays different characters at the different times. Everyone ages. Except for Lazzaro. He looks exactly the same; even his plain clothes remain unchanged.

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9. The Angel (Luis Ortega, 2018):

Carlitos (Lorenzo Ferro) has the face of Macaulay Culkin, the lips of Angelina Jolie and the hair of an angel. Yet he epitomises evil. He’s a staunch robber and serial killer. He doesn’t believe in ownership of goods, and so he will steal anything that comes his way, ranging from cars and posh mansions to a gun store. He also has a profound disregard for life, and so he will kill just about anyone who stands in his way. The action takes place in 1971.

Carlitos befriends the dark-haired and also extremely good-looking Ramon (played by Chino Darin, son of Argentinian über-actor Ricardo Darin), who soon becomes his partner in crime. Ramon’s parents also become enthusiastic accomplices. Angel’s parents Aurora (Cecilia Roth) and Hector (Luis Gnecco), on the other hand, suspect that their son is up to no good, and do not approve of his behaviour. But there’s little they can do in order to stop their deviant and untrammelled angel.

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10. Dogman (Matteo Garrone, 2018):

In some unnamed and extremely impoverished coastal town in the South of Italy, Marcello (Marcello Fonte; pictured at the top of this article) runs a small dog grooming business aptly named Dogman. He is also a part time coke dealer. He befriends a Neanderthal thug called Antonio (Edoardo Pesce). Together they engage in a life of petty crimes and nights out. They seem to complement each other in s very strange way: Marcello is puny, ugly, calm and with a squeaky voice, while Simone is bulky, considerably better-looking, extremely irascible and with a hoarse voice.

Dogman is in cinemas on Friday, October 19th, immediately after its premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.

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and a last minute addition to our list, no less dirty:

11. Mandy (Panos Cosmatos):

Mandy exists as a headfuck, a hallucinatory trip, but it’s one worth taking and experiencing in all its lucid glory. The action takes place in 1983 in the Pacific Northwest of America that seems devoid of people, at least normal people. But we know this is no alternate reality, however much Mandy believes in the supernatural or the otherworldly. President Ronald Reagan appears on the radio rallying against drugs and pornography. If Mandy had been released at the time of Reagan, the moral majority would have flipped at its bent vision of religion and God. Still, the woods, mountains, and lakes are bathed in a fog of dreamy light and aura that offers a sense that weirdness is a norm in these parts.

Dirty expectations: 10 films to look out for in Cannes

Posted on by victorfraga

The 71st annual Cannes International Film Festival starts on May 8th for 12 days, and the programme has already been announced. The event continues as auteur-driven, internationalist, prestigious, innovative and, of course, anti-Netflix as ever. The Festival demands that all films in the programme get a theatrical distribution in French cinemas, which caused the streaming giant to pull out last minute, just before the programme was announced.

The list is teeming with big director names from all parts of the planet, and the Competition alone includes eight newcomers, from a total of 21 films selected. A jury under the presidency of Cate Blanchett will announce the winner. A grand total of 1,906 feature films were viewed by the various selection committees. At least 100 movies have been announced for the various sections of the Festival so far: Un Certain Regard, Director’s Fortnight, Critic’s Week, Classics, Special Screenings, etc. Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s psychological thriller Everybody Knows will open the Festival. The Official festival poster (pictured above) features Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film Pierrot le Fou. It is the second time festival poster was inspired by Godard’s film after his 1963 film Contempt just two years ago.

Below is just the the tip of the iceberg. Our very dirty picks, films that we think you should be looking out for. Don’t forget to follow us for live updates at the event, as we watch the films below and reveal they were worth the wait.

