One Minute to Nine (2007)

You won't be disappointed!

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

"Every f---ing day of my life," Wendy Maldonado told the 911 dispatcher when the woman asked how often did her husband hit or abused her. This call came almost immediately after Maldonado bludgeoned her husband Aaron's skull in with a hammer, aided by her seventeen-year-old son Randy, before his bloody carcass was picked up and transported to a hospital and Wendy taken away in handcuffs. Her murdering her husband, while costing her ten years in prison, was a release of twenty years of unconscionable, unforgivable violence and abuse that was not an irregular or infrequent occurrence, but an every day tribulation for the middle-aged mother of three boys. Every F---ing Day of My Life, the edited and re-cut version of a film called One Minute to Nine, aired on HBO in 2009 and told the story that was so often silenced in the wake of beatings and inconceivable torture.Upon Wendy and Randy's arrest and subsequent acceptance of a plea bargain on manslaughter charges, with Randy arrested a week after Aaron's death, both souls were given four days before their sentencing hearing. Those four days are the focus of Tommy Davis's documentary, which is a collection of home movies revolving around what life was like in their Grants Pass, Oregon home. Wendy, who looks like any other woman you'd see in the supermarket or living on your block, details twenty years worth of trauma in just sixty minutes, showing us the grapefruit-sized holes in her walls, now concealed by drawings from her children, that were made by her head, bruises and cuts that were inflicted by her husband, and a wealth of broomsticks, knives, and flyswatters that were boxed away in the basement, out of reach from an unpredictably violent man of ostensibly no conscience.Randy speaks on the incident through a phone in the jailhouse, behind a thick sheet of bulletproof glass. He states that he was ready to murder his father when his mother voiced her desire, which came only minutes before the bloody death. He states how he can recall several nights sleeping with his shoes on, atop his covers, not underneath them, waiting for something to happen that needed his immediate action. He even recalls him and his two younger brothers forced to sit on the couch as they watched their father kick, beat, and terrorize their mother, a reaction I couldn't even begin to fathom watching passively unfold, even as a young child.A recurring moral of the documentary is the instillation of fear and helplessness. What made Wendy endure twenty years of abuse before finally acting, albeit in an extreme manner? She states that she could've ended it all ten years ago or even put up with it for another decade, but some impulsive instinct forced her to act and, in turn, bash her husband's brains in with a hammer one faithful evening, with the assistance of her older son. The act is recounted in horrifying detail, with gruesome crime scenes to boot, with both Randy and Wendy remarking how they saw Aaron hyperventilating and struggling to maintain irregular breathing after being struck so many times. When Wendy was being taken away by the police, she feared that her husband was still alive and that this incident would most definitely lead to a beating that she wouldn't survive. Sure enough, a coroner arrived and Aaron was pronounced dead soon after, an irreparable result to a drastic action that ended two decades worth of unjustifiable domestic violence.Most films show domestic violence as momentary spouts of violence, often impulsive and quickly apologized for, even in the most sinister dramas. Here's a documentary that holds the issue up to a magnifying glass, forcing the viewer to reap at the ugliness and unfathomable cruelty of the situation. I'm reminded heavily of Frederick Wiseman's lengthy documentary Domestic Violence, which concerned a battered women's shelter in Florida, the victims, and the treatments the women underwent in order to try and better themselves. Here's a documentary that zeroes in on perhaps a unique situation; a neverending display of brutal violence towards an innocence person that was tolerated for twenty years before something was done.However, at the end of the day, Wendy Maldonado and her son Randy are still killers, guilty of homicide, regardless of what the victim did to them or for how long he did what he did. Randy was eventually sentenced to six years with a release date set for August 2011, while Maldonado would serve ten years with a projected release date in March 2016. Upon being released from jail, I guarantee it will be the most liberating moment for Maldonado, if said moment hasn't already occurred.Every F---ing Day of My Life is one of the most frightening documentaries I have yet to see. It's a film that reminds many of us that we don't know domestic violence outside of films, news articles, and soap operas, and shows the real physical and psychological ugliness that burdens these situations. I end with the simple, but imperative statement for all to simply respect and cherish the people in your lives because nobody deserves to go through this kind of insufferable pain.NOTE: The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233; you know who you are.Directed by: Tommy Harris.

Here is a powerful documentary on a case of domestic violence that dragged on for 19 years before Wendy Maldonado bashed her husband's head in with a hammer. We see and hear a lot about the facts of this sordid situation, but this documentary is seriously diminished by its lack of attention to the psychology behind such terrible events. Why did Wendy stay with her brutal husband when the injuries he caused would have sent him to prison many times over? If she couldn't afford to leave, OK, I think the viewer could accept that. But ask her, at least!Clearly concerned friends, family, and neighbors of Wendy are interviewed on camera, and they all knew about the brutality. Yet Wendy takes a plea deal because, she says, after so many years of abuse she couldn't believe that anyone, including a jury, would care or demonstrate sympathy. As a result, she's now serving a 10-year term with no possibility of early release. The film gives no clue as to what caused Wendy finally to crack and give her husband a taste of his own medicine. Nor is any information given about the role of her oldest son, Randall, who also accepts a deal and also had to go to jail. These are serious and inexplicable omissions. I'm glad I saw this because domestic violence is a terrible problem in our society. Yet I can't help wondering if the filmmaker agreed not to ask certain questions in order to gain access.

