Hot shot film producer Sharon (Moran Rosenblatt) flies home from abroad only to discover that her husband won’t let her past the gate entryphone to their home on arrival. Furious, she borrows (or, technically, steals) his parked car so she can go about her business. On arrival at her empty office, her long-standing assistant Alma (Lia Barnett) informs her that the bailiffs have taken everything.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, so she takes a meeting with another producer who under normal circumstancea she wouldn’t touch with a barge pole but who is snowed under with projects and wants her to take one of them off his hands. Thus, she becomes the producer of a comeback movie by a notorious womaniser who gave it all up to become an ultra-conservative rabbi, Uzi Silver (Rami Heuberger), a star who hasn’t worked for several years, i. The money is already in place from the Film Fund, so the project should be a piece of cake. It all looks too good to be true. And, as so often in life, when something looks too good to be true, it usually is.
Her fears abut the rabbi are confirmed when she learns that he won’t allow any women on the set apart from herself, nor will he negotiate with her (female) line producer in the room. And there’s no script – well, adapted from 1 Samuel 18-31 (this refers to the Hebrew Bible, which is apparently chaptered and versed slightly differently from the Christian one), the script is the story of King Saul visiting the Witch at Endor prior to his military defeat and his falling on his own sword. All she has to do is get someone to write a script and he’ll rubber stamp it. He himself is to play King Saul while his wife, the star who played alongside him on the last film before they got out of the movie business, is to play the Witch of Endor. To write the script, Sharon enlists the help of her old friend Shai (Uri Gottleib).
To reveal what happens next would be to spoil the film, except to say that this is one of those films where if anything can possibly go wrong for the central character, then it does. Somewhat curiously, it was billed in the festival blurb as a screwball comedy, however, I personally wouldn’t apply that label to it and fear anyone seeing this with that expectation would be severely disappointed. Thinking about it in retrospect, there IS comedy here, but it’s black comedy of the wry observation variety which may make you smile after the event but won’t make you laugh at the time.
The film is shot in stylish black and white apart from occasional sequences in preview theatres watching parts of the movie (only the odd clip here or there makes it into the film that we, the audience, are watching) which are in colour. This is scarely a new trick (see, for instance, Belfast, Kenneth Branagh, 2021) but it’s a tried and tested one that does the job. Elsewhere, the piece is nicely paced: director Anner and his editor keep it moving along nicely and you’ll agonise alongside Sharon as she undergoes one terrible experience after another.
Set in present day Jerusalem, it presents the movie business as essentially areligious in a wider culture which is clearly steeped in one of the major world religions, i.e. Judaism. The movie business is almost portrayed as a religion with its own set of irrefutable tenets (no-one puts it in these terms, but, for example, thou shalt offer opportunities for employment equally to members of both sexes) which are challenged, for good or ill, by those of conservative Orthodox Judaism (men should not touch or even associate with women, for they are unclean – my paraphrase) with the members of the Film Fund just as shocked as Sharon with Uzi’s “no women other than you on the set” demand to the point where they momentarily consider cancelling the funding.
You could argue, though, that non-association with women is exactly what Sharon’s husband does to her at the start of the piece. You could also argue that the only way she gets her films made is because she has a rich husband who bankrolls her (until, at the start of this, he no longer does) which makes it quite a smart sideswipe at the idea of the film producer who has got there by dint of hard work and talent alone. No-one suggests Sharon isn’t talented (although she’s fallen on producer’s hard times and the Uzi Silver / King Saul project is clearly her selling out, making something in which she doesn’t really believe in order to get some easy money), but equally it seems that without her husband, she is (financially) nothing, itself an ultra-conservative idea.
There would apear to be many more layers to this film on reflection, which might reveal themselves on further viewing; on first watch, however, it comes across simply as a great ride.
The Good Person plays in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
Another banker guaranteed to thrill watchers is the casino gambling scene. Its drama, ingenuity and tension will have gamblers and non-gamblers alike on the edge of their seats.
Those who do like to bet in Canadian real money casinos see something of themselves in such movies, a point encapsulated by some of the features on DMovies, the platform for thought-provoking cinema. Read more from our writer Jacek Michałski on casino cinema and plenty of other subjects here.
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The dirtiest casino-related scenes
So, what do online casinos such as betamo look to achieve for their Polish customers and beyond? They want the feel of their casino to be like some of the great casino scenes we’ve witnessed in glamorous movies. These best casino scenes and many more classic movie moments have been enjoyed by so many casino lovers in Poland throughout the years.
The movies below are listed in chronological order, along with their trailer:
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1. Dr No (Terence Young, 1962):
Dr No features the first big-screen version of Bond, played by the late and great Sean Connery. In the first of many classic Bond movies, the protagonist is seen in his favourite place: at the casino table with a vodka martini in hand and a beautiful Bond Girl right by his side.
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2. Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988):
A classic movie about autism and brotherly love. Raymond, played by Dustin Hoffman, has a photographic memory leading his brother Charlie (Tom Cruise) to come up with a very peculiar idea.
