'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[MichaelB]

It reminds me of how Jerry Seinfeld's Dad thought that Monet must have been near-sided cause of his style.

Jerry Seinfeld's dad was spot on.

[souvenir]

Taken from the IMDB page for the upcoming The Inner Life of Martin Frost:

hail a film that shut up Manohla Dargis, 23 March 2007
6/10
Author: mgduke from new york city

what motivated me up to the new director's festival to catch 'martin frost' tonight was the brutal review that it got yesterday from the lead critic of the new york times, brutal dismissal, to be more accurate, 'the less said about (it) the better', she said, and i figured that any movie able to teach Ms Dargis the virtue of silence for even a few column inches would be worth the trip.

and worth the trip it was. we are brought into a paradise of limpidly beautiful visual textures. the oaken rhythms of a country house ensconced in a springtime parkland of luxuriant trees and luminous skies bestow the soothing natural blessing needed by the main character, martin frost (David Thewlis), a writer rubbed raw by the mechanics of finishing a novel in new york city. (Thewlis makes palpable the casualty of intrapsychic machinery sawed into daemonic reverb against the banausic hive). then paradise morphs into purgatory, leavened comedically, in Dante's sense, by the postmodern angelic visitations of Claire (Irene Jacobs) and Anna (Sophie Auster).

unfortunately, to my taste, the verbal dimensions of the film are flaccid, the logic more fanciful than imaginative, the narrative arc crippled by some irredeemably creaky plotting, especially at the crucial initiation of the relationship between martin and Claire where the seeds of common sense are thrown to the magpies of theatricality.

but so beguiling is the willful vulnerability of auster's fantasy, and the edgy interplay that it potentiates between Thewlis and Jacobs, and the camera, and later Sophie Auster, and the broad comedy of a rural everyman (Michael Imperioli), that it is very pleasant to be carried along on the visual foam of uncertain sensual delight, eddying into a feeling that this film's oddly louche light touch is uniquely adept at tracing some grave lineaments of the human heart.

go innocently.

[miless]

how is that "rediculous"?

[souvenir]

how is that "rediculous"?

Because I couldn't get through it without laughing? This person has the vocabulary of an English major but lacks the discipline to use a shift key. Reading a sentence like "Thewlis makes palpable the casualty of intrapsychic machinery sawed into daemonic reverb against the banausic hive" is just as funny to me as the idea that someone with a widescreen television wants fullscreen DVDs.

[tartarlamb]

how is that "rediculous"?

Because I couldn't get through it without laughing? This person has the vocabulary of an English major but lacks the discipline to use a shift key. Reading a sentence like "Thewlis makes palpable the casualty of intrapsychic machinery sawed into daemonic reverb against the banausic hive" is just as funny to me as the idea that someone with a widescreen television wants fullscreen DVDs.

Psh. You act like you've never made an intrapsychic causality palpable. We all have, so get down from your high horse and climb back into the banausic hive with the rest of us.

[Mr Sausage]

the oaken rhythms of a country house ensconced in a springtime parkland of luxuriant trees and luminous skies bestow the soothing natural blessing needed by the main character

how is that "rediculous"?

Come on, man, you don't find that even a bit 'rediculous?' The first seven words alone are only reasonably explained by an earthquake or by someone being beaten with oak boards.

[colinr0380]

Wasn't Jimi Hendrix famous for his daemonic reverbs?

[Steven H]

Wasn't Jimi Hendrix famous for his daemonic reverbs?

...but visual foam was his fatal flaw.

I do love the word "louche," though.

[jsteffe]

My favorite review is not from Amazon or IMDb, but from DVD Talk. Don Houston, one of their regulars, gave Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali one star:

The acting was mixed here and the technical qualities very weak (primarily due to the multitude of print scratches and age of the print used) but I can see how some people, particularly people who confuse poverty with some form of nobility, would think of this as a classic. The themes abound this time with karmic debts taking center stage as well as issues relating to wealth and relationships. I'd be lying if I said that I thought the director's worldview at the time struck a cord with me. For the most part, not a single person in the movie was very sympathetic, from the thieving daughter and aunt, to the carefree father who thought money would come to him without working for it to the relatives that show remorse only when it's far too late. Apu himself learns to be quite stoic in how he treats the world as well, making no real claim to fame for himself.

So, if you want to wallow in self-inflicted tragedy among a group of poor role models, you may want to rate this one higher than the Skip It I believe it's worth. Yes, the visuals of the direction were very interesting and I'm told that this print was restored a whole lot by a host of experts, but the messages it presents are for those who believe that circumstances are random rather than brought by cause and effect.

Now when you look at his other reviews, you can't help but notice that they include "Celebusluts," "Big Ass Fixation #2," "Slime Ballin' 2," and "Jerk and Swallow." 4177 reviews and counting--cause and effect, indeed! It's not hard to understand why he got bored by a movie about poverty in India. If only that Satyaji Ray guy had included a good facial scene...

