“There are just so many stupid, annoying, worthless people on the planet. They just like, get in the way of what you want.”

The first thing this movie reminded me of was my most shameless personal fave, Slap Her … She’s French (especially considering that movie’s alternate title “She Gets What She Wants”) ... but it’s a lot more subtle, extreme and subversive than that. It’s funny I found myself watching it during the BBC’s “White” week, in a way. The moment Evan Rachel Wood starts her speech about how wonderful it is to be white being as she wants to be an actress, all of this told to a Muslim student, listing Asian as her second choice, then Afro-American, and finally Arab … it certainly makes you gasp if anything more than I remembered “Slap Her” did – and where that race line goes in the end … I still don’t know quite what to think of it except to compare it to the other stereotypes in the movie, like, yes, the male and female ones, and say that it is one of those movies where the stereotypes really never bother me quite as much as they should, basically because the script just oozes smarts and Wood delivers those smarts in a way I really think nobody else could. It seems like she gets better with every film I see her in, and the final shot of her here is just phenomenal. James Woods, Jane Krakowski and Selma Blair are the icing on the cake.

Not gonna write anywhere near as much as I felt I might write about this one, as with my last review it’s a case of right now or write never This TV movie reminded me of a lot of other movies – from Whistle Down the Wind to Heavenly Creatures (Geraldine McEwan’s Mother very like the mother in that movie at times), An Angel at my Table (probably just the ginger hair I’m thinking of) and Breaking the Waves, but more ultimately of My Summer of Love, which to me it resembles beyond the mere lesbian factor. In the end, like “My Summer …”, the movie kind of fizzles out when it feels like it ought to explode. An IMDb reviewer noted the movie’s “plainness”, and when I first read that, following the first part, though I agreed with them, I thought the plainness worked in the movie’s favour … and it does, but to a point.

Most of all I was glad the movie doesn’t suffer from “Jane Eyre” syndrome – the entire first third of the movie is dedicated to a pre-teen Jess, and the actress is so perfect and compelling, I dreaded the inevitable growing up – but Charlotte Coleman fills the girl’s shoes not only brilliantly but almost seamlessly for the remaining bulk.

I was surprised to find the movie was made in 1990. I was initially under the impression that it was from the same era of Ken Loach’s “Poor Cow”, “Kathy Come Home”, and the like, and even as the movie began, the production design is so terrific I still would never have imagined it was made so late were it not for familiar faces like Celie Imrie and David Thewlis. Rachel Portman’s music is a minor giveaway, too, once it gets going, but it’s still all surprisingly old school.

I’d’ve personally liked it to be a little more electrifying, but it’s still highly recommended.

“Is she saved?” “No, but she’s nice.”

I guess I’m watching this now to try and get the foul taste of Moodysson’s latest Hole in My Heart out of my mind. This one has a happy ending, I recall, it will therefore make me happy. Weird thing is, coming back to it after Hole and the similarly shattering Lilya 4-Ever, in addition to the very disturbing short movie, “Talk,” included as an extra on this new Region 2 DVD (annoyingly only available in the Lukas Moodysson box set), I couldn’t help focusing in on the more negative aspects of this movie now. Gee, thanks, Lukas.

It’s still a lot more fun to watch, though. For better or worse, it probably paints the most realistic portrait of teenagers ever seen in the movies: at once beautiful, pathetic, and inconsequential. The soundtrack is excellent and the two leads are perfect for each other.

An all-time favourite that never lets me down, yet I don’t know what to say about it. It’s the ultimate romance-gone-too-far-gone-sour movie. I don’t think Kate Winslet has ever been better; I almost want to say the same for director Peter Jackson; and Melanie Lynskey is great in everything she does. The combo of Peter Dasent’s score and Mario Lanza songs make for one of the best soundtracks, and the visual effects, while a little on the low budget side, are somehow perfect for the young girls’ fantasy world. I don’t think beautiful and disturbing have ever been so close.

This is possibly as difficult a movie to watch for any “good-natured” person as, say, The Passion of the Christ is to watch for any non-Christian… do you carry your own agenda to it? Reject the movie because it tempts you to sympathise with a criminal (in The Passion’s case, reject it because either you don’t believe in it or you feel you shouldn’t get involved with a faith you don’t follow?) Or do you watch it as a work or art, take it in and extract its basic message as it applies to other aspects of life?

I’m one who tries to take every movie as a movie. If it speaks to me it’ll speak to me. Monster, though, really is a tough one. I think when I last watched it, my first viewing, I actually came out saying I sympathised with Aileen Wuornos. I can’t entirely say I didn’t mean that, because there is a part of her that I definitely do feel sorry for… but I did overlook a lot of the movie that hit me on this viewing. The way the killings degenerate towards the end, when finally (and apologies if this is a spoiler) she kills a completely innocent man, who hasn’t even done anything immoral or unethical let alone illegal, he’s even offered her help, and she knows she shouldn’t kill him, apologises, and kills him as if she really has to… she left little room for sympathy.

I feel like this movie’s greatest success is that it really does let us inside the head of Wuornos… but this might be its greatest failure too. This is the definition of character study, and considering the character, it really does stir a lot of discomfort. It paints a bleak picture of the world that tells us that love is the answer etc, (“They gotta tell ya somethin’”, Wuornos says in her last voiceover) but presents us with a heroine, or anti-heroine, who claims to be seeking love yet who shows practically none herself. Theron plays Wuornos as a woman with severe communication problems, she loses her temper rapidly, even with the one person, Selby, who she’s able in her gentler moments to share a calm with. It’s hard to sympathise with her, extremely hard, but uncomfortably possible. She’s a representation of everything that is wrong with the world – we need her so we can point the finger because she shows us how good we are, that classic dilemma of evil.

This movie doesn’t entirely succeed in saying what I think it wants to say, but you’ve got to give it praise for trying. And Christina Ricci definitely deserves praise for balancing Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning lead performance. I think each time I watch this movie I’ll find something new in Christina Ricci’s performance – in many ways I think she comes out of the movie the better actress, there are just so many layers in there. If she looks uncomfortable, it’s not because she’s a bad actress, it’s because she’s playing a character who truly doesn’t understand what she’s doing… like Wuornos, she just wants love, but for her it’s much more innocent. Take that into account and you might just see beyond the initial strangeness of her performance.