Heading to Las Vegas, the brothers aim to win enough money to pay off Charlie’s $80,000 debt by taking advantage of Raymond’s card-counting abilities in blackjack to land the big one.
When the movie reached 30 years of age, it sparked a debate on whether or not it was good for autism awareness.
Rain Man is also pictured at the top of this article.
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3. Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995):
Given that this is a movie entirely about the casino business, specifically its mob ties in the ’60s and ’70s and about one prominent casino boss, there are too many great scenes to even list here.
A Martin Scorsese flick, Casino features greats such as Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone who will be remembered for throwing someone else’s chips high in the air early in the movie.
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4. Ocean’s Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001):
A remake of the 1960’s Rat Pack original, Ocean’s Eleven and its two sequels feature casino scenes heavily with the first in the series being among the most popular movies of its type.
In this version featuring George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon among others, the gang have tasked themselves with stealing $160 million from the vault of The Mirage, the Bellagio and the MGM Grand.
In a classic scene set beneath the casinos, Clooney and Damon reach the door to the vault before the former realises his detonator doesn’t work and he can’t blow the door, something that saves a team mate’s life.
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5. Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006):
Given that this was another rebirth of Bond with Daniel Craig now taking the role, his character was more of a novice without yet having a licence to kill.
Bond must destroy terrorist kingmaker Le Chiffre. His plan is to play the villain in a high-stakes game of Texas Hold’em, beat him, and bankrupt the antagonist. Needless to say, things do not go quite to plan in the private casino.
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6. The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009):
A brilliant comedy and a modern classic. One of the funniest scenes in the first movie of this franchise is the partial comedic remake of the above Rain Man scenes, featuring Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis coming down the escalator in the same way Cruise and Hoffman did in the original scene.
Watching any of these movies and their key scenes makes you want to hop straight to the nearest casino for yourself. Remember though, the outcome you’re hoping for is often different in real life!
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)…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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 last major film festival of the summer season before Oscar hype ramps up in the autumn, Locarno’s reputation is builtupon its eclectic and unconventional programme. Its standout cinema is the Piazza Grande — with over 8,000 available seats, it’s the largest outdoor screen in the world (pictured below) — which crucially means that queueing is a lot less stressful than during Venice or Cannes. This year’s Festival, curated for the first time by Lili Hinstin since Carlo Chatrian moved to the Berlinale, might be low on the big names, but nonetheless offers an exciting, experimentaland challenging line-up. From the Moving Ahead section, focusing on cinema’s most obscure edges to the retrospective Shades of Black — celebrating black cinema in all its forms — this year’s Festival champions that which is daring, different and auteur-driven. The event takes place from August 7th to the 17th.
Here are the 10 films we are most excited for!
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1. 7500 (Patrick Vollrath):
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a great knack for taking traditional genre fare and turning it into something that seems vital. He stars in 7500 as a young pilot tasked with negotiating with plane hijackers. Given that this premise is one of the most overcrowded of micro-genres, it will be interesting to see if 7500 — referring to the code pilots use in the event of a hijacking — can rise above its predecessors into something truly worthwhile. The claustrophobic clips released so far suggest a rather minimalist and claustrophobic approach, requiring Gordon-Levitt to really step up and carry the film all by himself.
Easily the most anticipated film at the festival, Tarantino’s ninth film sees the postmodern auteur return to the LA locale of his first three films. Received to rapturous applause at Cannes, this Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt-starring lament for a passing age of Hollywood, set against the backdrop of the Manson Murders, has been touted by some as a return to form following the middling The Hateful Eight (2015). Known for provoking endless discussion, it will be fascinating to see how he tackles the horrendous Manson murders and makes it entertaining and meaningful.
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3. Days of The Bagnold Summer (Simon Bird):
Yes, its Will from The Inbetweeners (2008-2010) with his debut film playing in competition at a major international film festival! Days of the Bagnold Summer, adapted from the graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, looks like a classic coming-of-age tale, telling the story of a young heavy-metal loving teen who is forced to spend his holiday’s with his annoying mother. Featuring an airy Belle and Sebastian soundtrack, and performances from Tamsin Greig, Rob Brydon and Earl Cave, it seems to be another thoughtful addition to the British oddball teen canon.
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4. Space Dogs (Elisa Kremser, Levin Peter):
Laika was the first living creature to ever be sent into space by the Soviet Union, dying in the name of scientific progress. Legends say that the dog returned to earth and lives among the streets of Moscow as a ghost. Experimental documentary Space Dogs looks to be an unconventional look at animal-human relations, and how progress can easily come at a cost to the earth’s most friendly animals. Interestingly enough, this film comes with a content warning while the inevitably violent Once Upon A Time In Hollywood doesn’t. Dog lovers beware!
