Bit of effort to find a tasteful graphic for this one..

Being old and middle-aged I was lucky enough (or perhaps in view of the film itself “unlucky enough” is more accurate) to see Salo when it was not banned in Australia. During the dark days of the Howard Regime of course a lot of films wowsers obviously could not understand got themselves banned after being available to see for decades. Every backward society goes through these phases, they even banned Last Tango in Paris in some places. After all if I am in government and I find something offensive then I must ban it from everyone according to my own moral and religious dictum’s, regardless of whether they actually agree with them (not)…

Salo is perhaps most appropriately about fascism (see above) and is one of those films that is both awful to watch and so full of metaphors and symbols you have to sit through it at least once if you are a serious student of films. The central characters are a duke, magistrate, bishop and president representing the four forms of authority and from this the films many themes about abuse of power develop.

The film has been greatly criticized for its scenes of torture and various cruelty; that’s if you just watch them out of context and are into finger pointing. When you consider that the Director Pier Paolo Pasolini himself was a prisoner of the Gestapo and tortured over two days during World War II, you kind of start to see he might be trying to say something by the set days of torture inflicted on the films victims. Clearly he had experienced the basest of human behavior first-hand and wanted to show to us warts and all what was never shown in the history books. Clearly he had experienced abusive power (in his case nazism) first hand and wanted to horrify us by what unchecked power can be capable of.

Another criticism of the film was that the victims were represented as teenagers (although the actors were clearly older), extremists of the type that ended up seeing the film banned even suggested it was child pornography! Perhaps they are unaware that teenagers engage in sexuality? (if you could call anything in Salo “Sex’) I suspect they really felt as I do that the film was even more yucky because it was happening to adolescents. I doubt however that the film would have had its terrible impact had Pasolini inflicted his torture upon old crones and people my age; its the very fact that the victims are so young and innocent that we feel greater pity rather than maybe morbid curiosity in our emotionally blunted culture.

I can not say that Salo is a great film achievement because it isn’t and there are many problems with the way certain themes are investigated. I tend to feel that films should enlighten and inform, that suggestion is films greater power rather than actual graphic depiction. But that’s just what I think personally and everyone should have the right to see this or any film if they choose, to make up their own mind what is and isn’t offensive.

The on again off again banning of Salo

In Australia young girls giggle and talk about boys..in Africa they run at you screaming with an AK 47 or is that the other way around…

Rebelle or “War Witch” is the story of a child solider in Africa. Whilst the film was made by a Canadian company in the french language, there is considerable input from the inhabitants of that African continent producing a very realistic rendering of African child soldiers today.

Komona is abducted from her village and forced to shoot her parents to show her loyalty. She is then forced into a brutal training regime for one of the many wars Africa has going on all the time.

She somehow develops the ability to “see” where the enemy is hiding (the film gets all magic mushroomy and fantastic here) and becomes known as a witch. Probably because of the milky hallucinogenic sap the other soldiers keep forcing her to drink..She is taken to the rebel leader to act as his War Witch and advise him on tactics according to ritual.

Ok I know you all watched it to see Christina Rici naked!

One of Sweet Wednesday Adams (Christina Ricci’s) better works; not that she has really made a dud movie now that I think about it (she did worry me a bit in Monster though!), but Prozac Nation is probably some of her best work.

What is immediately striking about the film is the level of authenticity the director has sought in representing bipolar illness. Unlike other films directly on the subject like Mr Jones, Prozac Nation keeps the Hollywood drama to a minimum with little in the way of huge dramatic events; just the little debilitating things that make life almost impossible to bear for its many sufferers.

If you know someone with a depressive illness or bipolar you should watch this film, watch it even if you don’t to see a brilliant performance from Ricci and a film that asks awkward questions about the American lack-of-health-care-system (hopefully of old if Obama does his thing) and why exactly so many people are depressed and taking antidepressants in our culture.

A classic British psycho-thriller from the 1960’s Peeping Tom broke some new ground in the way film language describes mentally ill people. The film was quite controversial when it first appeared on our screens, some critics suggested that it in a lot of ways it put us the audience in the role of the peeping Tom..then again I’m sure that’s exactly what was intended. A lot of critics however got on their moral high-horse and effectively destroyed director Michael Powell’s career in England.

