Pieces of a Woman is what happens when rich, entitled white folk have bad shit happen to them. Do they take responsibility for their bad decisions? Ha! Of course they don’t. They blame anything, everything and everyone they can.

The film begins with a technically virtuosic sequence where the lead character Martha (Vanessa Kirby) goes into labour. She’s got an awesome apartment, has a studly boyfriend played by the trainwreck of a human being that is Shia LaBeouf and has decided to give birth at home. Fair enough. That’s a perfectly reasonable decision. However, it’s also a risky decision. If you give birth at home, you’re exposing yourself to danger. You’re like a tightrope walker without a safety net. If something bad happens, you’re in trouble.

Anyone who’s made this decision should be completely honest with themselves. They should know that the potential for tragedy is far greater. But of course these assholes just want to have a beautiful home birth, listen to some shitty music on Spotify and stay out of that icky hospital where people can actually help them.

The opening sequence is well choreographed but is ruined by the acting of Vanessa Kirby. She doesn’t look like she’s in labour; she looks like she’s high. Or that she’s chugged a couple of bottles of wine. I’ve seen so many labour sequences in movies and television shows over the years and the acting from her is one of the worst. The smoke and mirrors of the shooting can’t disguise shitty acting.

The best acting comes from Molly Parker as the poor midwife who has to deal with these pampered douchebags. The creeping dread of this complicated labour is very subtly conveyed ,and she does her absolute best in difficult circumstances, but you can tell that she’s shitting bricks.

Despite some difficulties, the baby is born. All seems well. Shia LaBeouf even cracks out an old film camera and begins snapping away. Who the fuck does this? His baby is two seconds old and his first thought is to grab a camera. He doesn’t take a minute to enjoy the moment. He doesn’t hug his wife. He doesn’t use his eyes to gaze upon the wonder of his newborn baby. No, he snaps away with an old film camera. I don’t know why, but the film camera part of it makes it worse for me. I absolutely love film, but are you telling me that this roughneck is into film photography? Get the fuck out of here.

Five seconds later the baby begins to struggle to breath and turns blue. The assholes don’t notice this but the poor midwife does and tries her best to intervene. An ambulance soon arrives but it’s too late. Bet you this wouldn’t have happened in a hospital.

Is that too blunt of a statement? Is that too reductive? Is it too insensitive? But for the whole movie I was waiting for someone to mention this. Martha’s mother kind of broaches the subject, but it’s only in the final sequence that the question is explicitly asked. And it’s asked by the midwife’s lawyer. But the subject is quickly dismissed.

Instead Martha, upset by the questioning, gets to have a break. When she comes back, she asks if she can address the court directly. ‘This is highly unusual’ everyone mutters, which is movie code for ‘what’s about to follow is implausible BS’. So Martha addresses the court and makes a little speech. She says that what happened wasn’t the midwife’s fault. Everyone watching is meant to cry rivers of fat tears. I, however, was fuming. So this rich asshole gets to pardon the poor peasant? The person who was trying to act responsibly and do their best in difficult circumstances? How wonderful. How heartwarming. Yes, you’ve only put this woman through hell. You’ve only put her through months of stress and agony. You’ve only potentially taken her freedom away from her because things didn’t go perfectly. How dare you. And how dare this fucking film. The midwife doesn’t even get to say anything. She just gets to look worried and sad and then grateful. In reality she would despise Martha. The shit that Martha has put her through. Surely her professional reputation is in the toilet because of this. Who would hire her now?

So no, the ending didn’t warm the cockles of my heart. In fact, my rage only intensified during the final coda.

The ending has a child walking through a vast field and then climbing a tree. A woman calls the child and of course it’s Martha. They then walk hand in hand back to a large house. Does it make me a bad person that my sympathy is vastly eroded when the characters are disgustingly wealthy? Try losing a child when you don’t have a rich mother to bail you out. Try losing a child when you have to deal with bullshit from insurance companies. Try losing a child when your boyfriend isn’t a coked up manchild and yet you still separate anyway because the grief is too great.

The depiction here of Martha’s boyfriend Sean, played by Shia LaBeouf, is remarkably simplistic and one note. He cries a little bit but he’s mostly filled with blind rage. In one scene, not long after the incident at the beginning, he bullies his girlfriend into trying to have sex. They’re sitting on the couch and he grabs her hand and puts it on his penis. And then even though she isn’t physically or emotionally ready, forces himself on her. It’s essentially a rape scene.

