'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[mfunk9786]

That would be much better if it mentioned fuck-me shoes.

[RossyG]

Some lousy writing in those tweets. I wish he'd say how the male lead is introduced for contrast.

[mfunk9786]

With a sexy silhouette in the shower, no doubt.

[colinr0380]

Like Alfred Hitchcock in his TV show intros!

[domino harvey]

Not bad...just the chipmunks have a bit too much of a human face and not a chipmunk face.

[Lemmy Caution]

An Imdb review, in full, of the Aussie film We of The Never Never:

Excellent film showing how collective Socialism is a failure and robs the Aborigines of their freedom. Wonderful scenery and recreation of turn of the Century station life. Australians make good movies... take that Hollywood. The "fever" they refer to is likely a Plasmodium falciparum infection, a form of malaria with high mortality rates when untreated. Unfortunately the little fellow is becoming resistant to many drugs and due to its great ability to change, attempts to develop a vaccine have not been too successful either. They should be showing this film in our schools instead of fiction like Al Gore's climate change film. Gee... in this movie, it is hot, long before airplanes and trucks infiltrated the area.

Somehow they managed 4 digs at those awful, misguided Liberals in just 7 sentences.
Needless to say the reviewer is American. And none of their political points have anything to do with the actual film. There's no evidence the Aborigines are collectivized -- they seem to have personal possessions, and we really don't see their lifestyle much. I assume they mean social welfare, though even that's incorrect as the natives have to work in order to get supplies -- flour, sugar and tobacco -- from the Whites. And their freedom kind of took a hit when their lands were appropriated. Interesting how our right-wing reviewer didn't note colonialism, the pervasive racism or the concept of superior/inferior races, all of which the film critiques.

Otherwise, who knew there were hot places on earth prior to global warming? While "airplanes and trucks" seems to demonstrate a rather limited understanding of the causes of climate change. Finally, it's unclear how Australians making a quality film, in a rather Hollywood style no less, is somehow a reproach to Hollywood. I'm somewhat disappointed they couldn't find a way to blame the lack of a cure for malaria on government incompetence. It starts to sound suspiciously like they believe in science. Next time I expect all 7 sentences to be politicized!

[sir_luke]

I found it amusing and sad that Kino's trailer for Miguel Gomes' Arabian Nights includes the disclaimer: "This is not an adaptation of Arabian Nights - despite drawing on its structure."

[zedz]

I found it amusing and sad that Kino's trailer for Miguel Gomes' Arabian Nights includes the disclaimer: "This is not an adaptation of Arabian Nights - despite drawing on its structure."

I think that disclaimer is actually part of the film.

[sir_luke]

Ah, okay. It just seemed oddly shoehorned in between critic quotes. Comments on Things Before Researching Them Man strikes again!

[zedz]

Otherwise, who knew there were hot places on earth prior to global warming? While "airplanes and trucks" seems to demonstrate a rather limited understanding of the causes of climate change.

I also thought it pretty funny that he makes it abundantly clear that he doesn't get the 'global' part of 'global warming' in any way. Does he think the icecaps are melting because of all the traffic jams at the North Pole?

[colinr0380]

There are a lot of penguin crossings I bet!

[spectre]

An Imdb review, in full, of the Aussie film We of The Never Never:

Excellent film showing how collective Socialism is a failure and robs the Aborigines of their freedom. Wonderful scenery and recreation of turn of the Century station life. Australians make good movies... take that Hollywood. The "fever" they refer to is likely a Plasmodium falciparum infection, a form of malaria with high mortality rates when untreated. Unfortunately the little fellow is becoming resistant to many drugs and due to its great ability to change, attempts to develop a vaccine have not been too successful either. They should be showing this film in our schools instead of fiction like Al Gore's climate change film. Gee... in this movie, it is hot, long before airplanes and trucks infiltrated the area.

