Casual Relations - (dir. Mark Rappaport, 1974) - forgotten arthouse despair, impossibly low-budget, painfully slow, minimal dialogue and intertitles worthy of Beckett for their sheer bleakness, very unerotic nudity, redolent of a five year bad acid comedown - and like a carcrash you can't help but keep watching as the clinical depression rolls over you.
Especially unbearable and difficult scenes were the long and silent car journey with the couple listening to 'Under My Thumb' on the radio until the man turns it off in discomfort, the examples of the miserably low quality stag films and pornography posed for by the heroine, the scene where she hallucinates alone in a room all day staring out of the window not answering the phone.
I have no idea what he was going for or whether this could be called entertaining or good but it is really unforgettable and unlike anything else I've ever seen. Makes Bergman movies look like Die Hard.
Bad Santa - with Billy Bob Thornton from ten years or so ago - a pretty good foul-mouthed Christmas movie which fights off the inevitable heartwarming soft centre and moral message for a while with admirable misanthropy, and he's great in it from start to finish.
