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OCT 2015 MOVIE DISCUSSION


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12 Years a Slave is very well done but I never want to see it again. It's so brutal.  I think it's well worth watching though.   I never want to see Elephant again because I didn't think it was all that good and the school is set in Portland, Oregon.  A little too on the nose there.

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I'm a dad so any scenes featuring the endangerment or exploitation of children really makes me angry and uncomfortable. 

 

There were parts of A Serbian Film that sent waves of nausea through me and even the parts of Blade and Blade: Trinity where the vampires show their inhumanity by putting small children and infants into harm's way made my nose twitch.

 

As a black man, I can handle movies like 12 Years A Slave or Amistad because I can process my anger and I know that the majority of people I know in the present do not think like the racist assholes of yore. 

 

We've still got a long way to go and you are naïve if you believe that there aren't people out there that will judge you by your melanin count, but there is no Coloreds Only section in my local Wal-Mart either. Baby steps.

 

I can deal with Requiem For A Dream because the unpleasant things that the characters endure or force themselves to endure are the symptoms of their drug abuse and I appreciate the the fact that the movie does not sugar coat the idea that there is no depth an addict will sink to in order to get their fix.  If you need a visual example of why you should Just Say No, here it is.

 

I think that the Passion of the Christ is one of the dumbest films ever made because it misses the whole point.  Good Friday lasts the length of the film while Easter Sunday is treated almost like an afterthought.   Yes, Christ suffered and died for the sins of the world, but he also rose again and defeated the grave.  Apparently, I paid more attention in Sunday School than Mel Gibson did.

 

I think the sadistic, ultra gore franchises that only serve to test your gag reflex like the August Underground, Red Room, and Guinea Pig movies are really stupid save for one or two exceptions (Mermaid In A Manhole actually has a pretty tragic story).  I also think it is pretty crazy that the most offensive thing that people find in Cannibal Holocaust is the eating of live turtles. 

 

There are images of people being dismembered and tortured and women being raped or otherwise violated, but since it is not really happening that makes it okay?  Seriously?

 

I hate movies like Irreversible, Visitor Q, Antichrist and Baise Moi for the same reason I realize that I now despise A Serbian Film.

 

I'm a fairly intelligent human being so I don't need some director to hammer his philosophical point home with an excess of violent or unsettling imagery, because he is an arrogant auteur douche that believes his genius vision is so abstract and profound that the only way that "normal" people will understand it is if it is taped to an iron truncheon and bludgeoned into the back of your brain. 

 

I get what you are trying to say, man, and I am sure that other people do, too.  You are not as clever as you think you are.

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As far as a movie I want to watch over and over, I just saw "The Salvation" starring Mads Mikkelson and Jeffrey Dean Morgan and it's fucking awesome. It's a Danish film and it's a western. And it's everything a fucking Western should be. Just a kick ass tale of bad guys picking the wrong guy to fuck with. It hits every fucking trope but does it perfectly, and it's beautiful to look at. I cheered so many times when some righteous mayhem went down. Watch this now.

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I also think it is pretty crazy that the most offensive thing that people find in Cannibal Holocaust is the eating of live turtles. 

 

There are images of people being dismembered and tortured and women being raped or otherwise violated, but since it is not really happening that makes it okay?  Seriously?

For whatever reason, most people seem to get more upset by watching bad things happen to animals in movies than they are upset by watching bad things happen to people in movies. I've never understood that tendency myself, I typically worry more about humans than beasts. Maybe it's because violence against humans is much more common in films than violence against animals, so we're less sensitive to it?

Yet another irony is how Cannibal Holocaust has recently become known as "that one movie where they really killed animals", despite literally dozens of other Italian exploitation flicks that did the exact same thing.

Also, something to make you feel even worse about watching it: remember the part where we're shown the filmmakers' faked documentary footage, showing a bunch of staged executions? Yeah, guess what: that's actually real film of real executions that the director decided to use as stock footage in his movie, for whatever shithead reason. Those parts just don't look as spectacularly violent as the phony gory bits, so practically nobody ever noticed that they were legitimately watching people getting shot in the head.