Asif Kapadia has established himself as one of the best profilers in the documentary business with character portraits of legends such as Amy Whinehouse (Amy, 2015) and Brazilian F1 Driver Artyon Senna (Senna, 2010). For his latest work, he turns to arguably the greatest footballer of all time, Diego Maradona, utilising an extraordinary 500 hours of unused footage to go deep on his mythical stature. With critics saying that deep knowledge of football is not required to enjoy the movie, it seems that Kapadia has found a way to use Maradona’s tale to enquire into deeper truths regarding the human condition.
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6. Wilcox (dir. Denis Côté):
The preeminent Quebecois auteur Denis Côté’s previous film, Ghost Town Anthology (2019)may have already been released this year after positive buzz at Berlinale, but he’s already back at it again with the experimental film Wilcox. Running only 63 minutes long and featuring no dialogue, it seems Côté is taking his minimalist instincts to a new level; telling the quiet story of a hermit living beyond the normal bounds of society, surviving on his wits alone in the vast countryside.
Wilcox is also pictured at the top of this article.
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7. Echo (Rúnar Rúnarsson):
The most exciting contemporary director to come out of Iceland, Rúnar Rúnarsson tells sensitive, family-focused tales set against the beautiful backdrop of the rugged and barren countryside. Often filmed in grainy 16mm, his body of work does a lot with little dialogue yet strong and evocative gestures. His latest is set during Christmas time, and features only 56 scenes; foregoing a traditional narrative to create an entire portrait of Icelandic society. Judging from his boldly shot trailer, this could perhaps be his best film yet.
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8. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot):
Already released to highly positive reception in the USA, The Last Black Man in San Francisco makes its debut on European shores. At tale of gentrification that leaves the African-American community of San Francisco behind, it has been touted as a highly lyrical and dreamlike depiction of a city that has changed beyond measure. It stars Jimmie Falls playing a version of himself, attempting to reclaim his childhood home built by his grandfather. Picked up by A24, currently the hottest independent film studio in the USA, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays over the pond.
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9. A Voluntary Year (Ulrich Köhler):
The Berlin school — comprised of directors such as Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec — have been making serious waves on the arthouse scene recently, from Berlinale to beyond. Ulrich Köhler may not specifically be from Berlin, but his work — bold, uncompromising and completely its own — fits the ticket exactly. His last film, In My Room (2018) took a wistful look at the end of the world, while the upcoming A Voluntary Year tells the story of a girl taking a gap year volunteering abroad, possibility separating her from her father. It’ll be fascinating to see what Köhler does with the topic here.
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10. To The Ends of the Earth (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa):
An Uzbekistan-Japan co-production, To The End of The Earth is a clash of civilisations story; depicting a young Japanese woman’s travels to the central Asian country to film the latest episode of her travel show. Here she has the bizarre aim of capturing a legendary fish; once again showing Kurosawa’s love of blending genres together, mixing together comedy, thriller and romance for good effect. The closing film of the festival, it’ll be the second Kurosawa film to premiere at Locarno after Real (2013).
DMovies critic Redmond Bacon will be at the festival. Follow DMovies for our exclusive coverage of the event!
Overwhelming, confounding, peerless. To watch Roma for the first time is to know that you’re in the presence of something special, an artist at the top of their game, a feat of formalist, analogue filmmaking, the kind of great movie that only comes along once or twice in a decade. It’s a year in the life of a family in Mexico City 1970-71, and particularly Cleo, their maid, as director Alfonso Cuarón takes the opportunity to provide the audience with an experiential roller coaster of set pieces, through high and low society, political upheaval and intimate chamber moments.
This approach has led to critical rapture (including 10 Oscar nominations, tied with the most ever for a foreign language film) but questions have also been raised about the minimisation of a largely silent maid by an upper-middle-class filmmaker. You might find those problems too, but this is a film searching for answers, rather than the open ignorance of your problematic fave. Every time Cleo seems to behave as an organic part of the family unit, by joining in conversation, or sitting with them while they watch TV, it’s stopped dead by someone giving her an order.
Cuarón never allows you to forget about the master/servant relationship, and that’s the point. Especially when the film’s exploration of Los Halcones and the Corpus Christi Massacre becomes the focal point of the narrative, these contexts of power are revealed to feed into each other. True, Cleo doesn’t talk much, but no one does. And when an outburst does finally come toward the end of the film, it is crushing, snapping Cleo’s entire psychology into place and questioning how much we have actually known about her interior life. Gladly, the Academy has seen enough in what Yalitza Aparicio and Marina De Tavira as the family matriarch do to reward their subtle work.
You have to look at this as less about a particular character than it is about the place, the time, the memory. You might think of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010), or Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies, 1987), how the camera monitors these ghosts as though unbound by time. That distance is the major change in Cuarón’s style. Where he once relied on the Chivo driven, Steadicam heavy technique as means to immersion, here his distance, heavily detailed production design and costuming, and a well-timed cut creates, funnily enough, a stronger bond with the film than those twirling camera moves of his past few films.