As well as being a rapist asshole, Sean is also a complete moron. In one scene he spews the following toe-curling line: ‘Why are you trying to disappear my child?’ This is in response to his girlfriend trying to take apart the baby’s room. Who talks like this? Did he suddenly turn into Yoda? And Sean then goes on to say that he ‘misses’ his child? You mean the child that was alive for about ten seconds and the child that you loved so much you had to crack out your film camera for? You might be sad that your child didn’t get to live. You might wonder what kind of amazing future your child might have had if circumstances had been different. But you miss them? It’s like what someone would say if they’re trying to convince themselves they have emotions.

After this nonsense, Sean begins an affair with Martha’s cousin, who, would you believe it, is a lawyer who’s going to represent Martha in court. Why are Sean and Martha’s cousin doing this? Couples fall apart after trauma for a variety of reasons. Why reduce it to some soap opera level bullshit? Him and the cousin even start doing some coke after they have sex in her office, which is tacky as fuck.

I also find the depiction of the cousin completely unbelievable. She’s dowdy and shy looking and yet she’s supposed to be some fearsome lawyer. She also keeps on spouting disgusting shit about how the midwife must pay.

But back to Sean’s character. There was one scene of domestic abuse that was so over the top and ripe with student-level symbolism that I couldn’t help but laugh. Martha has gone out to a club and flirted with a man to communicate her intense suffering. Because this is what always has to happen in films of this ilk. It’s not enough to just suffer. People have to suffer beautifully while flirting with other beautiful people because they’re so damn sad. And then she comes home to her boyfriend and they get into an argument. She’s smoking on the couch and he throws a yoga ball in her face. She doesn’t say a thing. She doesn’t even look mad. She just stubs out the cigarette on the sofa (to communicate her smouldering rage) while her feet rest on the deflating yoga ball (to communicate that she’s sinking) as withered plants and flowers surround her (to communicate the death of their relationship). We then cut to a shot of an unfinished bridge (to communicate the gulf that exists between them). All of this happens in about twenty seconds. You couldn’t lay it on thicker if you tried.

But Sean isn’t even the most heinous character in this movie. That dubious distinction would go to Martha’s mother played by Ellen Burstyn. At first she seems like a harmless rich old lady. She even buys Martha and Sean a new car. But as the film develops we see what a bitter, twisted old fuck she is. Everything that has happened is the fault of the midwife, and the midwife must pay for her mistakes. Because isn’t that what rich people do? Rather than look at things from every perspective; rather than accept the complexity of life, there always has to be someone to blame when things don’t go the way they want. Because they’re rich. Nothing bad is meant to happen to rich people. Infant deaths and things of that nature only exist in the realm of the poor. So it must be the midwife’s fault. And she must go to jail because I don’t get to hold MY granddaughter.

In one scene Martha’s mother relates her strength of character. She says how she was born during the Second World War and how her mother would have to scrounge for food in order to survive. She barely had enough food to produce milk. In fact, people told her to get rid of the baby; that the baby wasn’t going to make it. But then to prove her strength, she held the baby upside down and the baby raised her head. Martha’s mother tells this story as a pep talk. What? So if I was an underfed baby and I still had the strength to raise my head, you should be able to get over your grief? That’s bonkers.

And Martha’s mother relates this story like she can personally remember it. Like she can remember being that baby. She doesn’t tell it like ‘my mother told me I raised my head’. No, it’s like she can remember being a few weeks old, which of course is complete and utter horseshit. It also speaks to a deeper, most insidious attitude in general. Well, if I can overcome malnutrition why can’t all those starving children in Ethiopia too? Well, if I can become stinking rich why can’t all these poor people as well? If only people would pull themselves up by their bootstraps like me.

To further illustrate this woman’s character, or lack thereof, she solves the problem of Martha’s boyfriend Sean by throwing money at him. Sean has a pretty good job so how much money would it cost to make him disappear? $10,000? $50,000? $200,000? I’m guessing it’s a bonkers amount, seeing as the check does the intended job. But again, how disgusting is this person? People are just objects or problems to be dealt with and disposed of.

Despite this, once the trial is over, we’re again meant to feel warm and fuzzy when Martha has dinner with her mother at some fancy restaurant. Martha’s mother is becoming forgetful but Martha sympathetically holds her hand. Am I meant to give a shit? I hope her mother forgets everything. I hope she forgets about her daughter. I hope she forgets herself. I hope she forgets every fond memory in her head. But most of all, I hope she doesn’t get to enjoy her granddaughter.