Somehow they managed 4 digs at those awful, misguided Liberals in just 7 sentences.
Needless to say the reviewer is American. And none of their political points have anything to do with the actual film. There's no evidence the Aborigines are collectivized -- they seem to have personal possessions, and we really don't see their lifestyle much. I assume they mean social welfare, though even that's incorrect as the natives have to work in order to get supplies -- flour, sugar and tobacco -- from the Whites. And their freedom kind of took a hit when their lands were appropriated. Interesting how our right-wing reviewer didn't note colonialism, the pervasive racism or the concept of superior/inferior races, all of which the film critiques.

Otherwise, who knew there were hot places on earth prior to global warming? While "airplanes and trucks" seems to demonstrate a rather limited understanding of the causes of climate change. Finally, it's unclear how Australians making a quality film, in a rather Hollywood style no less, is somehow a reproach to Hollywood. I'm somewhat disappointed they couldn't find a way to blame the lack of a cure for malaria on government incompetence. It starts to sound suspiciously like they believe in science. Next time I expect all 7 sentences to be politicized!

Not sure if you meant to capitalise 'Liberals', but let's just say that word has somewhat different connotations in Australia. (For instance, that reviewer would almost certainly be a Liberal voter.)

[jindianajonz]

Not sure if you meant to capitalise 'Liberals', but let's just say that word has somewhat different connotations in Australia. (For instance, that reviewer would almost certainly be a Liberal voter.)

I suppose being in the southern hemisphere, political stances would be reversed

[MichaelB]

I don't know if they're still going, but the Liberal Democrats were one of the most far-right parties in Russia - although their leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky generally got more coverage than they did.

[Adam X]

Not sure if you meant to capitalise 'Liberals', but let's just say that word has somewhat different connotations in Australia. (For instance, that reviewer would almost certainly be a Liberal voter.)

I suppose being in the southern hemisphere, political stances would be reversed

That's about as good a reason as any for the Liberal's naming themselves as such.

[MichaelB]

Two fascinatingly sniffy reviews of the Taviani Collection (Cohen, although they apply just as much to the upcoming Arrow release) by people who were viscerally disgusted by certain elements.

Here's the first:

The first 30 minutes is just seeing our main character being beaten by his father and then in turn Gavino abusing goats and in one terribly unnecessary moment actually rapes a goat. I can usually handle about anything in movies, but when your main attraction is child and animal abuse, you better have a good story to tell and this movie doesn’t.

...and the second (this is the whole of the section on Moon Sickness, the second story in Kaos):

“Moon Sickness” attempts to lighten the mood with a story about a man who begins to behave madly under a full moon, allowing his wife a rather convenient opportunity for adultery with her cousin. I find all aspects of this story rather distasteful, making it my least favorite in the bunch.

Are people really so utterly sheltered, so completely convinced that their own particular morality is the "correct" one, that they can't even process the notion that people living in rural Sardinia or Sicily might have very different attitudes? The fact that the second reviewer has totally missed the point of Moon Sickness is demonstrated by the phrase "attempts to lighten the mood", whereas for me it's easily one of the darkest and saddest pieces in the entire quintet (that sequence with the temporarily abandoned baby on the moonlit hillside still sends shivers right down to the base of my spine) - and for me, one of the most moving, because all three of the central characters have psychologically convincing reasons for behaving the way that they do.

[domino harvey]

Assuming the above is true, I don't think objecting to bestiality makes someone uncultured swine...

[MichaelB]

Assuming the above is true, I don't think objecting to bestiality makes someone uncultured swine...

No, but in objecting to bestiality tout court he's shut off the possibility that the film might have something worthwhile to say about it - he's just presenting the scene as being a pure gross-out exercise, which it emphatically isn't.

Aside from the fact that the animal in question is actually a donkey, the phrase "rapes a goat" is technically/legally correct (since an animal cannot of course give informed consent), but it creates a wildly different impression to what actually happens, and the reasons why it happens.