And it’s the details that transport the movie into a poetic realm where we really do feel as though we are watching memories projected: like a man being shot from a canon, a car driving through marching band, children at a New Year party running from a man in a bear costume. The cinema scenes grabbed me. Curtains closing on a film as soon as it ends, so the credits still project onto velvet, is a little touch that puts you into the mind of a young Alfonso Cuarón. The director inserts you into his brain by inserting images from his other films, like locations from Y Tu Mamá También (2001) and a clip of an astronaut from Marooned (Sturges, 1969), which nods to Cuarón’s inspiration for Gravity (2013).
And then there’s the motif of water, from a bucket washing away dog poop to those climactic waves. Cuarón uses them like Woolf did, as a visual expression for bouts of pain and depression. But at times in Roma, water can mea n the very opposite. Because it’s a film of rhymes both visual and audible. The maximalist sound design plays a large part in how we experience and are immersed into this world. The direction is so muscular, it’s a vast undertaking of David Lean proportions where they’ve built full streets and inhabited them to create the most epic experience. That appeals to the Film Twitter bros, and Cuarón always has the tendency to lean into that stuff. But if we accept immersion as his aim, then each moment is imbued with an honest to God purpose that pays off in a way that his other similarly bloated compatriots, ‘The Three Amigos’ do not with their own recent grandiose epics. The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015) delivers shot after shot of impact, without any camera motivation between shots. The Shape of Water (Del Toro, 2017) is like an episode of Riverdale, empty pop culture references softening the patronising social message. Roma is imposing, it loudly pronounces its cinematic lineage (the Neorealists shout loudest, Fellini and Pontecorvo especially). But it’s the real deal.
I have now seen the film three times: in the cinema, on television, and on my laptop. To complete the cycle, I really need to stream it on my phone, as Cuarón (or at least, Ted Sarandos) intended. I can’t pretend that there isn’t a best way to see it. As with any film, cinema is king. But see it wherever suits you, whenever suits you, just make sure you see it. Because this might be one for the history books.
Roma is available on Netflix and in Curzon Cinemas now!
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Another year has gone by, and DMovies is now nearly two years old. We were launched in February 2016, which makes 2017 our first year fully operational (from January to December). In the past 12 months, we have published more than 200 reviews, 40 articles and held eight screenings of our favourite dirty movies across London. Plus, we have attended the three major film festivals in Europe: Cannes, Berlin and Venice, plus Sundance and Tribeca across the pond. To boot, we have partnered with ArteKino and with The Film Agency/ Under the Milky Way in order to promote the best films on VoD in the UK, Europe and beyond.
This means that we have been extremely busy unearthing the dirtiest gems of cinema being made in all corners of the planet. It was extremely difficult to selected the dirtiest films from such an extensive pool, so we asked our top six contributors to cherry-pick their dirty favourites of the year. Each contributor picked one. That’s six films. The other four films were selected by our readers – they are the most read reviews between January and now.
These 10 films are from countries as diverse as Syria, Brazil, France, Israel, Italy and Germany/Australia. Sadly no British film made it to the list this year. These movies with deal complex and profound topics such as war (Foxtrot and Insyriated are very anti-war), sexuality (the twisted The Double Lover and the LGBT romance Call me by Your Name), misogyny (Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story), but also more lighthearted, puerile issues (The Florida Project and My Life as a Courgette). What all of these films have in common is that they will hit you like a ton of bricks, and cause you to reflect about your own life!
Check out the full list below, which is sorted in no specific order. Just don’t forget to click on the film titles in order to accede to our exclusive dirty review!
Get ready for a feast for the eyes. A visual orgasm conceived by DOP Giora Bejach. The creativity shows in every single frame, with a variety of angles, lighting and textures.Foxtrot is both a beautiful film and a piece of art, plus an incendiary anti-war statement. The visual ballet divided in three acts: Michael Feldman (Lior Ashkenazi) is informed that his son Jonathan (Yonatan Sharay), a conscript in the Israeli Army, has died; Jonathan’s days of military service in the Israeli Defense Forces, and; a long conversation between Michael and Jonathan’s mother, Dafna (Sarah Adler). Each act has a distinctive touch, and all three are strangely pleasant to watch.
For 85 minutes you will have to wear the shoes of Oum Yazan (in a rivetting performance delivered by the Palestinian actress and film director Hiam Abbass), as she does everything within reach in order to protect her family inside her flat in Damascus, as the Syrian War is just beginning to loom. You will be locked with Oum and seven other people in the relative safety of her middle-class dwelling, while a cannonade of bombs and machine gun fire explodes outside.
Urgent in its simplicity, the effective Insyriated will haunt you for some time. It’s a painful reminder that tragedy can strike at anytime, and that there is no such thing as a safe home. It’s also a call for action: every country should open their doors to Oum, Halima and their families.
We regret to inform you that Pennywise has been uncrowned and also stripped of his title as the dirtiest clown ever. The accolade has been rightly claimed by Brazilian Bingo. The difference is that instead of scaring and killing children, his South American counterpart subverts childhood in a very unusual way. He infuses it with swagger, malice, sensuality and a dash of naughty humour. And he’s also a little Camp. Most Americans and Europeans would cringe at the teachings of this very unusual prankster.
