Tag: execution

Paul & Paulette
Take a Bath

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 5 September 2025
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Take a Bath
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Director – Jethro Massey – 2024 – France – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

A young American photographer in Paris runs into a girl obsessed with the darker side of French history – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 5th

Opening with sepia-toned engravings then photos depicting the last couple of centuries of Paris, this switches to an image of a girl walking and kneeling and a male “Once there was a girl” fairytale voiceover about a girl who would immerse herself in history, who was drawn both to the stars and the gutter, who liked Bad Things. Immediately, it’s juxtaposed with a female “Once there was a boy” voiceover about a boy who came to Paris with a camera around his neck. He photographs the girl. She confronts him. He points out that before her execution (on which site the girl has been kneeling, as if awaiting execution) Marie-Antoinette would have had her hair cut so as not to impede the blade. The girl has long, black hair.

In voiceover, she talks about how a spoon’s meaning changes once you know that Marilyn Monroe ate ice cream with it on the last day of her life. They visit a church which appears to contain the site of Marie-Antoinette’s cell.… Read the rest

Tags Adolf Hitler, American in Paris, American photographer, Bataclan killer, bedroom, bullet holes, camera, Catholic, church, coming out, Communards, communion wafers, courtyard, crime, crime scene, criminal, Elvis Presley, engravings, Europe, execution, exhibition, fairytale, Fanny Cottençon, firing squad, France, Gabrielle Bompard, Gilles Graveleau, hair, haircut, history, Hitler, Hitler’s apartment, James Gerard, Jérémie Galiana, Jesus Christ, Jethro Massey, Kim Jong Un, kneeling, Laurence Vassiere, lesbian, LGTBTQI+, Margot Joseph, Marie Benati, Marie-Antoinette, Marilyn Monroe, move out, murderer, old flame, parents, parents and children, parents and daughters, Paris, Paris Commune, Paul & Paulette Take a Bath, pedestal, Pentax camera, photo shoot, real estate, relationship, romance, Salzburg, scissors, suit, The Bloody Trunk Affair, transubstantiation

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Getting Away
With Murder(s)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 September 2021
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With Murder(s)
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Director – David Nicholas Wilkinson – 2021 – UK – Cert. 15 – 175m

*****

Most of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were never prosecuted: this documentary attempts to understand why not – on BD/DVD combo from Monday, March 27th following its debut on various streaming platforms UK, USA, Canada and Australia on Friday, January 27th 2023 (Holocaust Memorial Day)… Full details below review:

There’s something about the enormity of the issues involved here that makes this a very tough watch. (If it wasn’t, there would be something wrong. The Holocaust is not an easy issue to deal with. Films about it can consequently be tough to watch. And so they should be.) That combined with the near three-hour running time (this is not a complaint, honest) means it sat on my pending review pile for quite a while before I finally sat down and watched it.

I suspect Wilkinson is aware of this problem. As the film starts, he takes you (as it were) gently by the hand as he walks into Auschwitz and matter-of-factly discusses its horrors, helped by a man who works in the museum there and has probably helped numerous people before and since to come to terms with the implications of the place as they go round it.… Read the rest

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Where Is Anne Frank

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 7 August 2022
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Director – Ari Folman – 2021 – Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Israel – Cert. PG – 99m

*****

In Amsterdam, a year from now, her imaginary friend Kitty sets out to discover what happened to Anne Frank – out in cinemas on Friday, August 12th

Amsterdam, Holland, about a year from now. Early in the morning, the usual tourist queues are assembling outside the Anne Frank House, passing a tent housing refugees on the pavement. Inside, something strange happens as a glass case shatters and the original copy of Anne’s diary is exposed to ink from a pen, affecting the ink writing on the pages and materialising Kitty (voice: Ruby Stokes), the imaginary pen-friend to whom Anne addressed her diary.

