On a cruise, from [OP] Cinn’s bucket list. Well, not in the context of today's film pick*

 

1960. On a luxury line, former prisoner Marta and her warden Liza meet again. Things had happened years before, in Auschwitz. This new confrontation reverses their roles.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for December has a few dateless themes. This is one of them.

Lights on water for the final day of Féte des Lumiéres, 2025

“In Sicily, Italian is not the language of the poor.”

– title card

A special soldier for National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (USA)

“They sent me out by plane to a boarding school. But I ran away. There's a war on. I can't cram some stupid stuff when it's a war.”

– Ivan

A twelve-year old boy works as a scout for the Soviet army. His age and size make him an inoffensive figure in the war-scarred landscape. But inside, he's brooding for revenge.

“If that's Americanism, it's very hyphenated.”

– narrator

A hot air balloon*

 

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for December has a few dateless themes. This is one of them.

– I've never seen a film like this before.

– Oh, it's different, alright.

A temple*

“Now consummate the sacrifice in your throat of flame, o father and mother, o god and goddess, o father and mother, o father and son, o god and goddess! Voracious creator! Roaring ardent hunger…”

The world's first epic film and the debut of – the later hugely popular – strongman Maciste.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for December has a few dateless themes. This is one of them.

A theme park*, or in this case, amusement park.

“Just take it from me I'm just as free as any daughter I do what I like Just what I like and how I love it

I'm right here to stay when I'm old and gray I'll be right in my prime Living in the sunlight, loving in the moonlight Having a wonderful time”

– Tiny Tim, Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight (Al Sherman & Al Lewis, 1930), from God Bless Tiny Tim (1968)

Tiny Tim is a personal hero of mine. A decade after his mainstream TV debut, Tiny's career had taken a tumble but he still was – God bless him – Tiny Tim, and he performed a two-hour-and-seventeen-minute singing marathon at Luna Park Sydney. Just months after that, tragedy hit the park's Ghost Train ride. A fire, arson as it was determined decades later, killed seven. Fellow Tiny-aficionado and OZ artist Don Lane saw a connection between these two events and spend years cutting and editing the musical marathon, nude drunken interview and disaster footage, and Tiny wandering around a mirror maze into a narrative.

 

Lane passed in 2013 and, in respect of his family's wishes, Street of Dreams remains unfinished.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for December has a few dateless themes. This is one of them.