The character is in based on the real story of Arlindo Barreto, the first Bozo (The American clown character, which never featured on British media) on Brazilian television, back in the 1980s – his name was changed to Bingo on the movie in order to avoid legal trademark issues, and also for the sake of more artistic freedom.
Bingo: The King of the Mornings was released just last week, and it’s in cinemas now. Its immediate popularity with our readers catapulted it to our top 10.
Simply orgasmic. Ozon’s latest film is an incredibly arresting, sexy and funny study of love, sexuality and emotional breakdown. Chloé (Marine Vatch) begins an affair with her psychologist Paul (Jérémier Renier), after she has recovered from anxiety and some apparently psychosomatic stomach pains. Paul is strong and confident, while Chloé is frail and insecure. Her looks and vulnerability, plus some of the sex scenes, reminded me a lot of Mia Farrow of Polanski 1968 classic Rosemary’s Baby – minus the blond hair. Like Rosemary, she begins to suspect that her husband is concealing something from her and – despite her insecurities – she begins to investigate his life. She soon discovers that he changed his surname, but that’s just the beginning.
The Double Lover, which is also pictured at the top of this article, was selected by our readers. It was by far the most read review of the year, suggesting that our dirty readers love a little twisted randy action! It’s yet to hot UK cinemas, so stay tuned!
This modern take on Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971) is an emotional, rapturous and sensual queer love story taking place in northern Italy, and it will immediately steak your heart.
In the summer of 1983 in northern Italy, Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a 17-year-old boy, is about to receive a guest in his aristocratic house. He is lending his bed to Oliver (Armie Hammer), a 24-year-old American scholar who has some work to do with Elio’s father (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor specialising in Greco-Roman culture. Elio and Oliver will share the same toilet as well as a desire for each other.
Call me by Your Name was selected by Maysa Monção.
The streets will feel boring and dim after you’ve watched Good Time. Working with Robert Pattinson in a role written specifically for him after seeing the brothers’ previous film Heaven Knows What (2014) – a bleak examination of a young woman’s addiction to heroin – the narrative follows Connie Nikas’ (Pattinson) quest to get his mental disabled brother, Nick, out of jail before anything life-threatening happens to him. Even before the retro Good Time title appears on screen, accompanied by a heavenly synth based score, you gain an intimate understanding of both brothers and their relationship.
As the manipulative Connie, Pattinson manages to create a human who produces both disgusts and sympathy; he is a natural-born saviour who has rejected the only paternal figure in his life. His ability to be whoever whenever is undoubtedly a gift. Acting up to police officers in lies that flow effortlessly from his mouth, Pattinson is effectively acting within acting. To Corey (Jennifer Jason Leigh) he is her affectionate toy boy. Yet, Connie only sees her as a spare credit card for Nick’s bail money and a free ride around town.
The Florida Project is “a loving look at the innocence of childhood”, as announced in the film trailer. Everything the camera captures is from the point of view of three children. Sean Baker is best known for his dirty Christmas film Tangerine (2015).
Baker represents the lives of marginalised Americans. The director uses photography in order to tell a story. Mooney and Jacey want to get to the pot of gold at end of the rainbow. The colourful rainbow is a symbol of the journey the kids are about to start. They desire to get out of the margins of society. The photography is not only beautiful, but it is a meaningful part of the story.
Unlike so many mainstream children’s films which are designed to capture young minds by throwing relentless, rapid fire sounds and images at them, this one concentrates on the plight of its characters and how they deal with deep-seated social issues confronting them. A wry observational humour underscores the whole thing, as when Simon explains to the others that the final point of “doing it” is that “the man’s willy explodes”.
This is a striking script adaptation of a book realised with a real love for the craft of the stop frame animation process. Yet it’s much more than that, too: tackling difficult social issues head on whilst delivering convincing child (and adult) characters with lots of rough edges in a simple story which holds the viewer’s attention throughout.
My Life as a Courgette was selected by Jeremy Clarke.
She was just 16 and she was a natural born star. She was the first woman who simulated an orgasm in cinema. Hedy Lamarr could have stopped her career soon after she appeared in the film Ecstasy (Machaty, 1933), but she didn’t. The feature contains nudity. What a bold woman! Beautiful and twisted face,. But she wanted more than a quick and fake pleasure. She wanted to be recognised as a clever woman. So she devised a secret communication system to help the Allies to beat the Nazis. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is a historical doc that inspires us not to be defined by the labels that other people stick on us without asking.
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story was selected by our readers. It’s one of the most read pieces of the year, despite seeing no theatrical distribution in the UK, and just a couple of ad hoc screenings. Time to fix that and place Hedy where she truly belongs, in front of huge audiences, recognised for both her looks and her skills.
Clare (Teresa Palmer) is an Australian photojournalist visiting Berlin and trying to capture some of the city’s essence with her camera. As both a female and a foreigner who doesn’t speak the language, the actress conveys a sense of extreme vulnerability without coming across as clueless and stupid. There’s lingering fear in her eyes, even in the most trivial actions such as having a glass of wine or crossing the street. She soon falls for the handsome and charming local lecturer Andi, who eventually locks her up and turns her into some sort of sex slave.