Incidentally, I'm not arguing that he's "uncultured swine" - rather the exact opposite: I think his cultural conditioning is getting in the way of appreciating what the Tavianis (and their source writer Gavino Ledda, who had first-hand memories of a rural Sardinian lifestyle) are doing.

[colinr0380]

Speaking of uncultured swine, I'm not sure how that commentator would react to the eye-popping Japanese Roman Porno film Eros School: Feels So Good, which starts off queasy with a older student getting hired to transfer in and then, ahem, sexually assault all of the female classmates, before at its climax it goes into similarly frustrated territory as the 'hero', made jealous by this older student's prowess:

Spoiler

impulsively rapes the school's pet pig mascot in frustration outside the classroom in that his girlfriend is being deflowered in!

This was directed by Kurahara Koretsugu, the brother of Koreyoshi Kurahara who was the subject of an Eclipse set.

[matrixschmatrix]

Speaking of uncultured swine, I'm not sure how that commentator would react to the eye-popping Japanese Roman Porno film Eros School: Feels So Good, which starts off queasy with a older student getting hired to transfer in and then, ahem, sexually assault all of the female classmates, before at its climax it goes into similarly frustrated territory as the 'hero', made jealous by this older student's prowess:

Spoiler

impulsively rapes the school's pet pig mascot in frustration outside the classroom in that his girlfriend is being deflowered in!

This was directed by Kurahara Koretsugu, the brother of Koreyoshi Kurahara who was the subject of an Eclipse set.

Man, that's like a whole school of Japanese film, huh? Like I got kind of excited about the Nikkatsu Roman Porno period that follows the gangster/new wave stuff Arrow has been putting out lately, since it shares a lot of the talent, but there is a really strong and repeated emphasis on rape specifically presented as a source of erotic fascination, with the apparent assumption that sexual violence is just a thing the audience will enjoy looking at (as opposed to, say, Oshima, who whatever you say about him doesn't ever appear to have presented sexual horrors in the hope the audience would have something to get off to.)

Though now that I think of it, a lot of American and British cinema was similarly obsessed at the time- everything from A Boy and His Dog to Zardoz was kind of fixated on it as a subject, and if not actually intended as pornography, it's certainly often presented as some kind of impressive or justifiable display of machismo. What the hell was going on?

[zedz]

Speaking of uncultured swine, I'm not sure how that commentator would react to the eye-popping Japanese Roman Porno film Eros School: Feels So Good, which starts off queasy with a older student getting hired to transfer in and then, ahem, sexually assault all of the female classmates, before at its climax it goes into similarly frustrated territory as the 'hero', made jealous by this older student's prowess:

Spoiler

impulsively rapes the school's pet pig mascot in frustration outside the classroom in that his girlfriend is being deflowered in!

This was directed by Kurahara Koretsugu, the brother of Koreyoshi Kurahara who was the subject of an Eclipse set.

Man, that's like a whole school of Japanese film, huh? Like I got kind of excited about the Nikkatsu Roman Porno period that follows the gangster/new wave stuff Arrow has been putting out lately, since it shares a lot of the talent, but there is a really strong and repeated emphasis on rape specifically presented as a source of erotic fascination, with the apparent assumption that sexual violence is just a thing the audience will enjoy looking at (as opposed to, say, Oshima, who whatever you say about him doesn't ever appear to have presented sexual horrors in the hope the audience would have something to get off to.)

Though now that I think of it, a lot of American and British cinema was similarly obsessed at the time- everything from A Boy and His Dog to Zardoz was kind of fixated on it as a subject, and if not actually intended as pornography, it's certainly often presented as some kind of impressive or justifiable display of machismo. What the hell was going on?

The panic of arrested adolescents in the face of second-wave feminism?

