'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[colinr0380]

This reads worryingly like Mark Cousins' blanket dismissal of the French New Wave in the Story of Film series - has someone just been copying passages from his book?

(But then I'm one of those strange people who considers many of Godard's 'unwatchable and solipsistic' films as among his best!)

[tarpilot]

(But then I'm one of those strange people who considers many of Godard's 'unwatchable and solipsistic' films as among his best!)

His 80s output is by far his best, closely followed by the 90s

[MichaelB]

This reads worryingly like Mark Cousins' blanket dismissal of the French New Wave in the Story of Film series - has someone just been copying passages from his book?

I caught a plagiarist once after he made the classic plagiarist's error of reproducing a mistake in the original text - I read it thinking "that seems very familiar" but wasn't certain of the source until he misattributed a piece of music. That was enough to get me to dig the original out, and the two pieces were damn near identical. The editor who'd accepted and published the plagiarised piece was genuinely horrified when I told him, though it obviously wasn't his fault.

[knives]

(But then I'm one of those strange people who considers many of Godard's 'unwatchable and solipsistic' films as among his best!)

His 80s output is by far his best, closely followed by the 90s

My favorite remains the relatively recent Notre Musique, but in general I agree he only got better as he moved forward (why am I talking about him like he's dead).

[matrixschmatrix]

On Certified Copy:

This film is an example of all that I hate in a poorly made foreign film: boring characters who endlessly talk in the existential sphere ("What is copy? What is real?), tightly filmed shots that give little sense of locale-- but which manage to always maintain a constant focus on the female character's breasts--, and a preoccupation on the act of eating.
The main characters are very serious, very educated, and very boring.
As typical of existential-type films, the female character represents Woman i.e. she who man needs, even if he doesn't know this himself. The man is just an oaf who struggles though life.
It's all a bit much.
But, if you like seeing a woman's bosom throughout a film, this is for you.
If you think the French language makes everything sound deep and enlightened, this is for you.
If you enjoy seeing actors speaking directly to the camera, this is for you.
This film is a forced and indulgent exercise producing nothing.
Thank goodness for 1.5 speed!

Looks like Becker has at least one ally.

[domino harvey]

Not that a lot of the film stayed with me, but I don't recall any untoward attention to Juliet Binoche's breasts

[MichaelB]

See if you can guess the film and director from this description:

The combination of lazy direction and literal, descriptive narration (“I slept until morning,” he says, while we watch him fall asleep) are not helped by a wretched central performance from [the lead actor]. Learning that [the director] used unprofessional actors does more to explain than it does to intrigue and pleasantly surprise. [The actor] is a disastrous leading man. Not that the story calls for Mr Charisma – quite the opposite. But it does call for someone who doesn’t look like he’s about to glance at the camera and crew every time he shuffles by.

The answer.

[zedz]

Accusing a non-professional of being "unprofessional" is actually a pretty funny piece of idiotic point-missing.

[JakeB]

Woah! the same reviewer is also extremely unkind to Medea: http://www.subtitledonline.com/reviews/medea

[knives]

I almost got it with Taxi Driver. In a weird way I suppose that review is complimentary.

[colinr0380]

And zedz should definitely not read that site's review of Mysteries of Lisbon!:

This review is being kept short so as to take up as little of your precious time as possible – something Ruiz does not care about. Mysteries Of Lisbon is presumably great as a novel and TV show, but not as a film. It is too long, too uninteresting and too pompous. It has no coherent story interesting enough to grab our attention for an absurd amount of time and so it tries to compensate for this by offering tales from people who aren’t developed enough to care about. Just watch the first hour, then the last hour, and you will gain all that is needed from this tepid melodrama.

[Gregory]

Mysteries Of Lisbon is presumably great as a novel and TV show, but not as a film.

Presumably great? Translation: I don't really know what I'm talking about but wish to sound as if I do.

As stated in the introductory paragraph, Mysteries Of Lisbon is adapted from a TV series and remains over four hours long. This ensures that it does not work as a film. TV shows are made one way, films are made another, and when the two different formats are combined in such a blunt way like this, disaster strikes.

Huh? Is the concept of a four-hour film totally new to this reviewer?

Just watch the first hour, then the last hour, and you will gain all that is needed from this tepid melodrama.

Right, I'll be sure to do that...
Since he's fresh out of film school, I wonder if that's how he got through his seminars, reading just the introduction and conclusion of each book or article.