The dirtiest aspect of Berlin Syndrome is that, unlike in the syndrome named after the Swedish capital, the victim here does not gradually begin to identify with her kidnapper. The frail and vulnerable foreigner here defies all expectations and instead morphs into a headstrong escapee. It’s remarkable that female directors are embracing the male-dominated field of suspense and horror, and to dirtylicious results.
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!
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.
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.
Next time you go to the cinema be careful. The outcome could be far from rosy. Some films are just so powerful that they can trigger the most violent and unexpected physical reactions from viewers. That apparently innocent and innocuous movie could have a devastating impact on your mortal body. And I’m not talking about sobbing and crying: that’s very vanilla. These films have made people vomit, urinate, ejaculate, have a heart attack, commit suicide and much more. Cinema can have incendiary and deadly implications to your health.
Of course we are not asking you to stop going to the cinema or to shudder in fear every time you press “Play” on your DVD or Blu-ray. We just want you to be aware that it’s never “just a film”! And sometimes your body has very strange ways of telling you something just isn’t right! So be prepared!
By the way, the picture at the top of this article at the top is not from a hysterical and bedazzled moviegoer reacting to a film. That’s instead Isabelle Adjani in the dirty 1981 classic Possession (Andrzej Żuławski). She’s expelling bodily fluids from pretty much every orifice of her body, as she has an alien miscarriage in a Berlin subway. Her reaction is not very different from some you are about read, so we thought this was a good way to start our discussion!
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1. Vomiting during Raw (Julia Ducounau, 2017)
Raw tells the story of 16-year-old Justine (Garance Marillier), who arrives for her first year in veterinary school somewhere in provincial France. She comes from a family of strict vegetarians, and she has never eaten meat herself, but she’s then forced to consume rabbits kidneys during an initiation ritual. She’s goaded by her upperclass sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) to engage in the bizarre procedure for sake of acceptance. Soon after, a very bizarre accident happens, causing Justine to have her first contact with raw human flesh and to develop a taste for cannibalism. Click here for our review of the film.
2. Explosion of bodily fluids during 50 Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015):
The infamous 2015 American erotic romantic drama stirred a lot of controversy, churned plenty of stomachs and also, of course, aroused many viewers. Despite receiving generally negative reviews as well as winning six nominations at the 36th Golden Raspberry Awards, it was an immediate box office hit. The film is based on the eponymous 2011 novel by British writer E. L. James and stars Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele, a college graduate who begins a sadomasochistic relationship with young business magnate Christian Grey, played by Jamie Dornan.
A female at a packed showing of the film at the Cineworld Milton Keynes caused the entire audience to be evacuated after losing control of her bodily fluids. The woman, believed to be under the influence of alcohol, started vomiting. But then things got even worse when she lost control of all her bodily fluids, including her bladder and bowels. It’s not entirely clear which part of the film triggered such extreme physical reactions. She certain to make Isabelle Adjani jealous, and would be at the front of the queue for a remake of Possession!
3. Mass ejaculation, also during 50 Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015)*:
In New Zealand, Matthew Garelli, general manager of Hoyts Cinemas New Zealand, told media today that he “understands fully” just how exciting the film will be “for some,” but asked viewers to please respect cinemas’ private property, and try not to leave “too much of a mess”. Moviegoers were kindly requested not to ejaculate on their seats or on each other, and instead to use specially designated cups handed out with their tickets.
4. Seizures while watching Twilight: Breaking Dawn (Bill Condon, 2011)
This apparently harmless romantic fantasy film is based on the eponymous novel by Stephenie Meyer, and it is the first part of a two-part film, and it also forms the fourth and penultimate installment in The Twilight Saga film series. All three main cast members, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner, reprised their roles.
The unexpected problem with this film is a birthing scene, which could have triggered episodes of photosensitive epilepsy, according to medical experts in the US. A California man named Brandon Gephart, was reportedly rushed to hospital after getting sick while watching the sequence. He started convulsing, snorting and trying to breathe, and the screening had to be stopped when the paramedics arrived. Not quite the jolly experience you’d expect from a fantasy movie!
5. Heart attack while watching porn:
Be thrilled: we’re now back on British soil! Back in 2010, authorities found the seminaked body of Nicola Paginton with a sex toy and porn. The nanny was found in her bed by her employer after she did not turn up for work and police were called to investigate. She was without pants and had a pornographic movie on her laptop. A sex toy was found under the covers near her body. A subsequent pathologist’s report determined that she likely suffered a heart attack as a result of sexual arousal. Gloucestershire coroner Alan Crickmore had determined that her “sexual activity” triggered a heart attack.