[domino harvey]

Holy smokes, I had no idea they made a sequel to Big Ass Fixation, adding it to my Netfux queue.

[Svevan]

I think there's a tendency among some people to justify being bored by a film by claiming that "no one was sympathetic" or "I couldn't relate to anyone" or "I didn't agree with his message" or some other bullshit thing like that.

I also love that he separates the "visuals of the direction" from the story, as if all he was judging was how good the yarn was, disregarding how it was told. I guess in the porn industry story trumps "the visuals of the direction."

[miless]

I love the fact that he equates print scratches and damaged prints as "poor technical qualities"

in his context it seems as if they are the filmmakers fault... like it was bad editing, or something.

[Svevan]

Man I love Yunda Eddie Feng.

[quote]In this day and age of Hollywood freelancing, I find it touching that some performers routinely appear in movies funded by specific studios. Angelina Jolie is one such actor. Despite her wild-child/independent-streak image, she has regularly made movies with Paramount: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider--The Cradle of Life, Beyond Borders, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, A Mighty Heart, Beowulf. The Paramount-Angelina Jolie connection is rather odd because despite her celebrity, Jolie isn't capable of opening movies the way that Julia Roberts and Jodie Foster can. Beyond Borders (a movie about landmines) probably was greenlighted to keep Jolie interested in additional Tomb Raider installments, but that series is dead at the moment.

A Mighty Heart is yet another message movie from a clearly socially-conscious activist. (Paramount's box-office experience with Oliver Stone's World Trade Center should've warned studio execs away from another post-9/11 on financial grounds, but with Jolie's boyfriend Brad Pitt producing, I guess studio head Brad Grey just wanted to make his former production-company partner happy.) Unfortunately, Jolie doesn't seem to understand that her approach to social activism is too in-your-face to be effective. It's not that she's confrontational...it's just that her efforts impart a “holier-than-thouâ€

[nyasa]

Call me shallow, but I've never watched a movie featuring Angelina Jolie.

Before YEF came along, I reckon I was interested in about 80% of the DVDs featured on Beaver. Now it's down to about 40%.

[Ishmael]

I'd be lying if I said that I thought the director's worldview at the time struck a cord with me.

Yes, I also expect a director's worldview to help me cut wood.

[Chull]

I'd be lying if I said that I thought the director's worldview at the time struck a cord with me.

Yes, I also expect a director's worldview to help me cut wood.

Nice

[tryavna]

Yes, the visuals of the direction were very interesting and I'm told that this print was restored a whole lot by a host of experts, but the messages it presents are for those who believe that circumstances are random rather than brought by cause and effect.

Apart from obviously not knowing much about India's caste system ("the carefree father who thought money would come to him without working for it"), the above quotation also reveals a startling inability to discuss technical details for a DVD Talk reviewer: "this print was restored a whole lot by a host of experts"!

I'm not even sure what to make of that last phrase, though. I suppose he's suggesting that it's poor Apu's fault for happening to be born into dire poverty in a developing post-colonial nation rather than having the good sense to have been born into a white middle-class porn-appreciating American household. Is that the "cause and effect" he's referring to?

Edit: Ha! And I actually just read the entire review. You know you're in trouble when the opening paragraph sets up the reviewers own stupidity as some sort of hilarious and provocative iconoclasm:

Every once in awhile I'll stumble across some movie held to be a cultural treasure of a foreign land and proceed to apply my usual standard of "what does everyone see in this piece of crud" standard to it. After all, times change and a great many movies made decades ago simply don't hold up very well (no matter what some people think). On the other hand, I've also reviewed movies that the self-proclaimed "cultural elite" thought were base and worthless, yet found them completely enthralling (such is life). Well, I was treated to a couple of movies by famed Indian director, Satyajit Ray (R.I.P.), this week including his first credited movie, Pather Panchali (AKA: Song Of The Little Road).

Love that parenthetical "R.I.P." just before proceeding to shit all over Ray's aesthetic sensibilities.

[domino harvey]

After all, times change and a great many movies made decades ago simply don't hold up very well (no matter what some people think).

#-o

Amazing, this is like 101 stuff.

[jsteffe]

Amazing, this is like 101 stuff.

That's not being entirely fair to the many smart and engaged students I've come across in my Intro to Film classes!

But that benighted soul would have earned a poor grade due to his inability to use basic vocabulary in film analysis.

[Lemmy Caution]

I can understand if English is not someone's first language, but this gets incoherent and downright sloppy (he mistypes that the Romanian Revolution was in Dec. 98, instead of 89). At least he manages to convey a sense of anger and outrage about something.

