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Yeah, can you please not? ThanksNoiretirc wrote:I'm sure that all of these people adore Schindler's List though.
To be fair it's not like Spielberg never treated brutal violence as entertainment value.dda1996a wrote:Yeah, can you please not? ThanksNoiretirc wrote:I'm sure that all of these people adore Schindler's List though.
I never said it was Schindler's List that did it.dda1996a wrote:To be fair I don't think using the Holocaust or a filmic presentation of it should be made here.
...and then I catch up with it a few years later and wonder what all the fuss was about. I suppose I should get round to Antichrist one of these days, but I’m (still) not in any hurry.Lost Highway wrote:Every few years Von Trier releases some cinematic provocation and every time critics and audiences dutifully clutch their pearls in response, just as intended. This has become a Road Runner cartoon and the lack of self awareness of those being played is ridiculous.
I‘m not disagreeing, I feel the same about his actual work. As to Antichrist, there are things to recommend it but they aren’t the themes, ideas or the balls pounding. Its cursed fairy tale forest is a thing of beauty though.MichaelB wrote:...and then I catch up with it a few years later and wonder what all the fuss was about. I suppose I should get round to Antichrist one of these days, but I’m (still) not in any hurry.Lost Highway wrote:Every few years Von Trier releases some cinematic provocation and every time critics and audiences dutifully clutch their pearls in response, just as intended. This has become a Road Runner cartoon and the lack of self awareness of those being played is ridiculous.
Having been shocked by the atrocities committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 90s, I found it a valid response. It makes an attempt at putting the audience though what those countries went through. It also works as a pitch black outrage comedy, it‘s much like an adaptation of the gross out joke at the centre of the documentary The Aristocrats.tenia wrote:But on the other end, many extremely violent films haven't much more to offer than just button-pushing violence, and it seems to be the problem with this LVT movie.
As for Serbian Film, I'm amongst those who've actually seen it (twice) and while my memory of it is now quite fuzzy, I found it to be just not very good and interesting. I understand what it tried to achieve. I just think it wasn't very good at it, and chose a very gratuitously way to do it. If you can't get to the heart or the brain, get to the guts...
I much prefer the 1st Human Centipede, which is much less graphic, but is better done and atmospherically better crafted.
Movies that many people discussed as being awfully extreme without even having seen it.Lost Highway wrote:I’m not even sure where The Human Centipede comes in there apart from that it was discussed in regard to the so called torture porn cinema of the period.
I’ve acknowledged that even in that quote. I think it’s a superficial way of looking at both films.tenia wrote:Movies that many people discussed as being awfully extreme without even having seen it.Lost Highway wrote:I’m not even sure where The Human Centipede comes in there apart from that it was discussed in regard to the so called torture porn cinema of the period.
Yes, that's very much how the filmmakers pitched it, accompanied by the suggestion that only they were brave enough to tread this kind of psychological terrain. Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, absolute cobblers - A Serbian Film has no more to say about the legacy of 1990s wartime atrocities than, say, Dejan Zečević's The Fourth Man, made a few years earlier. And at least Zečević wasn't pretending to be making any kind of profound statement: he was merely using the characters' past in the same way that American exploitation filmmakers were using the Vietnam veteran. (This is of course but one of countless examples: I watched a lot of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian films in the late 2000s thanks to multiple trips to the Sarajevo Film Festival.)Lost Highway wrote:Having been shocked by the atrocities committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 90s at the time, I found it a valid response. It makes an attempt at putting the audience though what those countries went through. It also works as a pitch black outrage comedy, it‘s much like an adaptation of the gross out joke at the centre of the documentary The Aristocrats.
That's letting them off the hook to an extent that I really don't think they deserve. In actual fact, I'd argue that the stronger parts of A Serbian Film are to do with the explicit satire (which is even embedded in the title) about how the term "Serbian" has itself become a catch-all suggestion of truly unspeakable brutality - hence the Vukmir character's keenness to market Serbian pornography on the strength of its country of origin.As someone who's more put off by offensive ideology or politics than extreme imagery, I have no problem with what the film does in that regard. It doesn’t condone any of its atrocities, they are meant to revolt and horrify. In that regard I find the film less problematic than a mainstream Hollywood film like Fatal Attraction, with its anti-feminist pro-family values propaganda.
It's just an old-fashioned mad-scientist movie, but hamstrung in this case by asking the question "OK, now what?" about a third of the way in, and never coming up with an even vaguely convincing answer. Still, it broke the record previously set by Herschell Gordon Lewis's Color Me Blood Red for the slowest chase in the history of the cinema, so that's something.I’m not even sure where The Human Centipede comes in there apart from that t was discussed in regard to the so called torture porn cinema of the period. I strongly disagree that it is better made than A Serbian Film. It’s fairly amateurishly made, written and acted. Apart from its hilarious concept, it doesn’t even deliver on the gross out promised, it’s a disappointingly timid movie in that regard.
