13 Tzameti the Movie

With the introduction of digital TV in Australia, we now have a veritable feast of viewing options.
The best thing to come out of this development is that our foreign movies channel SBS now shows at least two movies per night on their digital channel. With my hard disk recorder I diligently record these movies to watch at my leasure.

Being fed up with cliche plots or no plots at all in movies that are based around special effects (Hollywood can you hear me?) I turn to foreign movies for a taste of the different. Different stimulates the senses that have been dulled by the relentless churning out of crap. Five minutes into any movie is usually enough to indicate to me whether I'll continue to watch or just give up.

Now don't think that all foreign movies are great. Many are just arty farty excursions into an  indecipharable vortex of scene after scene with no inkling of a story line.

So what makes foreign movies so great? Well, it's not just that they open with a sex scene, the camera angles from ceiling looking down, or camera from floor looking up or camera showing a dark room or a keyhole shot.
Foreign movies show stories that Hollywood would never dare touch. And that's what I want to highlight here.

13 Tzameti, a movie that is extremely disturbing in it's subject and story. The title gives nothing away to what the story leads to and I won't give away the plot either. All I can say is watch the movie, be prepared for a slow introduction which is typical of the European style but once the pace picks up, it is nerve racking right to the end. Tzameti is the Georgian word for thirteen. BTW, Hollywood is remaking it with (no surprise here)  the story being altered to fit into Hollywood standards.