This is a fantastic film...so sad, so wrong and so *real*.Everyone knows a documentary tells a true story. To me, a *good* documentary tells a true story that evokes a strong emotional response from the viewer. This one resonated strongly with me.How easy it is for those who have not *lived through* extreme domestic violence to judge Wendy for staying with Aaron. They have not experienced the constant humiliation, torment and manipulation at the hands of an abuser. Abusers like Aaron are not dumb - they are *psychotic* and often masters of intimidation and manipulation. I should know, I grew up with one. Perhaps after having all your teeth knocked or broken out you might understand; or maybe the constant threats on your life and the lives of those you love if you leave? We all say "well I don't understand - I would just leave him"...of course we don't understand - we are not Wendy; we didn't marry that guy at eighteen and have kids with him. We can never know what it's like until we walk a mile in her shoes...the point of the film. I thought the ending was executed brilliantly by the director...brutally real...frustrating. It left me in total consternation with our so-called "justice" system. Wendy and Randy should not have been imprisoned...they should be in therapy.

Tommy Davis's brilliant documentary One Minute to Nine lays out the case of Wendy Maldonado, 35, a mother of four boys, who murdered her husband of nearly twenty years, Aaron, 36, on May 1, 2005.One Minute's first minute wastes no time in setting up a sense of uneasiness that permeates throughout the film. Seemingly innocuous home video footage of young boys sledding in the snow, juxtaposed with an eerily dark ambient piano-based soundtrack set the mood for an unusual trip ahead. The capper is a split-second shot of a man, presumably the boys' father, who glares into the camera lens almost as if he is looking directly through the person shooting the video.From there, the film shifts to a leisurely paced discussion with an attractive, yet tired looking, Wendy Maldonado. At first, the viewer is unaware of her significance. Her purpose is not immediately thrust into the viewers' laps. Instead, Davis allows us to get to know who this young, pretty, likable woman is and warm up to her instantly.This is followed by several of her family members, including three of her four boys and her mother. The whole family seems very loving toward one another. However, an undercurrent of tension is faintly apparent. Eventually, it is revealed that Wendy has murdered her abusive husband, Aaron, and it is only a matter of days before she is to be sent off to prison for ten years. She and her family are getting their affairs in order and Wendy is able to reveal the horror of what happened behind the walls of their Grants Pass, Oregon home.Aaron Maldonado apparently was a video hound. He loved to shoot footage of his young lovely young bride and their playful teen courtship. This was followed by a teenage marriage and a pregnancy. The couple gave birth to a girl who, unfortunately, passed away after only nine days. Despite this early tragedy, the couple forged onward and had four more children, all boys. Photos of a very pregnant Wendy, baring twins, revealed the couple to be happy and in love.According to Wendy, however, Aaron began to change. As the boys grew up, he used to pick on them quite a bit. He also became sterner with Wendy and had developed a quick temper. He also started to seem to be losing it quite a bit. Aaron professed to his wife that he dreamed of becoming a serial killer, one on par with the Ed Geins and Charles Ings of the world. He wanted to capture his prey, seclude them in a basement and torture them for as "long as it took for them to die." He then proclaimed he wanted to skin their bodies and consume their flesh.Despite these glaring warning signs, Wendy stuck around.Aaron's teasing of the children began to escalate, especially in regard to their oldest son, Randy, whom he began to smack around. He started beating Wendy, too. He allegedly bruised her repeatedly and even knocked out several of her teeth with his fists.Some of the most disturbing portions of One Minute to Nine are culled from the family video footage during this time frame. A few pops to the head of his kids begins the transformation. One shot of him teaching one of his little boys, probably no more than two or three years old, how to shoot a shotgun is devastating. Finally, Aaron's desecration of a dead baby deer, illustrated with a flying kick to the head of the dead animal, and then the latter supping of its blood from its eviscerated belly, are mortifying.Again, despite the ever-escalating warning signs, Wendy Maldonado chose to stick by Aaron's side.Throughout the first 2/3 of the film, Davis pulls a nice red herring in regard to the oldest son, Randy. References are made to him in the past tense, as if he may be dead, possibly at the hands of Aaron.It is the reveal that Randy actually helped kill his father, however, where I lost a little bit of sympathy for Wendy Maldonado. I know the appropriate thing to say in regard to domestic abuse cases is that the abuser created an environment in which the abused feels he or she is unable to escape. Indeed, Wendy claimed that Aaron threatened her with death if she ever told the police about his misdeeds. He supposedly even threatened her that if she ever took off, he would go after her family members and kill them one by one until he found her.For me personally, I have a very difficult time understanding how she would allow her son to participate in the brutal killing of his father, regardless of what he had done to her and the boys. I understand that there are serious problems with law enforcement in regard to domestic violence and that the authorities are not always reliable, as is evidenced in the movie, but I still have a hard time reconciling the fact that she would allow her son to participate in the murder.That does not, however, detract from the brilliance of the film-making on display. It is, rather, a testament to Davis' skill that he can wring so many disparate emotions out of his viewers.Indeed, by the end of the film, you have to ask yourself if justice has been properly served? Did her son deserve more than just six years for his part in the crime? Should Wendy be locked away for more than the 10 years she was sentenced to? Or, were they both wrongfully convicted? Should there be an expansion of the self-defense laws as posited by the judge who sympathized with her plight? These are but a few of the powerful questions raised by Tommy Davis' excellent documentary, One Minute to Nine. Thankfully, the film allows the viewer to make up his or her own mind.