Australia Has No Second Amendment

Film: Nitram
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

Whenever there is a mass shooting in the U.S., it is inevitable that someone will bring up Australia and the absence of such events there. It’s because, we are told, that a number of years ago there was a terrible mass shooting, and laws were soon changed to prevent this sort of firearm access. About three dozen people were killed in Port Arthur and another nearly two dozen wounded on April 28, 1996, by Martin Bryant, currently serving 35 life sentences and 1600+ years without possibility of parole. Nitram is that story, after a fashion.

Nitram (Caleb Landry Jones) is a intellectually disabled young man living with his patents in Port Arthur, Australia. He seems to have almost no ability to control any of his urges. He lights off fireworks, annoys the neighbors, and causes trouble. He’s also prone to grabbing the steering wheel of cars when someone else is driving. His father (Anthony LaPaglia) struggles to keep the peace in the home between Nitram and his mother (Judy Davis). Nitram has strange demands and is unable to separate the idea of what he wants from it not being necessary.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Snowtown Murders

Film: Snowtown (The Snowtown Murders)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on The New Portable.

Horror movies come in any number of varieties. One of the clearest distinctions is between movies that are based in the supernatural and those that are based more in reality. A movie like The Silence of the Lambs is clearly horror and purely within the realm of possibility, which makes it that much more terrifying for me. Contrast that with, say, A Nightmare on Elm Street, which is terrifying in the moment, but then stops affecting me the moment the movie is over. Snowtown, also known as The Snowtown Murders is very much a film of the first variety. In fact, this is based on a real case of the most notorious serial killer in Australia and the young man who he influenced.

That summary really is what Snowtown is about; the rest is really just the details. Those details focus on Jamie Vlassakis (Lucas Pittaway), a young man who lives in poverty with his family in a poor suburb of Adelaide, Australia. His mother (Louise Harris) does the best she can, which honestly isn’t that great for her kids. Need evidence of this? At one point, Jamie is raped by his older brother Troy (Anthony Groves) and her boyfriend takes indecent pictures of all three of her sons. A gay, cross-dressing neighbor named Barry (Richard Green) introduces her to John Bunting (Daniel Henshall).