I didn't say A Serbian Film has anything to say about the Yugoslav wars. I think it makes the audience want to feel something similar to what I felt when I read about them at the time. That may well be exploitative but I found this allegorical approach less problematic than for instance the much admired Son of Saul, which uses the Holocaust for a self-congratulatory exercise in representation.MichaelB wrote:Yes, that's very much how the filmmakers pitched it, accompanied by the suggestion that only they were brave enough to tread this kind of psychological terrain. Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, absolute cobblers - A Serbian Film has no more to say about the legacy of 1990s wartime atrocities than, say, Dejan Zečević's The Fourth Man, made a few years earlier. And at least Zečević wasn't pretending to be making any kind of profound statement: he was merely using the characters' past in the same way that American exploitation filmmakers were using the Vietnam veteran. (This is of course but one of countless examples: I watched a lot of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian films in the late 2000s thanks to multiple trips to the Sarajevo Film Festival.)Lost Highway wrote:Having been shocked by the atrocities committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 90s at the time, I found it a valid response. It makes an attempt at putting the audience though what those countries went through. It also works as a pitch black outrage comedy, it‘s much like an adaptation of the gross out joke at the centre of the documentary The Aristocrats.
That's letting them off the hook to an extent that I really don't think they deserve. In actual fact, I'd argue that the stronger parts of A Serbian Film are to do with the explicit satire (which is even embedded in the title) about how the term "Serbian" has itself become a catch-all suggestion of truly unspeakable brutality - hence the Vukmir character's keenness to market Serbian pornography on the strength of its country of origin.As someone who's more put off by offensive ideology or politics than extreme imagery, I have no problem with what the film does in that regard. It doesn’t condone any of its atrocities, they are meant to revolt and horrify. In that regard I find the film less problematic than a mainstream Hollywood film like Fatal Attraction, with its anti-feminist pro-family values propaganda.
It's just an old-fashioned mad-scientist movie, but hamstrung in this case by asking the question "OK, now what?" about a third of the way in, and never coming up with an even vaguely convincing answer. Still, it broke the record previously set by Herschell Gordon Lewis's Color Me Blood Red for the slowest chase in the history of the cinema, so that's something.I’m not even sure where The Human Centipede comes in there apart from that t was discussed in regard to the so called torture porn cinema of the period. I strongly disagree that it is better made than A Serbian Film. It’s fairly amateurishly made, written and acted. Apart from its hilarious concept, it doesn’t even deliver on the gross out promised, it’s a disappointingly timid movie in that regard.
She also faved a tweet calling her performance "punishingly thankless" in the film, though.I would say he has a different way of approaching issues than most. And that he is a provocateur. And to maybe search for a deeper meaning within the film and see if you can find oneBut his films are not for everyone & everyone is entitled to their own point of view on art.
That's a pretty good film critic you're slagging off, so you're pretty much just living up to the sort of mostly accurate stereotype she's deriding in this thoughtful review of a film you haven't seen. I'm gonna go with the word of Jessica Kiang over the word of new CriterionForum.org user black&huge 100 times out of 100, even if at my own perilblack&huge wrote:Finally a review. Unfortunately it's from The Playlist. Spoilers of course.
The end of that review is remarkably defensive. Someone expressing more interest in seeing a film because a critic panned it is a “douchebag”? It’s perfectly ok to hate a film and to express why – it’s just, y’know, possible that not everyone will agree with you.black&huge wrote:Finally a review. Unfortunately it's from The Playlist. Spoilers of course.
This person is the type that will flat out deny to the death being partly responsible for the rise of the "filmbros" they're calling out. Also.. filmbro?
I'm getting pretty sick of the self serving attitude of "I used to defend this person but now they've gone too far." What does one hope to achieve by saying that aside from unearned privilege of being a "voice of reason"? This article stinks of narcissism.
Lastly, the first publicized qoute from Trier regarding this film months ago was that it celebrates the idea that life is evil and soulless. So... did people not take that seriously?
The Playlist is one of the websites my work network doesn't block for its association with "Movies," for whatever reason, so I've read her a bit. But, I mean, if you ask of your film critics that they like everything you like or suspect that you'll like (which, why bother with film criticism then?), YMMV.tenia wrote:Without knowing the writer nor black&huge and having not seen the movie, it's true that it was hard not to parellel what the review describes and how black&huge was reacting to it.
This being written, I never followed Kiang as an outstanding reviewer and will take your word on this for the future (I'm currently looking at expanding my "reference UK/US reviewers" pool).