6. Miscarriage during Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932):
Carnival sideshow performers with real deformities and medical conditions are the stars of the controversial Freaks. They includesthe Bearded Lady, the Stork Woman, the Half-Boy Johnny Eck, the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet, the Human Torso, the Armless Wonder as well as various sufferers of the Virchow-Seckel Syndrome (which gives humans a bird-like appearance with a narrow face and pointy nose). The central plot is around an able-bodied trapeze artist called Cleopatra, who deduces and marries the sideshow midget Hans upon finding out about his large inheritance.
The film was so shocking that it was heavily edited down to just 62 minutes (from the original 98 minutes). Still, viewers convulsed, vomited and left the cinema in droves. And a woman allegedly had a miscarriage while watching it. Just click here in order to find out more about Freaksand its impact on the people’s lives and the cinema industry as a whole.
7. Suicide after watching Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977):
Ok, we’ve cheated. Suicide isn’t exactly a physical reaction. But the implications for your body are immediate, and so we decided that it was just too closely associated.
A lot of people know that Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis listened to Iggy Pop’s album The Idiot shortly before he committed suicide in 1980. But what a lot people don’t know is that he also watched the bleak Stroszek, by the German enfant terrible Werner Herzog.
The film follows the footsteps of Bruno Stroszek, an alcoholic recently released from prison in Berlin. He joins his elderly friend and a prostitute in a determined dream to leave Germany and seek a better life in Wisconsin. This is some sort of twisted American Dream, which obviously never comes to fruition. In fact, the characters excel in aimlessness, selfishness and scrupulousness. So much that Curtis decided it was no longer worth being part of this world!
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This is not the first time that we’ve discussed the effects of cinema on people. Last year we wrote about the top 10 films in which the character eventually found their way into the real world, often to catastrophic results. Real life imitates fiction, quite literally. Don’t be scared, click here for our very dirty list of films that became a tragic reality.
* Since the publication of this article, we have been reliably informed by a reader with a sharp eye for detail that the “mass ejaculation” source was a satire website. Blimey, why did it have to be the most fun of the physical reactions on the list?
Time flies by! DMovies was launched in February 2016 and since then our team watched seen hundreds of dirty and thought-provoking films from every corner of the planet. We have published nearly 250 films reviews, plus a number of articles, many professional profiles and organised screenings across the UK.
Now we decided to cherry-pick the 10 best gems of the year, so that you don’t have to do it. They are listed below in no specific order. These films have challenged conventions, stereotypes, held a mirror to communities and individuals. That because at DMovies we believe that cinema is far more than a mere entertainment. It’s a powerful weapon that can bring about positive change!
While 2016 was a annus horribilis with the rise of the far-right in Europe, the Great Trumptator and even a coup d’état in Brazil, at least there was no shortage of dirty and subversive, creative minds in the cinema world. And there is plenty of hope for 2017!
These masterpieces will force audiences face their own fears and demons, and the outcome isn’t always rosy. It often leaves audiences shaky and scarred, with a rancid taste in the mouth and a rank and offensive odour everywhere. It’s like a spiritual cleansing, a sensorial exorcism. You become a dirty person. So buckle up and read on, watch the films you haven seen yet and get set for an yet filthier 2017, with plenty of innovative and provocative movies to follow!
The largest country in Latin American is mosaic of cultures and races, but also of conflicts and paradoxes. Kleber Mendonça Filho’s latest film has come to epitomise those in the shape of the Clara, an obstinate and tenacious woman probably in her 60s, mother to three children and several grandchildren. She lives in a building named Aquarius, in the Brazilian city of Recife.
Aquarius premiered in Cannes earlier this year, where the actors held signs after the screening denouncing the recent coup d’état in Brazil. The illegitimate Brazilian government retaliated by giving the film an adult certificate and also by not submitting it to the Oscars. Several Brazilian filmmakers – including Gabriel Mascaro, Eliane Caffé and Aly Muritiba – demonstrated solidarity with Mendonça Filho by withdrawing their films from the competition. Aquarius – already a symbol of physical and emotional resilience – has since also become a symbol of political resistance.
The dramatic vigour of the movie lies in the absurdities that benefit claimants have to face, supported by cogent and astute performances. Both the filmmaker and the actors and in sync with the plight of the people they depict. The film is also a reminder that a honest and trustworthy person could eventually stumble into such horrible predicament, and so we should always exercise solidarity.
I, Daniel Blake is a tearjerker, but not because it relies on forlumaic devices – such as melodramatic music, plot ruses and unexpected twists. Ir is not exploitative and it never evokes extravagant emotions. The film is so effective because it’s is extremely accurate in its realism, a quality virtually absent in the British mainstream media and cinema. While the story is fictional, the plot is entirely based on real horror stories from people on benefits interviewed by Ken Loach and his long-time scripwriter Paul Laverty.
The Greasy Strangler tastes different to all the other films in the kitchen of Sundance programming director Trevor Groth. It is like giving cinema-goers a messy bowl of jelly instead of popcorn or M&M’s. It is an unpretentious and puerile new flavour and experience.