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I think it has to do with "oh look at the cute puppy!"  and I love puppies.  It's that they are innocent or whatever you want to say and some people are evil. Not that I feel that way but some do.

 

I think that humans throw the term "evil" around way too easily.  Hitler? Delphine LaLaurie? Pol Pot? Shiro Ishii?  Yeah, you could make a case for implacable evil with those people and I'd fully support tying people like that to a large wooden wheel and rolling them into a lake full of burning gasoline..

 

But the asshole who cuts you off on the highway or checks his cell phone during a movie is just that; an asshole.  And being an asshole doesn't warrant a death sentence or waterboarding or bamboo shoots under the fingernails because guess what? 

 

Someone out there also thinks that you are an asshole and they are probably right.

 

There are only a handful of people in the world that are really deserving of the types of things that happen to the film crew in Cannibal Holocaust and that lady that just lets her kid cry in the super market isn't one of them.

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That brings up an interesting topic: What are some films that are really really good that you watch once and never feel compelled to see ever again because they're so fucked up? My big one is Monster.

 

For me, Leaving Las Vegas. I watched it once, and it is a fucking amazing film and deservedly got Nicolas Cage an oscar, but boy did it leave me deflated and devoid of any enthusiasm for life - especially after the rape scene

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I think Requiem for a Dream fits that bill for me. I may watch it again some day when I revisit all of Aronofsky's catalog, but it definitely was an unsettling film when I saw it 10 years ago or whenever that was.

 

Exactly.  Saw it once, understood it was well made and a good piece of work, never need to see it again.  It did give us "ASS TO ASS" though.

 

I recommended Requiem to a coworker.  He texted me halfway through saying, "Why did you tell me to watch this?  Did I do something to offend you?  Why do you hate me?"

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As far as a movie I want to watch over and over, I just saw "The Salvation" starring Mads Mikkelson and Jeffrey Dean Morgan and it's fucking awesome. It's a Danish film and it's a western. And it's everything a fucking Western should be. Just a kick ass tale of bad guys picking the wrong guy to fuck with. It hits every fucking trope but does it perfectly, and it's beautiful to look at. I cheered so many times when some righteous mayhem went down. Watch this now.

 

I watched this on Friday and enjoyed it quite a bit.  The plot is nothing original as far as western/revenge tales go, but I thought it did a good job in portraying life in the old west for people who had recently immigrated as well as illustrating the incredibly grimy and dirty settings of a frontier town on its last legs.  Good performances by the cast all round too.

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I was thisclose to renting The Salvation last Saturday and passed for whatever reason. Apparently I am a fool. 

 

I also don't remember live executions in Cannibal Holocaust or a rape scene in Leaving Las Vegas, so my brain is going too. 

 

As far as Cannibal Holocaust goes I think people watch it, like Salo (which I refuse to watch), etc. as an endurance test, not because they're sickos that want to watch a woman violated with a stone dildo. I try to give someone that would go to the extent of purchasing or renting said film that kind of credit, because they've gone that far to see it when it's so obscure. At the same time J.T. brought up the point of fake violence being okay, and I think it is. Maybe I am a little twisted, but I like gory, nasty shit, as long as it's not real. It's cathartic to me. I get out my antisocial tendencies in a safe way by watching magic tricks, is how I look at it. Some films go too far though, and become actively disturbing, and that's what brought up this conversation in the first place.

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There are only a handful of people in the world that are really deserving of the types of things that happen to the film crew in Cannibal Holocaust and that lady that just lets her kid cry in the super market isn't one of them.

 

The biggest difference here is the people in the movie are unharmed, they are actors/crew members who willingly participated in the film for money.

 

The turtle getting killed, was actually killed, had no say as to its participation in the film, wasn't able to say "No thanks, I'd rather not be killed for a stupid horror movie" and was made to feel suffering and die for no reason other than "Look at how shocking that is!"