The last time we met Lars von Trier, the earth was being smashed by a rogue planet. Then before that, in Antichrist, Wilem Defoe was having his testicles smashed and Charlotte Gainsbourg was cutting off her clitoris. Time to put the children to bed, because we have the final part of the ‘depression’ trilogy - Nymphomaniac, where it’s Charlotte Gainsbourg’s turn to get smashed, this time by hundreds of penises, one of which happens to belong to Shia LaFuckingBeouf.

Yep, that’s right, Shia LaFuckingBeouf; the weasley, barely sentient kid from Transformers. Thankfully, contrary to his terrifying promises when the film was cast, we don’t get to see his penis, but we do get to see a porn star have their penis grafted onto his crotch via the wonders of CGI. Ah, what a great job for the tech wizards. ‘What did you do today, darling?’ ‘I’m working on Nymphomaniac, the new von Trier film.’ ‘Oh, that’s exciting!’ ‘Yeah, I’m pasting a porn star’s erect penis onto Shia LeBeouf’s crotch as he has simulated sex.’ ‘Oh...’

So yeah, it’s little weird having the kid from Transformers fool around with a girl and then have von Trier suddenly cut to a very artistic shot between LaBeouf’s legs where you can see his massive stunt penis have full penetrative sex.

And now as you shift uncomfortably in your seat and try and change the subject, you ask me how his acting is. Has he matured into a fine thespian? Like fuck he has. His acting is immature and unconvincing and his attempt to perfect an English accent is gut-wrenchingly embarrassing. For half a second it sounds okay, then it sounds fucking awful and then it sounds like he’s swallowed an Australian. It’s one of the worst vocal performances I’ve heard. Just either cast an Englishman in the role or have him speak in his normal voice. Make up some bullshit reason for why an American is living in the UK.

LaBeouf’s undetermined age doesn’t lend him any credibility either. We first see him as a teenager and then we see him as an adult. Funny thing is, though, that as a ‘teenager’ he doesn’t look any different to when he’s an adult. LaBeouf is one of those unfortunate people who looks like he could be aged anywhere between 12 and 35. It’s hard to take him seriously as either a teen or adult.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stellan Skarsgard don’t fare much better. Gainsbourg mumbles morosely into a cup of coffee and Skarsgard comes across as a pretentious simpleton. Yes, that is a contradiction but von Trier somehow manages to achieve it. While Gainsbourg is recounting her experiences as a teenager where she fucked an entire train-load of men, Skarsgard is comparing it to angling and talking about Fibonacci numbers. It’s Iike von Trier has made a fuck-happy Forest Gump.

But the wraparound story of a sex-obsessed individual recounting their exploits to an avid listener reminds me of Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon. In that film, Peter Coyote tells his story to a salivating Hugh Grant. But while Bitter Moon is joyfully trashy, Nymphomaniac is po-faced. It somehow manages to make sex seem like the most depressing thing in the world. It also doesn’t have the emotion and tragedy of Bitter Moon (at least not in this first part). At heart, Bitter Moon is a deeply sad film. Nymphomaniac, meanwhile, is half joke, half depressed rant.

It also suffers from a man’s deluded idea of female sexuality. There’s a scene where two girls, one of which is our ‘heroine’ Joe, are going through a train, trying to fuck as many men as possible. It’s a competition between the two women. Whoever fucks the most guys, ‘wins’. It’s something that only a man would come up with. Sport fucking. Fucking like it’s a match between Liverpool and Manchester United.

While the portrait of female sexuality is misjudged and adolescent, the portrait of male sexuality is just depressing. None of the men have any willpower. None of them are able to control their impulses. One man, who’s travelling back on the train to see his wife, is powerless to stop our heroine from giving him an earth-shattering blow-job. Everyone here is just giving in to their most basic instincts.

Perhaps the only ‘normal’ character is Joe’s father. A seemingly ordinary, decent man, he shares a love of nature with his daughter and is attentive and kind. But even here you can kind of sense that something is off. At one point he catches his daughter looking at book of female anatomy - she’s looking at the clitoris. Her father smiles but doesn’t say anything. While nothing overt happens, their relationship feels a little incestuous.

But this is perhaps the most believable part of the film. This feels like a genuine human relationship. Joe even lets her father repeat stories she’s already heard many times before just to make him feel better. There’s love there. And this is maybe why Joe engages in joyless sex. She wants to make men happy. She needs their attention.

One of the most plausible sequences in the film is when Joe sleeps around in her father’s hospital. In order to escape the pain of her father’s demise, she repeatedly fucks a hospital employee. But while this feels convincing, von Trier has to be his puckish self and include a saucy detail once Joe’s father dies. Joe becomes aroused and we see a dribble drip down the inside of her leg.

