My 2024 Watchlist Obsession!

Pan across the faces of soldiers waiting in a landing craft during an amphibious invasion these days, and I see boys - reminiscent of the "children's crusade" I first heard mentioned in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Thomas Beddows (Brian Stirner) is not quite a boy, but not quite a man - he lives with his parents, and the love of his life happens to be the family Cocker Spaniel. Overlord is about Tom's journey from his front door, through basic training, and onwards to his appointment with destiny as Europe in the meantime is engulfed in flames during the Second World War. It's not your usual war film though, as around half of the footage we see is real, and was selected by filmmaker Stuart Cooper from the three thousand hours of footage he's said to have viewed in preparation for the making of this film. (Twenty-thousand feet of film are stored at the Imperial War Museum in London.) What's most surprising is how seamless the effect is - I was actually lulled during moments of the movie into a state where I wasn't quite sure where the more contemporary stuff ended and the WWII stuff began. To help with this effect, cinematographer John Alcott (of Kubrick film fame) used German lenses which had the right black and white look to achieve the right kind of balance.

We might expect Overlord to become a little impersonal, like many war documentaries are, but the narrative focus on Tom throughout really provides us with a human being at the center of the humungous military machine he's now a part of. Tom's story is what makes this a worthwhile endeavour because on some level an understanding is reached that there were millions upon millions of Toms, and our emotional connection with him brings the tragic nature of war into sharp focus - something that often fails to happen in movies dealing with war itself. The stock footage on the other hand gives us a sense of scale, organisation, ingenuity, effort and raw industrial output - the other side of war, which is often focused on to the exclusion of humanity, lest we lose enthusiasm for whichever war effort our country needs us to get behind. It's an interesting juxtaposition that gives Overlord a two-pronged effect, and it's all aided with a rather artistic, non-linear, dream-like approach to filmmaking, editing and storytelling. During Tom's journey he often dreams of his own death, and thus we see and share his anxieties, which he eventually simply comes to accept and be at peace with. Having watched him fall in love and start becoming an adult, we sure aren't at peace with this boy being killed - as we fear he will be.

Amazing to think that this came out in the mid-70s (it's easy to forget that while watching it, especially considering the way it's filmed - with the archival footage blending in so well with what was shot.) During this time anti-war feeling was at it's peak due to the conflict in Vietnam, and Overlord adds to the appreciation of how wasteful and terribly appalling modern warfare is, and how innocent young lives get chewed up by the monstrously gigantic machinery set in motion on an industrial scale. If we were to take a day to consider each soldier that died in World War II, we'd be spending around 55,000 years counting the cost, and if we were to spend a day considering each person, it would be nearly 165,000 years. Overlord gets us in touch with one such person, over the course of only 84 minutes. That's enough to make it hurt a little, and while we get to know him we see that in the meantime bombs continue to fall, cities burn, and civilians are captured on camera as charred remains - all someone's mother, daughter, son or father. Overlord is overdue some recognition and it's set to claim a place amongst the pantheon of great war films out there, the best of which are the likes of Paths of Glory, All Quiet on the Western Front, Come and See and The Cranes Are Flying.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #382. It won the Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize at the 25th Berlin International Film Festival.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Overlord

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Just added Overlord to my Criterion Channel watchlist this morning!

My watchlist is definitely moving in the wrong direction, lol.

I love Overlord too!

Oh, and The Changeling is about as good as haunted house movies get. No frills, just a house a ghost a mystery and a deep penetrating sadness. Understands the basics.



It's totally up there with The Innocents and The Haunting.

I….don’t think I have heard of this? yeah, Overlord doesn’t look familiar, so I’ll just have to throw it onto the watchlist as well.
I’m not even familiar with the director

I'd say it's quite a bit above those two. Especially The Haunting, which I watched just a couple of days ago, was truly disappointing in its mediocrity.

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It shall be worth your while, though, I think.

@Wyldesyde19, I also really liked Overlord, think you might enjoy it.