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1. Climax (Gaspar Noe):

The Argentinean provocateur, who has worked most of his life in France, returns three years after the 3D explicit sex romance Love. which saw an actor ejaculate on the audience and the camera assume the penis perspective as it enters a vagina. Everyone is curious what antics the enfant terrible has under his sleeve the time, and whether audiences will leave the cinema feeling orgasmic. The movie is in the Director’s Fortnight section,

2. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam):

Terry Gilliam’s long-delayed feature will be the Festival’s closing film. Production began exactly 20 years ago (!!!). And yet the film encountered new problems, and a legal challenge almost prevented it from being shown this year. The movie is a blend of fantasy, adventure and comedy loosely based on the Spanish super-novel Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. The film, which is pictured below is in the Competition.

3. Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (Wim Wenders):

The 72-year-old German filmmaker has largely focused on producing and directing documentaries in the past couple of decades, including the iconic Buena Vista Social Club (1996) and Our Last Tango (2017, directed by German Kral). This time he has created what looks like a romantic portrait of the current Pope, in which he speaks directly to the people. The film is also in the Competition. Let’s just be grateful he didn’t do a film about his countrysake and previous pope, aka God’s Rottweiler. Meanwhile, Wenders has a feature film coming out in cinemas later this year.

4. Donbass (Sergei Loznitza):

The Ukrainian director’s previous film, a creepy tribute portrayal of Russia, A Gentle Creature is showing in cinemas across the UK right, and one of the dirtiest films you could catch right now. The film was in the Festival’s Competition last year. This year, the director returns with a film named after the region of the Ukraine that Russia recently attempted to annex (although Putin will dispute this). We would hazard a guess that the new film, which is in the Un Certain Regard section, will be no more sympathetic of the largest country in the world.

5. Three faces (Jafar Panahi):

The Iranian director of The Mirror (1997), Offside (2006) and Taxi Tehran (2015) started his career in the 1990s as the assistant director of the late Abbas Kiarostami. His films often dealt with controversial and fiery topics (such as women attending football matches in Offside), and the director himself was arrested in 2010. Three Faces is described as a “mountain travel” film, and it’s in the Festival’s Competition

6. Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda):

Firmly established as one of the most prolific and creative voices of Japanese cinema, the director of the dirty gems After The Storm and The Third Murder (both released last year) returns with Shoplifters (pictured below). The film, similarly to After The Storm, focuses on a dysfunctional “family”, as a group of petty criminals and crooks take in a child from the street.

7. At War (Stephane Brize):

Perrin industries decide to shut down a factory and fire 1,100 employees, despite record profits and huge financial sacrifices on the part of the lower employees. The 52-year-old French helmer once again exposes the ugly face of capitalism, corporate values and labour rights in Europe, after dealing with the subject two years ago in The Measure of a Man. Also in the Competition.

8. Everybody Knows (Asghar Fahradi):

This psychological thriller will open the 2018 Festival, and it features Spanish actors Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Argentinian Ricardo Darín. The double-Oscar winner refused to travel to the US last year in order to collect his statuette for The Salesman, in retaliation to Trump’s racist and Islamophobic government. The new drama Everybody Knows, which we expected to be as profound and multi-threaded as his previous films, the first time the director works in Spanish language, and it’s also only the second time a Spanish language movie opens the Festival.

9. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee):

Spike Lee is back, and he’s ready to set fire to his increasingly racist and reactionary homeland. The film follows the first African-American police officer to infiltrate the KKK, back in 1979. The urgency of the movie cannot be overstated. Hopefully Lee will not slip into platitudes and sexist cliches, unlike two years ago with Chi-Raq. In the Competition.

10. The House that Jack Built (Lars von Trier):

The staunch persona-non-grata has now made piece with the Festival, after being banned “for life” in 2011 following some controversial remarks about Hitler’s good qualities. His new film, which is named after an English nursery rhyme, stars Matt Dillon and follows with a highly intelligent serial killer. Von Trier described the film as celebrating “the idea that life is evil and soulless”. The film is running our of the Competition.

The top 10 dirtiest Christmas movies

Posted on by victorfraga

In a perfect world, Christmas is filled with some of the most jovial depictions of family, friends and community. But this is 2017, with grotesque creatures such as Donald Trump and BoJo calling the shots and presiding over our future! In this light, it is out with the Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life (1947) and in with some of the dirtiest Christmas related films to have ever graced celluloid.