British director Jim Hosking and scriptwriter Toby Harvard took very high risks sending their first feature to Sundance in the US. First, they are not American Indies; they are also not famous. The Greasy Strangler, a story about a greedy clumsy dad and his alike maladjusted son, was on six screening rooms in last January at the original Sundance Film Festival, a relatively low tally given the dimensions of the event.
The film is also píctured at the top of the article.
Gimme Danger is not only a love letter to The Stooges, but also a fine piece of art. A collage. Jarmusch breaks the rules of rocumentary genre by throwing in fragments of films illustrating Pop’s memories of his early years in Detroit and his first gigs. Don’t expect mere archive footages explaining the musical, cultural, political and historical context in which The Stooges emerged.
Indeed he was the first rock artist to ignore the fourth wall, the space which separates a performer from an audience. He invented stage diving. He invited the audience to go on stage while he would be down, singing and enjoying himself. Iggy Pop is the terror of security guards.
The Killing$ of Tony Blair reveals how a single politician destroyed Iraq, destabilised the Middle East and imploded the foundations of his own Labour Party at home. At times the film has traces of Michael Moore, with colourful charts and maps and some banter. At one point, Galloway knocks at Tony Blair’s door to no avail, similarly to what the American documentarist does to the subjects of his films. Overall, however, the British film has a much more serious tone. Perhaps that’s because Galloway is an insider (he was an MP until last year) and the film was crowdfunded by 5,000 pundits in the UK, ensuring that it remains less jaunty and whimsical.
It is unfair to describe The Killing$ of Tony Blair as one-sided and sanctimonious, as some of the British media have. In reality, the film is a very urgent statement against the media bias and political spin that drive most successful politicians in this country, New Labour and Tory.
Crosscurrent tells the story of young captain Gao Chun (Qin Hao), who steers his boat overloaded with fish up the Yangtze river. He is been in charge of delivering the commercial cargo in exchange for for a reasonable sum of money. Along his journey, he meets the magic figure of a woman over and over, and she seems to become younger the closer he gets to the source of the river.
The cinematography is breathtaking, just like the pollution that is taking over China. It is also one of the most beautiful and spectacular films in the history of cinema, a true masterpiece. Each take in the film is carefully balanced and crafted, like a Michelangelo painting. Despite its nostalgic and stoic tone, Crosscurrent is a film about reconciliation with irreversible changes. Upon reaching the source of the Yangtze, Chun realises that time cannot be turned around. There is no doubt that the new Yangtze is oddly fascinating – perhaps because it is so dirty, precarious and nostalgic.
Hannah Arendt’s work remains as urgent today as it did more than 40 years ago, when the controversial Jewish-German philosopher died in her post-war home in New York. Much of the Jewish establishment on both sides of the Atlantic has consistently dismissed Arendt’s opinions for her alleged leniency of the crimes committed by the Nazis on her own people, and for her apparent forgiveness of the Holocaust.
Despite more than two hours of duration and the complex philosophical content, Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt is an effective and digestible film. It is riveting and comprehensible even for those who never heard of Arendt before.
In a remote and cold coastal town in Chile – presumably in the far south of the country – Sister Monica dwells with four priests who have retired from church and society because they have committed crimes. Three of them, all of them homosexuals, abused children, while the fourth one snatched babies from teenage mothers and handed them to the wealthy. The “club” is a purgatory for erring priests.
The Club is a film painful and excruciating to watch not because it was poorly made, but because of the graphic detail, mostly in the dialogues. The retired, ageing priests are forced to confess their crimes to a younger priest sent by the Vatican. In addition, a victim of another molesting priest consistently haunts them by shouting out his clear-crystal memories at their windows. His abuser committed was meant to live at the home, too, but he committed suicide upon arrival at the beginning of the movie. Perhaps the most vividly shocking film of the year.
Hana (Alba Rohrwacher) lives with her sister Lila (Flonja Kodheli) and their parents in the remote mountains of Albania. Lila then escapes to the West in the hope of a better life, leaving Hana to care for her parents. Hana then decides to become Mark so that she can perform the family duties that only a man is allowed to carry out (such as handling a shotgun and hunting), according to strict social rules. She undergoes a conversion ritual, cuts her hair and begins to wear male clothes, all with the full consent and support of her parents as well as the rest of the community.
Italian director Laura Bispuri and editors Carlotta Cristiani and Jacopo Quadri (click here for his dirty profile) crafted a convincing tale that is both visually attractive and emotionally gripping. The snowy mountains of rural Albania are contrasted with the multi-coloured and fast-paced urban life in Italy. Rohrmacher’s performance as both Mark and Hana is superb, and she quietly yet effectively conveys a vast array of complex feelings.
Our last film on the last is from the prescient (he anticipated Trump’s unlikely victory) and controversial American documentarist Michael Moore. This time he “invades” nine foreign countries and claims the best aspects of their living so that they can be incorporated into the United States. He goes to eight European countries and Tunisia.
It is impossible to dismiss the importance of the United States in the world, and many positive values imbued in the American constitution and the American dream. Likewise with Michael Moore, it is impossible to deny his importance to world cinema, despite his foolish and misleading shenanigans.