Some stories will be told over and over, and Gifted is the one where a child prodigy, Mary Adler (Mckenna Grace), is involved in a tug of war between an uncle, Frank (Chris Evans), who wants her to have a childhood, and a grandmother, Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan), who wants her to be a great mathematician. The best weapon in it's arsenal is the cuteness and charisma of young Mckenna Grace, who lights up the screen and seems to be an acting prodigy herself. She steals the attention away from Chris Evans, and makes him seem rather dull in comparison. In fact, she makes everything else about Gifted seem a little dull - there's not that much more to it, other than a half-hearted attempt at a relationship side-plot between Frank and Mary's first grade teacher Bonnie Stevenson (Jenny Slate). It does do well at delineating the opposing sides, with Evelyn's blinkered focus on Mary picking up where her mother left off, even though her mother committed suicide before leaving her child in the hands of Uncle Frank. You see, Mary's mother was also a maths prodigy, as was her grandmother. It's this unhealthy, obsessive quest for maths greatness that drives Frank in his efforts to provide some healthy normality for this young child.

Gifted never quite did enough to make me care about anything other than Evelyn not getting her way, and Fred the cat being saved from getting euthanized. I thought the screenplay could have done with a little more work, and the crux of the film - the relationship between Mary and Frank - never seems to really gain traction and become something I buy into. In other words, the chemistry between these two leads is a little lacking. Even neighbour Roberta Taylor (Octavia Spencer) seems to share more closeness with Mary. Some of this could possibly be down to Chris Evans not being suited to the material. He can play a noble hero, but emotionally I can't see much going on inside of the man. Amazingly, it's 9-year-old Mckenna Grace (already a seasoned pro) that fills the void left open and absolutely sparkles at every moment. She's completely believable as a maths prodigy, and hits every emotional mark she's aiming for, whether it be anger, excitement, frustration, joy or worry. In such a hackneyed excursion, her charisma is a much needed tonic to the predictability and straightforward plod of the narrative. It's a child performance up there with Abby Ryder Fortson's in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

Gifted asks all of the stock-standard questions regarding prodigies, and how there's no really easy fit for them in a world with societal systems structured for the average, everyday kid. There are no really easy answers, but this film sides with giving them the birthright of a childhood that is fun, social and loving - and not pressing them hard in the hopes that they do extraordinary things with their lives. In other words, what's pretty much self-evident. Be kind, and be generous - we all have the right to lead happy, healthy lives. If I were to complain, I'd feel like a bit of a film snob - but there's nothing overly original about it. The courtroom drama we get is brief, but engaging enough. The Cat Stevens musical montage number might have had me rolling my eyes, but it's Cat Stevens, so I didn't even mind that. "The Wind" is great, and I'd gladly watch any montage accompanied to Yusuf Islam's songs. For me this was a mixed bag overall, but I'd say in my final estimation that it's worth watching for what it has at it's core - the adorable little Mckenna Grace playing an impossibly precious and darling girl, and giving such a memorable child performance.

Glad to catch this one - 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.6/10 on the IMDb. Reviews were mixed, but audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an A/A+. I guess it's a crowd-pleaser.




Thank you to whomever inspired me to watch Gifted

I looooooooved Gifted. (REVIEW HERE).

No, it's nothing original, but I loved the whole cast, and I liked its take on the plight of children with exceptionalities.

Also, in featuring someone who is good at math and rescues cats in need, the movie basically crafted my perfect human, so it has that going for it.

It's interesting that you said you didn't think Evans fit the film. To me, he, Jenny Slate, and Octavia Spencer are all actors who have what I think of as "natural depth". Like, I always just buy that they have stuff going on inside, even when the writing isn't stellar. And the child performance was, as you noted, really good.

Something I really agreed with in your review was how refreshing it felt to have a child character actually behave and communicate like a child, and not a pint-sized adult - so many screenplays seem to veer towards the latter. I adored Mary (as you probably gathered from my review) - Chris Evans is such a superhuman, handsome, stoic, strong-willed and perfect protagonist acting as Mary's uncle, and I find it so hard to see past that and find the human being inside.