The materialised Kitty is perplexed. Where is Anne Frank? What has happened to her, to the house? The staff, too, are perplexed. They can’t let the waiting crowds in with the case broken, but those people have been queueing for hours and it seems wrong not to open up for them. After a brief debate a solution is found and the diary moved to Anne’s room where it is placed on the desk where it naturally sits. The concerns of the house staff seem trivial compared to those of Kitty.… Read the rest

Tags 1945, 2D animation, 3D model sets, Aardman, Albert Dussel, Amsterdam, Andrew Woodall, animation, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House, Anne Frank’s diary, Ari Folman, attic, attic hideout, Auschwitz, authority figure, capture, Clark Gable, crowds, defeat, dentist, dissolve, Edith Frank, Emily Carey, execution, fathers and daughters, German Occupation, German soldier, glass case, Greek mythology, Greek underworld, handbags, hidden, hidden attic hideout, hide, hiding, Holland, Holocaust, illegal immigrants, imaginary friend, imaginary pen-friend, immigrants, ink writing, invisibility, it can’t happen here, Jew, Jewish, Jewish ethnicity, Jews, Margot Frank, Michael Moloney, migrants, mothers and daughters, museum, Nazi Occupation, Nazis, Nell Barlow, Otto Frank, parents and children, pavement, pen and ink, pen-friend, Peter Van Daan, pickpocket, Ralph Prosser, refugees, Ruby Stokes, Samantha Spiro, Sebastian Croft, Second World War, sheltering, siblings, sisters, Skye Bennett, squat, Stuart Miligan, tent, the Allies, The Third Reich, thief, tourists, Tracy-Ann Oberman, trial, Tristan Oliver, UK, Van Daan, Veronica Lake, visibility, visitors, war crimes, war zone, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Where Is Anne Frank

Hiding from deportation

Where Is Anne Frank
Directed by Ari Folman
Certificate PG, 99 minutes
Released 12 August

Amsterdam, about a year from now. Inside the Anne Frank House, Anne’s imaginary pen-friend Kitty (voiced by Ruby Stokes) materialises out of the ink from the pages of Anne’s diary. The perplexed Kitty wants to know what happened to Anne, and starts reading her diary to find out, taking it with her when she leaves the premises where she is invisible. Outside the house, she becomes visible.

Asking police ‘Where is Anne Frank?’ she is shown the bridge, hospital, school and theatre bearing Anne Frank’s name and is told, Anne Frank is all around you. [Read the rest at Reform magazine…]

[Read my longer review…]

Trailer:

Tags 1945, 2D animation, 3D model sets, Aardman, Albert Dussel, Amsterdam, animation, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House, Anne Frank’s diary, Ari Folman, attic, attic hideout, Auschwitz, authority figure, capture, crowds, defeat, dentist, Edith Frank, Emily Carey, execution, fathers and daughters, German Occupation, hidden, hide, hiding, Holland, Holocaust, illegal immigrants, imaginary friend, imaginary pen-friend, immigrants, ink writing, invisibility, it can’t happen here, Jew, Jewish, Jewish ethnicity, Jews, migrants, mothers and daughters, museum, Nazi Occupation, Nazis, parents and children, pavement, pen and ink, pen-friend, Peter Van Daan, pickpocket, Ralph Prosser, refugees, Ruby Stokes, Sebastian Croft, Second World War, sheltering, siblings, sisters, squat, the Allies, The Third Reich, thief, tourists, trial, UK, Van Daan, visibility, visitors, war crimes, war zone, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Getting Away
With Murder(s)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 October 2021
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With Murder(s)
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State-sanctioned killing

Getting Away With Murder(s)
Directed by David Nicholas Wilkinson
Certificate 15, 175 minutes
Released 1 October

The industrial extermination of the Holocaust included most infamously some six million Jews but also smaller numbers of other groups including Poles, gay men, the disabled and political dissidents, some 11 million people in all. It remains a stark reminder of the evil of which human beings at their worst are capable.

Getting Away With Murder(s) is a consistently compelling documentary which approaches this atrocity from an angle we’ve not really seen before: why were 99% of the perpetrators never held to account for their crimes?

The filmmaker David Wilkinson takes his camera to the sites of specific events, from the Auschwitz death camps… [read more]

Full review published in October 2021 issue of Reform.

See also my alternative review on this site.

Trailer: