'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[domino harvey]

Amazon reviewer reveals interesting taste matrix:

I am a huge fan and collector of "cult cinema" and, based on the reviews here, thought I'd give this set a shot (the price was nice also). What a major disappointment! I didn't even have to watch some of these movies to know that I wouldn't enjoy this (and most I didn't watch, including any on the second disc). After reading the back cover, had I seen this in a store, I definitely would have passed it up. The problem is that a third of these movies were made in the '60s, and one was from 1959. With the exception of Beatles and James Bond films, I hate movies from the '60s. My favorite cult flicks are all from the '70s and '80s. Plus, nearly half of these are in black & white (another thing I can't stand, besides the great Three Stooges shorts)! Lastly, a third of these are also rated PG (the only good PGs I ever saw were "Butterfles Are Free", "Tootsie", "Noises Off" and "The Invisible Kid" (which criminally remains unreleased on DVD to this day)! The only film on the first disc that I watched was "Fleshburn", and I ended up fast-forwarding through most of it (but, interestingly enough, saw in the closing credits that the music was by former Eagles member Don Felder).

[zedz]

Now that's a find (if it's authentic) - what was he reviewing?

[Matt]

Now that's a find (if it's authentic) - what was he reviewing?

Cult Terror Cinema - 12 Movie Collection (DVD)

[joshua]

Not a review as such since Mr. HipsterDbag has not seen the movie, but in the talkback for the Onion's "Secret Cinema" article on Murnau's Faust he wrote the following:

Am I just well and truly missing something here? Mr. Phipps, in praising the film's visual style, says "A clip from the film can say more than I could," and then proceeds to show a clip that appears to be from a lesser Ed Wood film. Seriously; that wasn't visually impressive; that was a city model that looks like it was made by seventh graders, with a guy standing over it in laughably cheap makeup..

I'm not a big silent film fan, largely because of the overacting -- Metropolis is absolutely gorgeous, but it kind of gets ruined by the cartoonishness of the facial expressions everyone feels the need to put on -- but neither of the clips shown here seems to portray any kind of interesting visual style at all. I genuinely enjoyed Nosferatu, but if I hadn't been told here that this was made by the same guy I probably would have assumed it was some '20's equivelent of a high school student's YouTube video.

and:

Sorry; I just don't see it. I remember watching Strike! and being amazed at how great Sergei Eisenstein's cinemetography was for the time; that scene here with the Devil appearing over the village reminds me of nothing so much as Boris Korloff's body double rushing around with his cloak over his face in Plan 9. It just looks... silly, and a little embarrassing.

I haven't seen the rest of the movie, so maybe I'm missing something.

Normally, I have no problem skipping past the wacko rantings thrown up on the net, but this one caught me off guard and managed to get my dander up. I guess it's just another sign that I'm getting old and sentimental.

[knives]

Naw, that's just a troll.

[matrixschmatrix]

Yeah, that guy's a regular there, and he's generally a pretty serious asshole. He went on a lengthy rant about how he didn't understand why parents of infants would be upset when their kids got killed, since babies have no personality.

The Metropolis opinion mirrors a Scenic Routes article the AVClub posted at one point, though, it's not necessarily a troll opinion.

[knives]

To be fair D'Angelo is a troll.

[Cash Flagg]

Not only is he apparently unable to differentiate between Karloff and Lugosi, but he can't even be bothered to spell the former's name correctly.

[domino harvey]

He should stay silent on silent films, amirite u guys

[joshua]

I figured he was a troll based on his user name, but I took his reaction to be sincere when he used the other films as points of reference to bolster his contrarian stance. It seem to me like he's stating a genuine feeling underneath his trollish desire to get a rise out of gullible folks like me.

[matrixschmatrix]

I don't think he's a troll in the sense that he's offering an opinion he doesn't actually hold, I think he's the filmic equivalent of a Little Englander, who can't be bothered to figure out the way things he's not familiar with work before critiquing them for being different.

I think a lot of people watching silent film for the first time have some trouble adjusting it, it's just most people recognize that they can't just blithely assume everything should be judged on the same criteria as Terminator 2. That dude in particular is the kind of contrarian who happily shares his most uninformed opinions as often as possible- which is still effectively a troll, if not someone intentionally speaking in bad faith.

[colinr0380]

I think a lot of people watching silent film for the first time have some trouble adjusting it, it's just most people recognize that they can't just blithely assume everything should be judged on the same criteria as Terminator 2...

You wouldn't happen to be alluding to this article in your Terminator 2 comment would you matrix?

[Gregory]

Just found some Amazon reviews by "polaroid seeker" in GA (Georgia). I'm not exactly sure what the language situation is, but his/her reviews frequently insist on "English speaking for American people" and English closed-captioning.

A review of Katyn:

This movie is good and sad. Soviet Red Army murdered more than 20,000 Polish Catholic officers. Soviet blamed Germany did it. It was not Germany Nazi. Do not trust Soviet Russia.

Everyman's War:

This movie is good and sad. The war was terrible. Both German soldiers and American Soldiers had feelings about them. They both were human beings.

A Woman in Berlin:

I read World History and watched youtube. Soviet Red Army raped more than 2 million included 100,000 Berlin German women and girls at the range of age was 8 to 80. Germany was not alone. They (Soviet Red Army) raped Polish, Prussian, Romanain, Finnish, and etc women.

I pray for poor victims and for the conversion of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Do not trust Russia.

Days of Santiago:

I do not like this movie because it talked about a man is crazy and his family is a part of incest family. The gray and colors film that bothered my eyes.

These are all the complete reviews, not excerpts.

[Cinéslob]

File under: general idiocy
I've never forgotten this Bud Dry commercial from (Jeezus) twenty years ago, so I decided to see if it was on YouTube, and sure enough...
And thank god nowadays we have Redbox instead of those elitist Blockbuster stores that were always relentlessly shoving incomprehensible Fellini/Bergman stuff down our throats.

The Cynephile has excavated a letter from Martin Scorsese to the NY Times that echoes your sentiments towards that advert:

It reminds me of a beer commercial that ran a while back. The commercial opened with a black and white parody of a foreign film—obviously a combination of Fellini and Bergman. Two young men are watching it, puzzled, in a video store, while a female companion seems more interested. A title comes up: “Why do foreign films have to be so foreign?” The solution is to ignore the foreign film and rent an action-adventure tape, filled with explosions, much to the chagrin of the woman.

It seems the commercial equates “negative” associations between women and foreign films: weakness, complexity, tedium. I like action-adventure films too. I also like movies that tell a story, but is the American way the only way of telling stories?

[colinr0380]

That Scorsese article was also mentioned in the comments section of an article on the Glenn Kenny site, with another enterprising commenter there (one "Tom Block" on the third page of the comments) actually unearthing the article to which Scorsese was replying!

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, I enjoy that in his defense of intellectual laziness, the writer of that article also slams Beavis and Butthead.

[Michael Kerpan]

Here's what that Bruce Weber (the writer Scorsese was responding to) has been doing lately.

[Donald Trampoline]

Review on Hulu-Plus for "L'Enfance-nue":

The animal abuse is nothing short of appalling.
Avoid this film at all costs unless you like seeing a cat grabbed by three worthless little 10 year old actors and stretched and pummeled, then thrown down three flights of stairs. The worst part is, I'm afraid they really did it. The cat seemed to drag itself off. This movie is garbage and its "star" deserves prison, as does its director.

[Michael Kerpan]

Donald -- Not having seen the film, I ask -- is the reviewer's observation as to possible animal abuse accurate?

[knives]

In that characters fictionally abuse animals yes, but as far as I could tell it's not an Andrei Rublev situation.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

As far as I recall, no-one stretches or pummels the cat at all. In the scene, there's a shot from below of the kids as they drop the cat and then cut to the cat shaking its head and walking away. It's not extended animal abuse and certainly not to the extent that Pialat - were he still with us - could be jailed.

[domino harvey]

Jail the animals

[MichaelB]

The film was passed uncut by the BBFC, which is legally required to remove all footage of genuine animal cruelty. So I suspect it's just a case of well-judged angles and editing.

[Michael Kerpan]

I wonder what this individual would think of Bong's Barking Dogs Never Bite? (She would probably not notice the introductory disclaimer that assured the audience that no animals were harmed).

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

The film was passed uncut by the BBFC, which is legally required to remove all footage of genuine animal cruelty. So I suspect it's just a case of well-judged angles and editing.

I think I read somewhere that it was Pialat's own cat . Maybe I'm confusing it with Tarr's cat in Satantango that gets a right royal pummeling in that . I don't think Kaurasmaki, who is fond of using his own dogs, has subjected them to anything untoward yet though.
Filmmakers and their pets thread please.
Michael Powell's spaniels for starters.