The 3 Buttons (Les 3 boutons). Agnès Varda, 2015.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 1) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 11 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Un agenzia matrimoniale. Federico Fellini, 1953.
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Edition screened: Included on Raro Blu-ray I Clowns, released 2011. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 16 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Fellini’s short Un agenzia matrimoniale is from the omnibus film L'amore in città (1953). It sometimes is confused with Giorgio Pastina’s full-length film Agenzia matrimoniale (Matrimonial Agency), also from 1953.
Agnès Varda’s Credit Sequences. Alex Vuillaume-Tylski, 2020.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 1) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 8 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A gentle overview of Varda’s techniques to engage an audience with title and credit sequences that are complimentary thematic compositions.
Bacardi and Coke Bonanza, ’81. William Grefé, 1981.
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Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefé Collection, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 7 minutes.
Summary: Rodeo animal abuse.
Details: The first 2 minutes of this promotional film are typical rodeo garbage, especially the event where those specific clowns dressed as cowboys try to snap the necks of calves running for their lives. Following that is 45 seconds of idiots clapping and jumping around to Orange Blossom Special. The remaining four minutes are an advertisement for Bacardi Rum, The Mixable One. Turns out that Bacardi is advertised in many leading magazines, just look at ’em all, and Bacardi and Coke has been voted America’s favorite drink.
Big Little Lies: Season 1. Jean-Marc Vallée, 2017.
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Edition screened: HBO DVD set, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 370 minutes.
Summary: Dead squirrel.
Details: Episode 5, 24:07-24:14, we join the children in staring at a dead squirrel. It is just a dead squirrel with no contrived gore.
Big Little Lies: Season 2. Andrea Arnold, 2019.
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Edition screened: HBO DVD set, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 338 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Gordon Klein’s toy room in his waterfront mansion has a 1992 Williams The Getaway: High Speed II and a modified 1980 Stern Galaxy.
A Chat with Nini. Agnès Varda, 2019.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 1) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 1 minute.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
In which Nini sets Agnès Varda straight.
The Clowns (I Clowns). Federico Fellini, 1970.
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Edition screened: Raro Blu-ray, released 2011. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.
Summary: Animal performers are seen in typical circus environments, but there are no depictions of violence or harm to the animals.
The Raro BD also includes Fellini’s 1953 short film Un agenzia matrimoniale and Adriano Aprà’s film essay Fellini’s Circus (2011, 42 minutes, no animal violence).
Daguerréotypes: Photographic Objects. Agnès Varda, 2005.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 4) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 6 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
An introduction to Daguerreotypes, their technology, and history.
Danger Lies in the Words (Maux croisés: Les dossiers secrets de l'inspecteur Lavardin). Claude Chabrol, 1989.
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Edition screened: Included in Cohen Blu-ray set The Inspector Lavardin Collection, released 2014. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The mansion has a spacious game room including a pool table, several arcade games, and four Zaccaria pinball machines that are seen first around 16:25 and again around 1:31:30: a 1979 Hot Wheels, a 1983 Farfalla, a 1980 Fire Mountain, and a 1979 Shooting the Rapids.
The Devil’s Honey (Il miele del diavolo). Lucio Fulci, 1986.
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Edition screened: Severin Blu-ray, released 2017. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 78 minutes.
Summary: Burial of a pet dog. 2/5❤
Details: We don’t know how or why the girl’s German shepherd dies, but we see him lying dead in the grave that she has dug on the beach, 1:09:25. The girl completes the burial by shoveling sand into the hole through 1:10:08.
Dictionary: The Adventure of Words. Brent Maddock, 1963.
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Edition screened: Included on Arrow Blu-ray Tremors, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 16 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. David Yates, 2018.
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Edition screened: Warner Blu-ray released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 134 minutes.
Summary: Implied violence to fantastic beasts.
Details: We don’t actually see any beasts killed, but there is a lot of violent flinging of creatures that presumably results in death, such as the giant Chinese kittydragon that grabs smaller beasts by the throat and flings them to the side. The most unkind flinging comes during the opening sequence (the best part of the movie) in which Grindelwald tires of his baby dragon being “so needy” and flings him out of the carriage and into the void.
The FLESH Triple Feature. Michael Findlay (as Julian Marsh) 1967-1968.
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Edition screened: Something Weird, released 2003. English language. Cumulative runtime of three features approximately 222 minutes.
Summary: Two of the three films have weird animal-related moments.
The Something Weird compilation includes three slightly fascinating Michael & Roberta Findlay films devoted to lingering close-ups of soft female torsos.
• The Touch of Her Flesh (1967, 75 minutes): A revenge thriller including a particularly admiring sequence of a young Black go-go dancer, and a good unscripted walk-on by somebody’s house cat in the murderer’s apartment. 2.5/5❤
• The Curse of Her Flesh (1968, 78 minutes): The previous story continues, with a minor animal incident at 20:06 when our killer dips the cat’s paw into water that he was shown lacing with something, presumably poison or a sedative. Later, embarrassing bed talk leads the killer to scruff the cat in a vague way while explaining that “all pussies must die,” 23:27-23:30. The girl kicks him out of the apartment and everyone is fine. There is no harm to the cat. The killer just scrunches its fur weirdly, and so his mysterious lacing ingredient must have been something like mouthwash or Fresca. I have no disagreement if you are thinking that this doesn’t make a lot of sense. 2.5/5❤
• The Kiss of Her Flesh (1968, 69 minutes): The saga concludes, but not before a few more languid murders. About six minutes into the film our killer sits down to a meal of lobster - just a whole boiled lobster plopped on a white cafeteria plate garnished only by a bottle of Lancers. His chair is situated so he can stare at an unconscious squishy girl tied to a spindly reproduction neoclassical sideboard. No thing leads to any other, and he is compelled to break the claw off the lobster and use it to pinch her thigh until she comes to, at which point he switches to a pair of awkward salad tongs and tweaks her further. He’s an odd one, our killer. 2.5/5❤
The Frontier Experience. Barbara Loden, 1975.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #965 Wanda, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 25 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
An educational film about 19th-century pioneer life.
Game of Thrones: Seasons 1-8. Various directors, 2011-2019.
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Edition screened: HBO Blu-ray box set, released 2019. Mostly english language, with exotic fictional languages and English subtitles. Runtime of all episodes approximately 71 hours and 10 minutes.
Summary: Pervasive killing and mutilating of animals.
I watched the entire series for the first time in October 2020. I found it exciting and enjoyable for the most part, occasionally hobbled by badly written dialogue.
There is no point in enumerating the endless depictions of animal cruelty, as there are few episodes lacking at least one or two close-up of a dead, dying, or mutilated animal. Horses suffer badly, brutally lost in battle or slain by their owners in rage. A family of wolf cubs we meet early in Season One mostly is violently killed one-by-one throughout the series. Village scenes open with close-ups of dead game animals at market or lugged about, and one episode begins at an army encampment with strategic conversation over the seemingly interminable skinning of a large animal. Magical beasts are killed and a marauding horde makes an enormous environmental sculpture from the hacked-up bodies of horses.
There is no way to pick your way through Game of Thrones avoiding or agonizing over depictions of animal cruelty. Watch the series or don’t watch it.
Girlfriends. Claudia Weill, 1978.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1055, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Come for the very good social realism of this easy-to-watch drama, stay for the generous exterior footage of SoHo in the 70s and one of the most authentic depictions of New York life I recall seeing.
Bonus material on the Criterion BD includes a good discussion with director Weill and actors Melanie Mayron, Christopher Guest, and Bob Balaban, and two short films, both free of animal violence:
• Joyce at 34 (1972, Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill) a 28-minute documentary about the impact of pregnancy on Chopra’s career.
• Commuters (1970, Eliot Noyes and Claudia Weill) a beautiful 4-minute section from the omnibus project Big Town.
Grave Robbers (Ladrones de tumbas). Rubén Galindo Jr., 1989.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #331, released 2020. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Groundhog Day. Harold Ramis, 1993.
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Edition screened:Columbia TriStar Blu-ray, released 2009. English language. Runtime approximately 101 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Rent-A-Girl. William Rose, 1965.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Total Fulfillment Triple Feature, released 2011. Muddy English language. Runtime approximately 77 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film. 2/5❤
The Total Fulfillment Triple Feature also includes Aroused (1966) and Help Wanted Female (1968).
Sensing Bodies. Trois Couleurs, 2019.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 1) released 2020. Scored, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 2 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A brief montage of Varda’s techniques for emphasizing human form.
The So-Called Caryatids (Les dites cariatides). Agnès Varda, 1984.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 3) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 12 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A narrated review of some architectural caryatids in Paris.
Disc 3 also includes a short follow-up of some addition caryatid figures, Les dites cariatides bis (2005).
You’ve Got Beautiful Stairs, You Know (T’as de beaux escaliers, tu sais...). Agnès Varda, 1986.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 3) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 4 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