The Turin Horse profoundly disturbed me, and left me with two distinctly diverging feelings. Firstly I felt a kind of awe at what I found to be a particularly great work of cinematic art, and secondly there was a brooding sense of doom, both personal and all-encompassing. There's also a little bit of a call-back to a movie I watched not so long ago - Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, because here again we have a film which focuses on drawn-out scenes featuring daily chores and household tasks. Any lover of Theodoros Angelopoulos will be appreciative of the way Béla Tarr has organised these moments into extraordinarily long unedited takes (only 30 takes encompass this 155-minute film.) There are two characters in it for the long haul with us - a coach driver, Ohlsdorger (János Derzsi) and his daughter (Erika Bók). At first I thought it was set in the 19th Century, because the film starts with a recounting of Friedrich Nietzsche's final years in Turin, and how his witnessing the flogging of a horse precipitated a mental breakdown. The events in the film however cause one to doubt when and where these events are happening.

Knowing nothing about this film, I at first found it hard to grasp at what it was trying to express - but as Ohlsdorger and his daughter go through their daily routine, little packets of information inform the viewer of what's happening in the world outside. We find out what's normal, and what's not - all the while visitors to the property bring disturbing news of happenings further away. Ohlsdorger's horse refuses to pull his cart or move at all, and eventually refuses to eat or drink, fretting about something internal or external. The movie counts off 6 days, each one a little more worrying and omen-infused than the last. Everything becomes more difficult as a permanent gale-force wind pounds the Ohlsdorger property, but the strong-willed father and daughter carry on as if there's nothing amiss. In the meantime we're treated to some first class black and white cinematography, and we're given the opportunity to sit back and soak in the atmosphere and general tone of the piece. Eventually everything seems to make more sense, but at the same time we slip into something that feels nightmarish and unreal. Almost biblical. By the time I'd finished I felt like I'd been through a meditation on death, decay and disaster - and a disquieting sense of unease crept through my entire being. Is this what the end feels like?

Be warned, The Turin Horse is a cold film, but it's powerful message speaks to something essential in the human spirit - an acknowledgement of a basic, fundamental part of life itself. It relates to our needs and our relationship with the world, both spiritually and elementarily. It does this with simplicity, but there's nothing simple about the way this film is staged, or filmed - as a whole it's a staggering achievement which shook me to my core. In my much younger years, I probably would have complained that nothing happens in this movie, but today my aesthetic appreciation and my eventual comprehension instead made this a film I'm never likely to forget. In fact, I'm very much looking forward to watching this again, because I can imagine everything being a lot more powerful knowing from the start where this is heading. Never has a simple trip to the well to fetch water felt more compelling, dramatic, dynamic and potent. Never has a strong breeze felt as laden with dark foreboding. That horse though - that sad, whipped, scarred, downcast horse was what my heart bled for. The Turin Horse was quite noble in giving the mistreatment of a horse such a significant role to play in such a cataclysmic drama. I thought it a flat-out masterpiece, and one of the best films I've sat and watched this year. I ought to finally get to seeing Werckmeister Harmonies.

Glad to catch this one - Won the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, where it premiered. In BBC's 2016 poll of the greatest films since 2000, The Turin Horse ranked sixty-third.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Turin Horse

I'm pretty sure Turin Horse is my favorite Tarr.

I felt like his humanity comes through in any scene where he talks about what happened to his sister.

I guess in a film like this, I don't mind if he's a bit of a Mary Sue. Yes, Chris, use those strong arms to rescue all those cats, you handsome empathetic soul, you!

I'd probably rank The Turin Horse at the top of Tarr's filmography as well. If you love his style, you should check out the short film Szel. It's incredible.

I thought The Turin Horse was fantastic. (Review HERE).

It's one that I keep an eye out for in case it ever has another theatrical run for some reason.

(And something I want to add: horses are, for the most part, notorious people pleasers. They will literally walk or run themselves to death. For a horse to stop is something else, and I think that the horses who stop in this film---both in the framing story and in the story that is the core of the movie---are very interesting omens.)

I didn't think I was going to like The Visitor all that much when it started, but by the time it finished the film's overall quality and authentic feel was undeniable. It's not often a drama manages to really capture something true-to-life about how people relate to each other that's so very believable, and specifically here what it might be like for an older, introverted intellectual to connect, by chance, with young immigrants. This older man is Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), a widowed economics professor sleepwalking through life, disinterested in everything apart from his efforts to learn piano. Tellingly, this was his late wife's occupation. Walter wards off friendship and human contact, but when a young Syrian man, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese partner Zainab (Danai Gurira) are conned into renting out Walter's apartment in New York, he feels obliged to help them out by letting them stay. From that moment on, as a connection begins to form between Tarek and Walter, long dormant parts of his personality and passion start to come to life. Tarek teaches him how to play the djembe (a type of drum), but a chance encounter with subway security lands Walter's new friend in immigration detention, and as he fights for this young man's right to stay in the U.S., a further bond is made with Tarek's mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass). The highs come with lows, but for the first time in a long time, Walter actually feels a part of the world again, expressing himself verbally and musically.