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I was thisclose to renting The Salvation last Saturday and passed for whatever reason. Apparently I am a fool.

I also don't remember live executions in Cannibal Holocaust or a rape scene in Leaving Las Vegas, so my brain is going too.

The live executions are part of the "Long Road to Hell" documentary section of the movie and are not included in every version of the movie.
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There are only a handful of people in the world that are really deserving of the types of things that happen to the film crew in Cannibal Holocaust and that lady that just lets her kid cry in the super market isn't one of them.

The biggest difference here is the people in the movie are unharmed, they are actors/crew members who willingly participated in the film for money.

The turtle getting killed, was actually killed, had no say as to its participation in the film, wasn't able to say "No thanks, I'd rather not be killed for a stupid horror movie" and was made to feel suffering and die for no reason other than "Look at how shocking that is!"

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Watching Andrew Zimmern today I was made aware that turtles' nervous systems make them spasm for quite awhile after their demise. 

 

That still doesn't make it cool to cut a turtle's head off and film its body freaking out while it gets butchered and eaten for a sick thrill.

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I think Requiem for a Dream fits that bill for me. I may watch it again some day when I revisit all of Aronofsky's catalog, but it definitely was an unsettling film when I saw it 10 years ago or whenever that was.

Exactly. Saw it once, understood it was well made and a good piece of work, never need to see it again. It did give us "ASS TO ASS" though.

I recommended Requiem to a coworker. He texted me halfway through saying, "Why did you tell me to watch this? Did I do something to offend you? Why do you hate me?"

I think I told this story on here but way back in 2002 a female coworker and I went to see the Ring and got dinner. We went back to her place to watch a movie and she chose Requiem For a Dream. I had no idea what it was about. After the movie, she wanted to hook up and I was like nah, I gotta go home and take a shower because that movie ruined me.

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The other thing I remember about Requiem was that the rental copy I got from the local video store (RIP Cranbrook Video) had a Harry Knowles writeup on the packaging with this creepy passage:

 

She’s our Jodie Foster/TAXI DRIVER character except.... she’s our girlfriend... and she’s let down.

 

Wait what???  I just looked that up and found it's part of this longer review that contains this full paragraph where you can practically smell Knowles' Cheeto sweat and Vaseline:

 

And then, Jennifer Connelly’s Marion Silver. First, how long have we collectively been in love with Jennifer Connelly? Since LABYRINTH in 1986. 14 years now. I saw HOT SPOT and CAREER OPPORTUNITIES for her. That’s screen love. And here she is again. The most beautiful woman in film... just... oh man it’s rough. She’s 364 days older than me, and I’m still willing to let that slide. After watching her in this film... I tell ya. There’s just no way you can call a hooker or a stripper or go to a club that has those. I mean, physically you’ll be able to, but when you look at the girls... you’ll think of this story... of Jennifer Connelly. I really really hope that she pulls out a supporting nom for this character. She’s our Jodie Foster/TAXI DRIVER character except.... she’s our girlfriend... and she’s let down.
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There are only a handful of people in the world that are really deserving of the types of things that happen to the film crew in Cannibal Holocaust and that lady that just lets her kid cry in the super market isn't one of them.

 

The biggest difference here is the people in the movie are unharmed, they are actors/crew members who willingly participated in the film for money.

 

The turtle getting killed, was actually killed, had no say as to its participation in the film, wasn't able to say "No thanks, I'd rather not be killed for a stupid horror movie" and was made to feel suffering and die for no reason other than "Look at how shocking that is!"

 

 

Revolting is revolting, no matter what and yes the actors are co-conspirators because they were instrumental in putting those images on screen.

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The other thing I remember about Requiem was that the rental copy I got from the local video store (RIP Cranbrook Video) had a Harry Knowles writeup on the packaging with this creepy passage:

 

She’s our Jodie Foster/TAXI DRIVER character except.... she’s our girlfriend... and she’s let down.

