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For this Friday Movie Night, first up is Babe (1995), a family film about a talking pig who is taken from his mother and ends up on a farm where every animal but him has a purpose. Uh-oh, he discovers he’s bound for the slaughterhouse, but lucky for him, he also shows a talent for sheep-herding, and uses it to avoid becoming dinner. This is by far the best-known and most-acclaimed film of Australian director Chris Noonan; received rave reviews at the time and was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

After that is Babe: Pig in the City (1998), the darker, edgier, more surreal and unsettling sequel, in which Farmer Hoggett breaks his leg and the gang is forced to move into the big city in search of new opportunities. It’s a weird place where everything is topsy-turvy and nothing to seems to make any sense. Babe becomes caught up in a murder plot somehow. Director George Miller is best-known for Mad Max (1979) and its sequels. This was Gene Siskel’s #1 movie of 1998. Time to finally cross this one off the list.

Last in Match Factory Girl (1990), a Finnish black comedy from renowned auteur Aki Kaurismaki, whose restaurant-owner comedy Drifting Clouds (1996) we previously watched. It centers on a woman in a dead-end factory job with an overbearing mother who steals her paychecks. The lady hooks up with a guy, and finds herself pregnant; after the guy abandons her, she goes on a deadpan, darkly-comic quest for revenge. Events escalate from there in Kaurismaki’s signature taciturn fashion. One of the highest-rated Finnish films on Letterboxd.

We’ll start at 8PM EST on Blorptube, right here:

https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine

Be there, comrades!

Letterboxd:

• Babe: https://letterboxd.com/film/babe/
• Babe: Pig in the City: https://letterboxd.com/film/babe-pig-in-the-city/
• Match Factory Girl: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-match-factory-girl/

Doesthedogdie.com links:

• Babe: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/8788
• Babe: Pig in the City: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/8789
• Match Factory Girl: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/83774

CWs for Babe and Babe: Pig in the City:

• Carnism.
• Cruelty to animals.
• Animal corpses.
• Child abuse.
• Child abandonment.
• Death of parent.
• Gaslighting.
• Deaths of animals.
• Dogfighting.
• Sad animal.
• Animal abandonment.
• Someone is physically restrained.
• Gun violence.
• Destruction of child’s toy.
• Kidnapping.
• Pooping.
• Needles.
• Anxiety attacks.
• Throat mutilation.
• Blood and gore.
• Unconsciousness.
• Death of dog.
• Broken bones.
• Kidnapping.
• Jump scares.
• Clowns.
• Cancer.
• Hospital scene.
• Someone struggles to breathe.
• Drowning.

CWs for Match Factory Girl:

• Vomiting.
• Domestic violence.
• Abusive parents.
• Misophonia.
• Miscarriage.
• Hate speech.
• Someone is hit by a car.
• Abused becomes the abuser.
• Slapping of woman.
• Death of family member.
• Hospital scene.
• Honking horns.
• Screeching tires.
• Someone leaves without saying goodbye.
• Sad ending.

Links to movies:

• Babe: https://tankie.tube/w/dqpXBqAwG77AqhuXwsazZU
• Babe: Pig in the City: https://tankie.tube/w/kD6p4E2oeWxYs2BrgSjHSx
• The Match Factory Girl: https://tankie.tube/w/gfAXNCqUcDMwZkVUk9V7Sk