From an IMDb review of 12:08 East of Bucharest, by a Romanian:

3 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :-
Waisting your time if watch it, another lie.,
7 April 2007
Author: galesanu_marian from Romania

Im not a movie specialist, i am just a watcher, now actually watched it in HBO. Same stuff as TV specialists who manipulated December 98 Romanian Revolution. This director was at those time in dippers add now he builds this movie from his memories. A last power demand of Romania rulers, who try a simplified version of Romanias history. Is convenient for actual rulers to dismiss Romanian Revolution this way after a washout nobody will ask for over 2000 violent deaths (crimes) at that time. Same obedience to actual rulers as for lost ones, same people who now rewrite history of this people. A act of beginning directing... a act of obey rulers demand, and no surprise, same echo press tendencies. At the history table there is no truth present no represent of deaths no true history action, so.... mister Porumbouiu claims ...there is no truth. After post revolution funeral of Calin Nemes this is a second funeral. Shame for this TV directing scenery who delete two hottest days of last 50 years in just one day, a old man speech about ONE day at botanical garden and cartoons on TV. This is not best Romanian movie, this is the only one.... If u seek for knowledge you are waisting time with this mystification, if you seek for entertainment... this is NO ENTERTAINMENT, time lost and lies.

[MichaelB]

I can understand if English is not someone's first language, but this gets incoherent and downright sloppy (he mistypes that the Romanian Revolution was in Dec. 98, instead of 89). At least he manages to convey a sense of anger and outrage about something.

...though he also completely misses the entire point of the film, which does rather invalidate his rancour.

[Cold Bishop]

IMDB review for Nostalghia by fedor8

2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
You have to be even more insane than Erland's character to consider this dull drama a masterpiece., 19 September 2007
4/10

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

First of all, let me explain the high 7.9 rating on IMDb. Only around 2,000+ people voted, and they're mostly film students who FORCE themselves to like movies like this, and other pretentious boredom-seekers who find thrills in watching grass grow. "Nostalghia" is the IDEAL film to fall asleep to. I speak from experience.

I absolutely loved "Solaris" and "Stalker", two brilliant, intelligent sci-fi dramas. On the other side of the Tarkovsky spectrum, I was utterly confused by "The Mirror" - which had zero story to tell (though occasionally visually very nice), I was mostly bored to tears by "Andrey Rublev" (nearly 4 hours!), but thought "The Sacrifice", his last movie, was okay (in spite of being in Swedish, an unpleasant language).

Tarkovsky's two sci-fi films are based on (good) novels, and this may be the crucial point. It seems that he is pretty much lost when doing his own material. He gets bogged down in his dull poetry and philosophy, not bothering to inter-connect various parts of the two in a cohesive manner, failing to focus on the essentials. Hence all his other (non-sci-fi) movies are not much better than all the other pretentious European crap from various Godards, Bunuels, Bergmans, Triers, and other overrated, lazy "geniuses".

"Nostalghia" is an overly pretentious non-story that is far too self-indulgent even for a European director. If you make movies just for your own "artistic" pleasure then why even bother releasing them? This two-hour snooze-fest could have been EASILY cut down to half that length - and it would still not be fascinating. Watching the main character walk around endlessly without saying or doing anything is just GARBAGE film-making. Lazy, and made/written by someone who overestimated himself a tad.

The positive side to this movie - apart from the fact that it made me fall asleep - are some visually stunning scenes. Especially the long shots of water, which are pleasant, if a little sleep-inducing because they may be TOO pleasant. Tarkovsky seemed to have some kind of an almost-fetish for "aqua", because he filmed it in all its visual and audio glory in nearly ever movie he made.

My advice to those who consider this a masterpiece is to stop lying to yourselves about your own intelligence, hence to quit being in denial about how you TRULY, honestly, perceive certain movies. Writing about a movie such as this being a "stroke of genius" is just one of many ways some people deal with an inferiority complex.

Erland Josephson, as uncharismatic as he has been in all his Bergman movies, is a poor choice for the insane man. Besides, what was the point Tarkovsky was trying to make? That he is sane and the rest of us are the insane ones? What a cliché idea! So trite. And how about that last scene (a 250-minute scene, it seemed) of the Russian character carrying the candle for the insane man? Was this symbolic of something? Trying to save the world? The world needs saving from very pretentious, boring movies.

Erland's character locked up his family for seven years. Hence he is not only insane, but should be put away for life. End of story. What can we possibly learn from Erland? His impassioned, idiotic left-wing "back-to-the-caves" speech was just dumb. It's something a 17 year-old manic-depressive idealist would write.

Besides some nicely photographed scenes, there was a pleasant scene where the blonde actress bares one of her breasts.

Tarkovsky portrays Italy as a gloomy, dark, depressing place. I have no idea why. If Italy looks like this, what should he do with Russia or Finnland??

[tryavna]

This director was at those time in dippers add now he builds this movie from his memories.

Assuming that he meant to type "diapers," I just looked up the director's (Corneliu Porumboiu) profile on IMDb and found out that he was born in 1975. If he was still wearing diapers at age 14, then perhaps he shouldn't have been allowed behind the megaphone to begin with....

Swedish, an unpleasant language

Not when you're listening to this guy:

[miless]

I wonder how Tarkovsky would have used him?

[Nadsat]

Swedish, an unpleasant language

WTF!?