But this is how fucked up this film is. The star performer in this movie is Christian Slater! The guy who was Uwe Boll’s muse in Alone in the Dark and who began turning up in direct-to-video clag like Hollow Man 2. He’s miles better than Skarsgard and Gainsbourg. Miles better. It kind of blows my mind.

With her father dead, Joe decides to pursue Jerome (Shia LaFuckingBeouf). He’s an absolutely worthless humanoid - a vain, greasy, arrogant nincompoop. Why any woman would desire this individual, I don’t know. But sex addicts rarely make sound decisions, so I shouldn’t be surprised that Joe would seek attention from him. Regardless, it’s difficult to watch these scenes because the acting is so damn wretched. And the ending of the film, with Joe crying, ‘I can’t feel anything’ lands with a dull thud. Did you ever feel anything, Joe? Did you really?

So the decade will be over in a couple of weeks. Well, unless you think that it ends next year because technically the millennium began in 2001. Blah blah blah. Go fuck yourself. As far as I’m concerned, it ends this year. Capiche?

With this in mind, I’ve decided to compile a list of the best films of the decade. Originally I was just going to post a Top 20, but then somehow I extended the project. It might have been my wife that persuaded me or it might have been the cat. I’m not sure.

Anyway, I’ve decided to break things down into categories/genres and from there I’ve picked my favourite films (and some of my least favourite, too). At the end of it all, the project will climax with an anti-climatic Top 20 where I’ll make all the films I’ve picked fight to the death for my amusement while wearing humiliating loin cloths. And so, beginning with thrillers, let battle commence!

Top Five Thrillers

5. Collateral


A straightforward thriller but superbly executed. Tom Cruise is always more convincing while playing an egotistical arsehole psychopath and here he plays the role with aplomb. The action is excellent and the digital photograph gives it a gritty feel. The only letdown is the ending, where everything kind of becomes formulaic. Aside from that, though – magnificent.

4. One Hour Photo


Robin Williams does creepy and turns in one of his best performances. His character further proves that there’s nothing creepier than a lonely white dude with glasses and a phallic camera (watch the scene where he’s taking pictures of the family: BOING!).

3. Memento


Yes the film is expertly made and constructed, but it’s the ending that makes the film. Lenny gives his life purpose by petulantly exploiting his illness and creating a mystery he’ll be compelled to solve. It doesn’t matter that he’s not really pursuing the truth – the mystery and the pursuit of an answer, no matter whether it’s true or not, is what will prevent Lenny from blowing his own brains out.

2. Munich


One of Spielberg’s best films, it manages to make its point without the solemn sermonising that filtered into the otherwise excellent Schindler’s List. Just take the two endings. Schindler’s List made the jarring mistake of showing survivors paying tribute to the real Schindler, while Munich unobtrusively shows the Twin Towers in the background of the final scene, subtly showing that for every action there’s a reaction. Also the action scenes are brimming with tension.

1. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer


Having had no real expectations for it, Perfume was a marvellous surprise. Exquisitely made, it’s a horrific film that is also tremendously sad and achingly romantic. The lead character uses murder to try and recapture the past while unknowingly reinforcing his meaningless existence.

Worst Thrillers

5. Disturbia


A teen rendering of Rear Window staring the plank out of Transformers. An empty, dull, predictable exercise devoid of wit or excitement. Basically everything Hitchcock’s film isn’t.

4. The Village


When a retard loves a woman, bad things happen. M Night’s film is supposed to be an interesting spin on post 9/11 paranoia, but while the idea is good and M Night shows off his technical skills (great atmosphere and camerawork), his writing once again lets him down. The twists are truly ridiculous and poorly delivered. Once again M Night promises so much and delivers so little.

3. Enough


J-Lo is a loveable waitress who quickly marries an abusive jerk. Rather than take it and do the dishes like a good wife, she decides to beat him to death. It’s like Sleeping With the Enemy with martial arts.

2. Basic Instinct 2


Has none of the guilty pleasure charm of the original (green sweaters, shaved cooters and lots and lots of grisly violence) and instead limps along like a flaccid cock desperately in need of Viagra. The only highlight is Stanley Collymore getting wanked off in a car before dying, and that’s only amusing if you know that he’s a crappy Brummie twtface kickballer who likes to punch celebrity girlfriends in the face and would deserve this fate in real life.

1. Open Water 2: Adrift


The story of a group of numbskulls who decide to jump off the side of a yacht and forget to put the ladder down so that they can get back on board. Cue an hour an a half of watching Tool Academy-style wanktoids reaching for stuff as they slowly perish in the water. It’s not half as fun as it sounds.