 

Wait what???  I just looked that up and found it's part of this longer review that contains this full paragraph where you can practically smell Knowles' Cheeto sweat and Vaseline:

 

And then, Jennifer Connelly’s Marion Silver. First, how long have we collectively been in love with Jennifer Connelly? Since LABYRINTH in 1986. 14 years now. I saw HOT SPOT and CAREER OPPORTUNITIES for her. That’s screen love. And here she is again. The most beautiful woman in film... just... oh man it’s rough. She’s 364 days older than me, and I’m still willing to let that slide. After watching her in this film... I tell ya. There’s just no way you can call a hooker or a stripper or go to a club that has those. I mean, physically you’ll be able to, but when you look at the girls... you’ll think of this story... of Jennifer Connelly. I really really hope that she pulls out a supporting nom for this character. She’s our Jodie Foster/TAXI DRIVER character except.... she’s our girlfriend... and she’s let down.

 

 

I think now I need a shower. Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck.  

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Tried watching Silver Linings Playbook. Couldn't get through it. Gave it half an hour, didn't like it, but Jennifer Lawrence had just shown up and I thought she might make it better. Gave it another half an hour, and...nah, not for me, thanks. And Bradley Cooper is like my age, he's got no business trying to pick up no 22 year old girl.

 

So I watched Trance instead. Was not expecting Rosario to be quite that naked. Usually when you get movie nudity, it's like, movie nudity, y'know? Whereas this has, like, actual naked nudity. It's a pretty good film as well, it's just the nudity really takes you out of the story quite a lot. You guys should probably watch it. Vincent Cassell is good in everything. James McAvoy playing someone who's not Professor X for a change (I need to see Filth some time. Good book).

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Tried watching Silver Linings Playbook. Couldn't get through it. Gave it half an hour, didn't like it, but Jennifer Lawrence had just shown up and I thought she might make it better. Gave it another half an hour, and...nah, not for me, thanks. And Bradley Cooper is like my age, he's got no business trying to pick up no 22 year old girl.

 

So I watched Trance instead. Was not expecting Rosario to be quite that naked. Usually when you get movie nudity, it's like, movie nudity, y'know? Whereas this has, like, actual naked nudity. It's a pretty good film as well, it's just the nudity really takes you out of the story quite a lot. You guys should probably watch it. Vincent Cassell is good in everything. James McAvoy playing someone who's not Professor X for a change (I need to see Filth some time. Good book).

Oh shit THAT movie. Yeah she was like a real life Lana Kane. . . .(see skytanic episode, for reference. . .)

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Tried watching Silver Linings Playbook. Couldn't get through it. Gave it half an hour, didn't like it, but Jennifer Lawrence had just shown up and I thought she might make it better. Gave it another half an hour, and...nah, not for me, thanks. And Bradley Cooper is like my age, he's got no business trying to pick up no 22 year old girl.

 

So I watched Trance instead. Was not expecting Rosario to be quite that naked. Usually when you get movie nudity, it's like, movie nudity, y'know? Whereas this has, like, actual naked nudity. It's a pretty good film as well, it's just the nudity really takes you out of the story quite a lot. You guys should probably watch it. Vincent Cassell is good in everything. James McAvoy playing someone who's not Professor X for a change (I need to see Filth some time. Good book).

 

For some reason, I am not too high on David O. Russell as a filmmaker. For me personally, his movies don't match the amount of reverence they get. I don't hate him or anything (BTW I plan on seeing Joy), but they don't create a lasting impression on me. I remember stuff from The Fighter only because I know a lot about Micky Ward and his story along with his career. I watched SLP in its entirety, but I probably forgot most of the important stuff regarding the plot. I just remember I didn't like the ending of SLP much like I didn't like the ending of The Fighter. However, I chalked up the hate for the latter because they ended on a fight that had no career significance for Micky Ward.

 

I loved Trance and thought Cassel was the MVP of the film along with nude Rosario Dawson.

 

I liked Filth mainly because it's just a weird movie. Also, Eddie Marsan is fucking brilliant in it. McAvoy held his own in both flicks though.

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