Though not a direct overview of the dirtiest Christmas films to have graced 2017, such a soiled list instead looks at the films that play against conventions of the festive period, character stereotypes and outright devour Santa’s nice list, revering to the naughty one instead.

Christmas does not have to included mince pies, snow or presents. In Tangerine (also pictured above), a message of forgiveness and acceptance comes in the shape of a wig traded between two quarreling transsexual prostitutes in West Hollywood. Rejecting the casts of Christmas, Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut decomposes the meaning of family. Each time Tom Cruise’s Dr. William Harford returns home, his wife and child are asleep with the Christmas lights creating some atmospheric red lighting to deepen his lustful thoughts. Similarly, the streets of New York city are a vacuous space in which humanities basest desires come to the forefront.

In Elle, starring Isabelle Huppert (pictured at the top), Verhoeven chooses to lace the Christmas meal with sexual tensions, family feuds and dark comedy. Lastly, the likes of Gremlins and Krampus literally have their cake and eat it when approaching the notion of a calm and quiet Christmas. Instilling the holiday season with sheer horror and creatures that snarl and devour, Dante and Michael Dougherty create a stark juxtaposition to the traditional values of the season. Replacing the red wrapping paper is the red of blood.

Sit back, relax and enjoy these rebellious films to Christmas traditions and representations! Have yourself a dirty little Christmas!

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1. Tangerine (Sean Baker, 2015):

Before The Florida Project (released earlier this year), Sean Baker crafted a truly sumptuous Christmas film about two transgender prostitutes who search the mean streets of West Hollywood on Christmas Eve for Sin-Dee’s (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) pimp and boyfriend Chester (James Ransone). Suffused with foul language and the skirmishes of ethnic and sexual minorities, through it all a level of forgiveness and acceptance is discovered. The contrasts of a Christmas setting with the scantily glad characters is extended in the hip-hop dubstep score, serving to go against the grain of festive songs, and induce one into the world of Sin-Dee and Mya. Filmed on an iPhone with Filmic Pro app, it captures the rawness of human emotion in a fashion now characteristic of Baker’s filmic style. Instead of a Christmas tradition of Miracle on 34th Street, Tangerine should be your new annual festive watch!

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2. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999):

Kubrick’s last film famously involved the longest shooting period of any film EVER! Still, behind the arduous filming, Christmas is depicted as a time of paranoia, overwhelming urges to commit adultery and masochistic sex grounds in New York. Featuring one of Tom Cruise’s best performances and an erotic underbelly supported by Nicole Kidman that recalls Bunuel’s masterful Belle de Jour (1967), it’s certainly going to get toasty near the fire watching this stone cold dirty Christmas classic.

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3. Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2017):

Paul Verhoeven’s Elle is a tale that reverts patriarchal notions of society, religion, and one would suggest Christmas, to Michèle Leblanc’s eventual revenge on her rapist. Casting a long shadow over those around her in a room, the gravitas to which Isabelle Huppert brings to the character infuses her with an emotional tapestry. The Dutch director is no strange to provocative filmmaking and this Christmas time why not enjoy the magnificent Isabelle Huppert as an early gift to yourself? Using the subject matter of family and the bourgeoisies in France, the Dutch director and iconic French actor combine to offer a deeply sardonic take on a Christmas meal that goes awfully wrong. The religious elements of the Christian tradition are similarly called into question over its narrative. Costumed by Nathalie Raoul, Huppert is at her finest Parisian chic. Who said it wasn’t the most wonderful time of year?!

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4. Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984):

No dirty alternative Christmas film list would be complete without these pesky little creatures and their complete and utter destruction of a small American town (Kingston Falls). Accompanied by the literal destruction of a modern Christmas, Gremlins is as rebellious to the notion of consumerism as the little critters are to any human being. Joe Dante brings Dante’s Inferno to the festive season. A dirty classic in every sense of the word.