While the focus of this film is Walter, the shadow of 9/11 and Middle Eastern immigration hangs over this film - when an illegal immigrant is caught, it seems that many of their human rights no longer exist. Here in Australia, things are even worse - I'd love to talk about that, but it would be too much of a digression from this review. What's most heart-rending in The Visitor is how powerless Walter is to help his new friend, and when he becomes especially close Mouna, that impotency feels even more tragic. We do feel his passion being reignited though, and this Richard Jenkins performance is something I obviously have to mention here - it's a standout, phenomenal turn that deserves all of the plaudits it received. Jenkins has to make believable the man's awkwardness, introverted personality, sadness and numbness - but eventually transform, to a degree, while still maintaining the character's core make-up. If this wasn't filmed sequentially (and most films aren't), then this had to have been a particular challenge. I never saw the actor while watching The Visitor, only Walter Vale, and as such much of this film's success and watchability is down to this man. As I mentioned earlier, everything we see in this movie feels true to life, and, contrary to expectations, nothing seemed particularly contrived.

Life is full of chance, life-altering encounters. It's amazing to sit back and think "If I hadn't of been at such-and-such a place at this particular moment, and met this person, my entire life would have turned out differently." There's a moment in The Visitor when Tarek and Zainab are leaving Walter's apartment, and he's doing nothing to offer them a place to stay until they organise alternate accommodation. On the one hand I know he must eventually, but that can't stop me from pushing the character in my mind to do it as he sits, blankly, and lets them leave. I liked that there were painfully awkward moments - Walter's small talk with Zainab, Tarek's habit of practicing drums with no pants on (and the "don't worry, I'll keep my pants on!" joke Walter shares with Zainab that goes down like a lead balloon.) The New Yorker's interaction with Zainab at her custom jewelry stand, which is kind but has an underlying racist tone to it. There's always an appreciation as to how tough it was (and is) being of Middle Eastern origin and living in New York post-2001. This was a wonderfully grounded movie, and when it comes to transformations it keeps itself on the level and well within the bounds of reason while still being inspirational - with a mix of feel-good and sad in very balanced proportion. It outweighed my expectations considerably.

Glad to catch this one - Richard Jenkins scored a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his role as Walter Vale (Sean Penn ended up winning for playing Harvey Milk in Milk.) Director McCarthy won the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for Best Director.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Visitor

reminds me of the 80s and 70s poster

The way that immigrants in particular are treated by government bureaucracy is maddening. I think that the film does a good job of capturing Walter's surprise and dismay at the way that those wheels start turning and nothing can be done to stop them.

You're watching a lot of things that I've watched in the last year or two! Here's my review of The Visitor.

For an anecdote about The Turin Horse, and the supposed impenetrability of these kind of films, a couple of years ago my grandmother talked about coming across some movie about a horse and two people in a shack and a lot of potato peeling. My grandmother has always been hesitant towards these kinds of films, and being that she's almost a hundred, has been virtually unable to watch any one thing for more than a few minutes at a time without losing interest and staring out the window


But this was the first movie in awhile she not only watched the vast majority of (possibly all of it), but that she talked about repeatedly. A part of her seemed dubious about such a minimalist kind of film, but this was also apparently what left the strongest impression on her. "Have you seen that movie with the potatos", even briefly became somewhat of a catchphrase of hers whenever anyone new came to visit.


In short, this all goes back to previous discussions about these things where there is this belief that these movies need to be unpacked intellectually, and they have to be entirely understood to have an impact. But the truth is, they really are about as direct a cinematic experience as you can get. And while there is nothing bad about trying to find deeper meaning in them, sometimes just the experience of watching is all that it required.


And, also, as an aside, Tarrs earlier neo realist work gets constantly overlooked beneath the shadow of all his other colossus films (Harmonies, Satantango, Turin). They shouldn't be. In some ways, I prefer them.