Have you ever lost out on a job, and seen it go to a lesser person? Have you ever fantasised about getting revenge on either the employers or the incompetent, suck-up fool that got the job? Then The Ax is the movie for you!Bruno Dalvert is unable to find work after hes retrenched. Then he finds himself unable to get back into the work market, as there are fewer positions in his line of work than there are people who can fill them. So Bruno decides drastic measures are needed if he's to regain employment, and starts to create his own "positions vacant" in a deadly style.The Ax is one of those movies that is very European in its feel. If you're after easy morals and characters with ultimately redeeming features, then you're looking at the wrong movie. What The Ax does present is a scathing commentary on the shareholder/profit world we live in, and how disposable most of us are to companies - but in a darkly enjoyable way, of course. So come along and fantasise about those bosses and work colleagues, and what you'd really like to do to them, with The Ax.'

Henri Verdoux (Chaplin) is a charming furniture dealer with a profitable sideline in mercenary marriage - seducing rich widows, marrying them and then bumping them off the twig for his own profit. Such behaviour (in a 1947 movie, anyway) can only end with Verdoux suffering the full weight of the law, but along the way theres room for some particularly wild comedy, as Verdoux's attempts to terminate his marriage to a loudmouthed lottery-winner meet with repeated failure.This film was a flop when it was first released - partially because Chaplin's political musings on how the behaviour of governments in wartime isn't too different to the behaviour of Verdoux were rather startling to a post-WW2 audience. However, sixty years later, they fit in a lot better in our more cynical age. For the jaded sophisticates of the ANU Film Group, this should be a delightfully dark detour into decadence. Enjoy!'