criterionforum.org

domino harvey wrote:Is this Criterion's first NC-17?

No, Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights were both NC-17.

Interesting-- I assume both were resubmitted by MGM for some previous home video release? Because NC-17 didn't exist til 1990

domino harvey wrote:Interesting-- I assume both were resubmitted by MGM for some previous home video release? Because NC-17 didn't exist til 1990

They had re-releases in 1991 theatrically and were resubmitted.

Even more recent than Trilogy of Life, Blue is the Warmest Color.

And if we go back to Laserdisc films, there is always Crash.

What's Salo rated in the US?

bdsweeney wrote:What's Salo rated in the US?

I believe it remains unrated.

Man Bites Dog (1992) was NC-17. In the Realm of the Senses was rated NC-17 for its 1991 reissue. Y Tu Mamá También was given an NC-17 by the MPAA, but IFC elected to release it unrated.

Yeah, no listing for Salo on filmratings.com

domino harvey wrote:Post creation of the PG-13 rating, brief non-sexual nudity is an almost automatic PG-13 if not R. I can't think of any PG films after the implementation of the PG-13 that had nudity, though I'm sure there are some.

I know I'm replying to an older discussion, but I'm just reading through this thread for the first time and thought I'd chime in. Two PG-rated movies from the 90s that I know of to have nudity are the teen-oriented Airborne and, more surprisingly, the kid flick My Favorite Martian. In both cases, we're talking about maybe two seconds of male backside (if it was female nudity, I doubt either film would have gotten a PG rating, which reveals another bias entirely), and they are both done for comedy.

The PG-rated Radioland Murders had a brief glimpse of a topless woman (maybe even women, plural—it's a scene where a man bursts unannounced into a ladies' dressing room). I guess it says something about the film that this is literally all I remember of it.

The only movies I recall seeing in high school French were 1990s My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle, rated G and PG respectively. One of them has some brief male frontal nudity of a boy taking a shower outside. This was the subject of much giggling in 9th grade. Many the MPAA felt the same way?

The Ongoing Failure of The PG-13 Rating, and the brief animated film it inspired.

The MPAA has also gotten increasingly conservative over the last 25+ years (absurdly so, IMO). I can think of quite a few movies I saw in my '80s youth that would likely be bumped up to the next rating today.

MoonlitKnight wrote:The MPAA has also gotten increasingly conservative over the last 25+ years (absurdly so, IMO). I can think of quite a few movies I saw in my '80s youth that would likely be bumped up to the next rating today.

Really? I can think of far more movies in recent years that never would've come close to sniffing an R rating 25+ years ago. The MPAA have become much more relaxed on violence. We're a long way from tame Friday the 13th sequels being shorn of nearly all blood before being allowed to bear an R. Hell, your average Saw film contains twice as much grue as most of the video nasties causing an uproar in the 80s.

Mr Sausage wrote:

MoonlitKnight wrote:The MPAA has also gotten increasingly conservative over the last 25+ years (absurdly so, IMO). I can think of quite a few movies I saw in my '80s youth that would likely be bumped up to the next rating today.

Really? I can think of far more movies in recent years that never would've come close to sniffing an R rating 25+ years ago.

Can you give some examples?

flyonthewall2983 wrote:

Mr Sausage wrote:

MoonlitKnight wrote:The MPAA has also gotten increasingly conservative over the last 25+ years (absurdly so, IMO). I can think of quite a few movies I saw in my '80s youth that would likely be bumped up to the next rating today.

Really? I can think of far more movies in recent years that never would've come close to sniffing an R rating 25+ years ago.

Can you give some examples?

The King's Speech?

The film was R-rated due to extended sequences of swearing, which I'm pretty sure would've made it R-rated for as far back as that's been a thing?

Especially since the swear in question has always been an automatic R (for as long as it has been allowed) when used in a sexual conjugation as it was in that film.

2 F-bombs is basically an automatic R these days, which is ridiculous given that I heard far worse than that on the average day in the hallways of my junior high. 1 is an automatic PG-13. I distinctly remember 2 films from '88 - "Big" and "Beetlejuice" - both having 1 each in them, yet both got PG ratings. It seems any frontal nudity - even in a non-sexual context - is also an automatic R today... though it's hard to truly gauge since most movies with nudity also seem to have a fair amount of violence and/or profanity. :-k

FWIW, Something's Gotta Give got a PG-13 rating, but there's a weird mildly sexist/ageist quibble there that they were like "well, it's alright that it has full frontal nudity because it's Diane Keaton."

The problem with King's Speech is undoubtedly that it's an extended sequence, though; it's a key plot point of the movie, which is what made the fact Weinstein was happy to cut it out to boost box office more upsetting!

I know we're off-topic now, but Metrograph did a series that focused on this exact thing last year, called "This is P.G.?!"

Let's not forget the infamous case of the MPAA wanting to give an "R" rating to the documentary about bullying. The film, Bully (2011) was just tooooooo harsh for the MPAA and even after 300,000 signatures of protest AND celebrity call outs they refused to budge. The Weinstein Company caved and changed it to make it PG-13.

While I don't like every aspect of the BBFC I think it's a vastly superior rating system and attempts to place all content into context. Tarkovky's Mirror, a film with nudity has a "U" rating the lowest they can possibly give.

Seen from France, my main issue with the MPAA isnt its seemingly conservative work, but rather what seems to be a very rigid set of rules.
Saw and Little Miss Sunshine are both rated R, which simply looks like a pure non sense.
I'd love to see the equivalent article of the one linked above, but focusing on movies which seems absurdly rated R.

Big Ben wrote:While I don't like every aspect of the BBFC I think it's a vastly superior rating system and attempts to place all content into context. Tarkovky's Mirror, a film with nudity has a "U" rating the lowest they can possibly give.

Non-sexualised nudity has never been a particularly big deal in Britain. Even in the 1950s, nudist camp "documentaries" were passed as being suitable for children even though, to quote David McGillivray's wonderful Doing Rude Things, "there cannot have been one sane adult in the country who seriously believed these films were being made for the sun worshipper".