[colinr0380]

It is a difficult subject, and I'd be on a hiding to nothing if I wanted to defend Eros High School: Feels So Good as a sensitive piece of art that deals with its issues with taste and subtlety(!) but I do think in some ways that works which throw out attitudes and approaches to their subject matter, albeit challenging and difficult approaches to 'general audience' sensibilities, can still be worth wrestling with rather than dismissed outright. Even if something may have a repugnant approach to its subject it is always much better to discuss a film and critique the perspective it is taking to articulate if there is anything at all that can perhaps be salvaged (and it probably goes without saying that subject matter being portrayed isn't always the same thing as subject matter being endorsed or celebrated) than to dismiss something out of hand (which is really what this entire thread is calling reviews out on doing in various ways). I often find almost any film will grow when it is approached kind of on its own terms, although if it doesn't succeed even at that point that is perhaps a damning criticism of the film in itself!

The whole area of sexualised rape scenes that turn up in the Japanese Roman Porno films is an extremely difficult one, but even in that already shocking area there is the room for a whole range of different treatments of the subject. Nikkatsu's notorious Angel Guts series are perhaps the key works in the Roman Porno series for this material, and even here the subject matter varies quite extensively from sexual violence just being problematically used as the dramatic pretext for showing sex scenes to actually surprisingly sensitive and complex (for exploitation films) explorations of the psychological effects of violation on both victim and attacker, even critiquing some societal or peer group norms too during their course (particularly in the stunning Angel Guts: Nami in which an ambitious reporter for a women's magazine tracks down rape victims for a sensationalist series of articles, dredging up their past traumatic experiences without any consideration for how cruel doing that is in itself, even before it goes into a delirious horror film final section in which the reporter gets her own Looking For Mr Goodbar-esque moment of running into someone who has been driven psychotically deranged by their previous attack).

[Manny Karp]

I love cinema more than anyone else on YELP and probably am in the top 10 cinema lovers in the entire United States...

Ahahahah

[Orlac]

Speaking of uncultured swine, I'm not sure how that commentator would react to the eye-popping Japanese Roman Porno film Eros School: Feels So Good, which starts off queasy with a older student getting hired to transfer in and then, ahem, sexually assault all of the female classmates, before at its climax it goes into similarly frustrated territory as the 'hero', made jealous by this older student's prowess:

Spoiler

impulsively rapes the school's pet pig mascot in frustration outside the classroom in that his girlfriend is being deflowered in!

This was directed by Kurahara Koretsugu, the brother of Koreyoshi Kurahara who was the subject of an Eclipse set.

"I've never expelled anyone before...but that pig had some powerful friends."

[perkizitore]

From an Inland Empire listing!

'Well I went ahead and bought his AMERICAN movie from a seller in the UK. Now considering that this is an AMERICAN movie I would think that the film distributors when producing this DVD would have formatted it to be compatible with AMERICAN dvd players. But alas, somehow it is only compatible with European dvd players such as those found in the UK. Now it would be an understatement to say that I was angry after spending all this money and then going ahead and trying to play the dvd on my dvd player only to find out that the dvd is not compatible with American dvd players.

First let me say this: The rest of the world needs to follow America's lead and format THEIR dvd players the way OURS is formatted. Just like the rest of the world needs to get its a** off of the obnoxiously confusing metric system and start using America's measurements. We are a superpower for a reason. At the risk of sounding like a hard-core nationalist I am just so maddened by the ridiculousness that western countries can't format their dvd players to match that of the world's superpower's dvd players. The UK by the way is the place that just put a travel warning to Brits going to America because of.....wait for it.....Donald Trump! BWAHAHAHAAHA! Of all the problems that the UK is facing internally, they have to always look across to pond and lecture us about how our society operates. As an American I can say that we Americans given our history are especially sensitive to Brits lecturing us. Well let me lecture the UK and the rest of the world.....it's time to get off the metric system and it's time to format your dvd players to be compatible with American dvd players. Stop scrutinizing our politics and our way of life. That is OUR business, NOT YOURS.

I am going to have to buy another version of this AMERICAN movie now. Last time I ever buy ANY movie from ANY other country. There's a reason America is #1.'