I used to love Transformers as a kid. The cartoons were great and I loved the toys. But then a few years ago I got the toys out of my loft. Fuck me they were crap. Cheap, flimsy and poorly made. How could I have been so wrong? How could something so awesome secretly be a pile of toss? Well, I guess children are both stupid and easily impressed.

But I guess that assessment must be extended to a lot of teenagers and young adults, as a lot of people are saying that Transformers is a good film. Well, it’s not. Fuck me it’s not. What a horrendous example of filmmaking. The action is dull and uninvolving, the characters are annoying as hell and the writing and the acting are risible. What an atrocious piece of shit.

That being said, the special effects are pretty good. But why would anyone want to watch a film just because it has some nice graphics? And anyway, even though the Transformers themselves are impressively rendered, you rarely get a chance to look at them properly. The camera never lingers on them, so you only get glimpses. Therefore there’s no sense of awe. They never take your breath away like the space station did in 2001 or the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. They just look…nice.

But unfortunately they don’t sound very good. Yes I can imagine it must be pretty damn difficult to think of dialogue for alien robots, but the stuff here is just painful. ‘My name is Optimus Prime, we are autonomous robotic organisms from the planet Cybertron.’ ‘You still fight for the weak! That is why you lose!’ ‘Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.’ Just awful.

Not that I was expecting Kafka from this film. But it would be nice to watch the film without having to cringe every five seconds. The dialogue here isn’t even serviceable. It’s floating about in the toilet. And the plot itself is almost incomprehensible. Okay, so a big cube thing lands on Earth and the robots want it and, er… Yeah, I’ve lost the will to live. I’m sure the film explains it all in its dim-witted way, but the movie is so restless, so eager to move onto the next explosion or next joke that everything just washes over you like a tide of effluent.

But what about the characters? Okay, so even if the writing and the direction are pants, maybe the characters can save it. Er, no. Nearly all the people here just made me want to kill them. Whether it be Jon Voight as the Defence Secretary, the fat black guy who’s mouthy but a genius, the blonde Australian bimbo, the army guys, the Transformers themselves or Megan Fox’s airhead heroine. The only people who don’t totally humiliate themselves are John Turturro (who’s always fun), Bernie Mac (who gets to be an amusing asshole for about ten seconds) and Shia LaBeouf (who’s passable as the film’s hero). Everyone else though can go fuck themselves.

And Megan Fox can go fuck herself hardest of all. She’s got great legs and a flat stomach that I’m sure loads of men would like to jizz all over, but she seems barely sentient. She has no charisma, no screen presence and no ability as an actress. She’s a dull fantasy for teenagers and men with no taste. I mean, there’s a scene where she looks under the bonnet of a car and tells the panting LaBeouf what’s wrong. Maybe I’m asking too much in wanting believability in a film about alien robots, but I can barely believe that Fox knows how to open a door let alone know her way around an automobile.

But now that I think about it, there is something worse than Megan Fox – the annoying little Decepticon robot that runs around. It’s meant to be a Puckish figure. A cheeky little rapscallion. But every time it was on screen, which was often, I wanted to rip Michael Bay’s arm off and slap him in the face with it. This little robot is one of the most irritating screen presences I’ve ever seen. I’d rather have five hundred Bette Midlers dancing around. They’d infuriate me less.

And is it just me or is there the whiff or something unsavoury in the way that the Decepticons (minus Megatron) all speak an alien foreign language and want to destroy the world and the way that the Autobots all speak perfect English and want to protect it? Take this robotic bitch-slapping surrogate Muslim fundies! But how to explain Megatron speaking English? Maybe he was the smart one that was sent overseas to learn a proper civilised language. And then something went wrong in his brain circuits and he turned loopy.

But this would give the film too much credit. Transformers is really just all about building up to one large robot face-off. Too bad, then, that the final sequence is a snoozefest. Part of the reason for this is because we don’t care a jot about the characters and their fates, but it’s also because the direction is so poor. We rarely get to see what’s going on. Indeed, half the time it’s hard to know which side the robots are fighting for. Is that big thing an Autobot or a Decepticon? At least in the cartoons you had helpful logos on the characters to tell you who was who. But here you’re fucked. Yeah, you might be able to recognise Optimus Prime and Megatron (maybe even Bumblebee, seeing as he’s actually given screentime), but the others are just anonymous blobs. And as such, the one reason to watch the film, to see gnarly robots beat the shit out of each other, is rendered pointless. You might as well just get those toys out the loft. As shit as they are you’ll probably have more fun.