Peeping Tom follows a man who derives sexual pleasure from filming women in their dying moments, so he goes about killing them here there and everywhere. Carl Boehm is eery as the central character Mark Lewis who meets a girl he actually likes and struggles against his wanton needs..their are moments of tension in this film where you can cut the air with a knife all with that beautiful 1960’s colour!

He’s just got to be a sex-case with that moustache

A ground breaking film that explores two alternative journeys of young men dealing with sexual abuse by their little league coach as children.

Neil ends up as a teenage hustler, he always believed the abuse to be consensual as he had gay feelings from a young age. He believes the abuse made him “special”. As a teenager he no longer feels special and has unsafe encounters with older men somehow acting out the abuse over and over again.

Brian believes he was abducted by aliens because his family once saw a UFO. Until his nightmares begin to take on greater clarity he has visions of aliens violating his body.

The two finally meet and sitting in the house where Brian was first abused as a child they unravel the deeply hidden memories of the abuse.

A very hard film to watch which comes to us from Austria where the country was horrified by the kidnap and imprisonment of Natascha Kampusch for most of her childhood. After her release there was a gruesome sexualization of her plight by the Austrian press and later questions began to be asked about how the press reports such crimes.

The director of this film gives us no such option, being careful to avoid just this treatment of the subject. Michael starts off looking like an ordinary father and son getting about their business, until they get home and Michael is locked in a cellar. We realize he is a prisoner allowed out on carefully controlled walks and the man is a phaedophile horribly abusing him with almost commonplace disregard for the child. Fortunately most of the abuse is heavily implied and we are not subjected to the horrors of an over-graphic warts and all American telemovie.

This film has Brilliant performances from the main stars and it is impossible not to feel tormented anguish for the imprisoned boy (or indeed to feel like slowly torturing the man to death) so good is the acting. Hard as it is you will have to watch this movie to its end, the director torments us a fair bit in the last section of the film, but (spoiling it for you) this one won’t leave you sleepless.

The true story of Doctor Kinsey who compiled the Kinsey Report in the late 1940’s: the first serious attempt to define and catalog the various parameters of human sexuality.

Liam Neeson gives a very believable performance as a man of science who sometimes get a little bit over-involved in his research. A often very amusing study of the times where it was considered that masturbation and oral sex would cause a wide range of terrible illnesses!

Ok Excision is definitely going on the wish-I-could-unwatch-it list! A girl for some bizarre

Oh no it gets far worse..

reason is sexually excited by death and dying and we are treated throughout the film to her fantasizing about people being horribly killed and her getting the shivers..

That’s all the bad things said about Excision; apart from this it is a very funny black comedy, with a hell of a kicker ending that will leave you gasping for days after. Despite often very gruesome scenes, the film is very watchable – I just probably will never watch it again.

Very well directed with sharp editing, I can see why this film got rave reviews when it was first shown at Canne (despite a lot of critics walking out of it). In fairness most of the gruesome scenes are brilliantly filmed with a very serious attempt to present them as distinct pieces of art..

Girls warehoused complete with tracker tags just like any other livestock..its true honest

A rather far-fetched “true” story about the abduction of girls from American streets to work in the sex industry. In this tale a young Asian girl sneaks into a bar with her friend and a fake ID and meets a fireman. After lots of flirting they go for a drive, but the drive turns into a nightmare (no he’s not really a fireman).

She wakes up to find herself in her underwear in the back of a truck with several other girls in a similar state. Housed in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere the girls are rented out to customers who seem oblivious of what is going on. The whole setup is very organized and almost production line.

In a lot of ways this film reminded me of Prime Cut (supposedly also based on “Truth”), this film even has the same corrupt cop played by Lee Marvin in the original. Whilst the film was mildly entertaining, if not perhaps a little over sensational in parts; if Americans really believe the “truth” part, I think they are more gullible than we think! Sure it was based on a true story but for the most part that concerned one woman who was shifted around from motel to motel, this film is more like a twisted Japanese porn flick!

A time honored classic in which strange in-bred mountain men are men and red-blooded

No its not the sequel to “contracted”..this is one of the friendlier locals from Deliverance County

hunting men are..well squealing like piggies..

Four men set off to fish and hunt in an area of mangroves that soon will be flooded for a new water reservoir, on their way they meet some of the indigenous locals who seem rather friendly at first but then quickly degenerate into being not very nice at all.

Lots of chasing and killing each other ensues and then they all head off back to their suburban lifestyles trying very hard not look each other in the eye.