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5. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960):

Featuring a drunk Christmas office party and the ramifications that feature when one drinks too much around someone who you hold a crush towards, Billy Wilder, Jack Lemon, Fred MacMurray and Shirley MacLaine star in this misery infused classic about how unfestive Christmas and life truly can be. With some of the finest dialogue in film, Wilder crafts a stunning piece of dark comedy.

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6. Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Nagisa Oshima, 1983):

After the legendary singer David Bowie sadly passed away this year, why not let his presence be known in your life again, not through his music, but through his performance in Nagisa Oshima. This is the perfect opportunity to relive the man himself, just like a ghost from Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Representing the conflict between East and West, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, as Criterion writes ‘its a multilayered, brutal, at times erotic tale of culture clash, and one of Oshima’s greatest successes’.

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7. Krampus (Michael Dougherty, 2015):

The pick of the modern phenomenon that is an annual horror related Christmas film, 2015’s Krampus plays with the idea of wicked malevolent forces arriving to commandeer Santa’s favourite season. The Christmas spirit is replaced with death, fire and evil demons coming to ruin your presents and much cherished family.

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8. Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985):

Terry Gilliam and a dirty Christmas film you said, yes, you are correct! Occurring in a time and place alternative to ours, with an examination of bureaucratic regimes, Christmas shopping is represented by Gilliam as it really is: HELL!!!

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9. Jack Frost (Troy Miller, 1998):

A Snowman and Michael Keaton should, in theory, make for perfectly harmless viewing on a cold winters evening. Well, think again as in Jack Frost, Keaton plays Charlie Frost’s (Joseph Cross) deceased father who comes back from the dead and becomes a living snowman who attempts to make amends for his failures as a father. Besides this strange plot, the character design of the snowman is a far cry from the cute Snowman from The Snowman cartoon of 1982. Less walking in the air and more walking with a palpable sense of horror!

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10. The Snowman (Tomas Alfredson, 2017):

Every year there are always films which are considered absolute stinkers and none more than so wannabe Tomas Alfredson’s Nordic noir. Set in the depth of winter with a serial killer on the lose who cuts off the heads of women and then places them on snowmen, and who appears to have the artist brain of a four-year-old, this thriller deserves to be featured on this list simply due to its awful promotional campaign. Leaving your Christmas spirits very lukewarm, its dirtiness derives from the hilarity that ensures at its bad premise and strange acting.

Mulholland Drive is a very dirty La La Land

Posted on by victorfraga

Blah blah Land. Another film about glamorous and sunny California. All works fine. Your dream is possible. Everything is possible if you work hard. Even flying! Hollywood couldn’t be possibly be any more spurious and fabricated. The Oscar blunder are a gentle reminder of how phony and fallible it can be. When I think of Los Angeles, I picture its darkest, gloomy side and the long and winding roads. When I think of Los Angeles, I don’t think of the dreamy La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2017). I remember the gloomy David Lynch classic Mulholland Drive (2002), which was voted the best film of the 21st century by a BBC Culture poll last year and has just been rereleased in cinemas across the country.

Lynch’s references to Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) and the decadent film star have much more to do with reality than the unrealistic picture of stardom that we see in La La Land. I can relate to a character that doesn’t know who she is and picks a name from a picture, as Laura Harrindon does when she calls herself Rita (Hayworth). I cannot relate myself to a singer who thinks of her aunt during her audition. Emma Stone singing “here’s to the fools who dream” is an insult to me. I am a dreamer and I am not a fool!

Below I have contrasted the two films: the formulaic 2017 musical against the 2002 dirty cult film. In a nutshell, I think that Mulholland Drive is a filthy and subversive La La Land. Or the other way around: La La Land is a clean and sanitised version of Mulholland Drive. Here are the reasons why:

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1. Complex mindset VS easy dream:

In both films, an actress is trying to break into Hollywood, yet they couldn’t be more different. In Mulholland Drive, Betty/Diane (Naomi Watts) arrives in town with high expectations. Her eyes look so fascinated by everything that surrounds her. She hopes her days of fame will soon begin, but what Lynch says to us is that there is more fantasy than reality in her aspirations. On the other hand, Mia (Emma Stone) of La La Land is a cafe waitress who goes from audition to audition seeking her role of dreams. She eventually succeeds.