I love the opening sentence of his "Bluffer's Guide to International Cinema" on the same site:

Have you ever wanted to join a discussion on intellectual movies, but can’t actually be bothered to sit through the two-and-a-half hours of boring existentialism?

[zedz]

Just watch the first hour, then the last hour, and you will gain all that is needed from this tepid melodrama.

Right, I'll be sure to do that...
Since he's fresh out of film school, I wonder if that's how he got through his seminars, reading just the introduction and conclusion of each book or article.

I wouldn't be at all surprised.

[Gregory]

Anyone else find the "goofs" listed at IMDb to be consistently rediculous? I wish I could train my eyes not to read this self-satisfied nitpicking whenever I'm scanning a page for information. For example, on Greenberg:

Revealing mistakes: During the "teenage party", Greenberg decides to change the music on the CD player and inserts "Rio" by Duran Duran. He only presses three times the "next song" button and should therefore reach the song #4 ("Hungry Like The Wolf"). Instead, it is "The Chauffeur" (song #9 on the CD) that can be heard, to everybody's dismay.

That's a revealing mistake? What is revealed, that movies are literally not reality?

[matrixschmatrix]

What, are we supposed to believe this is some kind of a, *snort*, a magic CD player or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

[domino harvey]

He had a Wizard's key

[Jeff]

A comment left on Christy Lemire's AP review of Shame:

You know, I don't want to go to a movie that prominently displays a man's naked butt. Not just once, but from the sound of it, over and over and over again. It may appeal to gay guys (Not being gay, I don't know about that), and women with butt-fetishes - or people who want to be left feeling "pummeled".

I go to a movie for entertainment - an escape from my reality into a reality I'd like to (at least for a short time) become part of. This reality isn't one that in any way, shape or form interests me in becoming part of. In fact, quite the opposite.

Indie flicks are pretty much masturbation for the artists involved. They feel good for creating something that isn't "mainstream Hollywood" but their efforts are usually consigned to the dust bins of history (unless you're a woman famously divorced from a much better film maker, in which case you get the academy award for a flick no one saw twice and almost no one saw even once).

[hearthesilence]

Homophobic, right-wing, juvenile, "escaping into fantasy-land"...Somehow, I pictured someone at Marvel Comics writing that review.

[Brian C]

That's odd, I don't remember Amy Irving even making a movie, much less getting an Oscar for it.

[matrixschmatrix]

Homophobic, right-wing, juvenile, "escaping into fantasy-land"...Somehow, I pictured someone at Marvel Comics writing that review.

Don't forget the implied misogyny! Also, the appalling lack of actual knowledge! So... Frank Miller?

[Michael Kerpan]

A comment left on Christy Lemire's AP review of Shame:

Speaking of shame, the writer of this brilliant comment has hidden his profile on yahoo. ;~}

[Bill Thompson]

That comment matches the usual quality of what Lemire brings to the table.

[mfunk9786]

Spoiler

This movie was terrible. I am so disappointed in myself and my friends who are now no longer my friends, for making me watch this terrible movie. It was filled with side plots and more side plots and had no main character. It was terrible. There was no conflict, except the contagion. And Matt Damon was in the movie and he was immune, but that doesn't matter, because he doesn't do anything. There were chinese people, but the americans screwed them over, except one girl, she left an airport. We don't know her name but thats ok. There was a black dude in charge of the CDC, but he didn't really do anything, then people got mad at him and robbed his house and his wife cried. Then he helped a little boy. Oh and by the way, 15 minutes into the movie we find out that the disease is from a pig-bat clusterfuck. It changes, but it doesn't matter because they only ever made one vaccine. It would have been better if everyone died but Matt Damon. He didn't even care that his wife died, but thats ok because she was a whore. Maybe if the movie had Will Smith and he was like the last alive or something and fighting zombies with a dog it would have been better. There were people in a grocery store that robbed it. They were mad. But nothing happened because of it. Oh did I mention that it was caused by a pig and a bat? Yeah it would have been better if the last seen was a pig fucking a bat and that caused the epidemic. But it was a bat eating a banana, then a pig eating a banana, then a person eating a pig, and Matt Damon's whore wife died. There was terrible, unsuspenseful, lame movie with terrible orchestral arrangements. WTF mate? save your money and don't ever see this movie.

[The Narrator Returns]

So his/her complaints are that...

A. There is no main character
B. There is no conflict.
C. It wasn't I Am Legend

Meet the man who has never seen a Steven Soderbergh film!

[tarpilot]

I'm pretty sure someone already compared another review in this thread to a Donald Barthelme story, but that fits it pretty wonderfully too