In Lynch’s world, it’s the struggle in the mind of the actress that matters. Is Betty dreaming high? Does she have any talent? Can she compromise? In Chazelle’s fantasy land, what’s important is that if you try hard, you’ll be successful. It’s the fulfilling of the American dream. Dream on, little dreamer.

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Living the dream: everything is wonderful and glitzy in La La Land.

2. Real music VS fake music:

Mulholland Drive is not a musical, but the film is solidly built around musical numbers. There’s the song that appears in the audition Betty goes, which refers to Doris Day’s filmography. There’s also the beautiful and cathartic number on the Club Silencio. The songs reveal the transformation of the characters and link them to their inner self. The characters don’t lie to us when there is music around. They reveal themselves instead.

La La Land is entirely a musical, that supposedly celebrates jazz, as Ryan Gosling’s character (Sebastian) is a jazz musician. He claims he loves free jazz and is determined to show Mia what jazz truly is. Only that the main theme of the film is not a jazz composition. Seb can’t write jazz. In reality, it is a little waltz. (Yes, it is!) There is nothing jazzy and cool in La La Land. La La Land exploits jazz.

3. Strong women VS frail women:

Mulholland Drive is all about Betty and who she truly is. The unrelenting search for success has turned her into an invidious, jealous and mean woman. She cannot stand the fact that Camilla/Rita (Laura Harring) took her part in the musical. So she seduces her. It’s never clear though if she really gets that woman, or if it’s all part of her paranoia.

In La La Land, the plot is far less complicated. Mia doesn’t follow hard enough her ambitions. She almost gives up being an actress and returns to her parent’s house just because she broke up with Seb. On the second part of the film, she is more a mother than an artist. This is why Lynch is more edgy than Chazelle. Lynch’s women are stronger than Chazelle’s. They don’t function according to men’s desire.

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Strong and robust women are the centrepiece of Mulholland Drive.

4. Edifying diversity VS confused diversity

La La Land opening scene offers the diversity Chazelle wants to show, though Los Angeles consists of individuals from more than 140 nations, speaking 224 recognised languages. The Latins, Blacks, Whites and Asians are all at the same social level. They are all struck in a traffic jam, they all have cars. There is also a bad taste joke about Latin culture, revealing a confusion between Brazilian and Hispanic cultures. Sebastian’s favorite jazz club will be demolished and on its place there will be a “Samba Tapas Club”. Tapas don’t come from Brazil; and jazz is not superior to samba, they are just different.

In Mulholland Drive, Betty and Camilla are empathetic of Latin culture as they both fall into tears during the Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison’s Crying. The musical number contrasts truth and illusion. Here the diversity serves for the purpose of turning Americans into more sensitive human beings.

5. Non-linear narrative VS linear narrative

Lynch’s style of storytelling is non-linear. He comes and goes, mixes flashbacks with flashforwards, with some objects and characters suddenly reappearing in order to reveal a secret. It is as creative and unpredictable as life itself. La La Land tries to play a trick by faking a non-linear narrative. It shows a sequence which suggests what could have happened if Seb and Mia hadn’t broken up. In reality, this is just a breather, so viewers can resume dreaming of a happy ending shortly after.

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Everything is colourful and everyone is jolly in La La Land.

6. Dirty sex VS sanitised sex

Let’s face it: you can’t get frisky with the love sequences between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. They are not even naked! Taste the lesbian flare of Naomi Watts and Laura Harring instead. They will get much closer to your sexual fantasies, rest assured. Here’s what Harring declared about filming the sequence: “Even though I was nervous, he [Lynch] does everything with class. He knows how to get people to react – and without any special effects”.