'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[Cash Flagg]

La Nuge?

[RossyG]

Got to be a wind-up, hasn't it?

[The Narrator Returns]

Spalding Gray's new film, "And Everything Is Going Fine," is 89 minutes long. What a coincidence! That's exactly 89 more minutes of Spalding Gray than I can stand.

Gray was a motormouthed small-time actor who (largely thanks to incessant cheerleading from the New York Times) achieved mild 1980s fame as an autobiographical "monologuist," which is to say that he was not funny enough to be a comic and not enough of a wordsmith to be an author. Films of his droning and digressive 90-minute lectures, such as "Swimming to Cambodia," are unfortunate for their emphasis on a single topic -- his fascination with himself -- because the sentiment is difficult to share.

In "And Everything Is Going Fine," director Steven Soderbergh assembles without comment or narration an anthology of clips of Gray's act over the years as he heads for the edge he would later jump off. The laziness of this filmmaking (which assumes you know that Gray killed himself in 2004) is of a piece with the emphatically uninteresting tales told by a classic dinner-party bore who once referred to his ramblings as "creative narcissism." He was half-right.

[Jeff]

Well, here's the dumbest goddamn thing anybody has ever written, and a smart rebuttal of it.

[Lemmy Caution]

Well, that really reads as a parody. Either that or it's the shallowest writing on film imaginable. The impressive thing is it just seems to go on and on with ill-informed opinions.
I gave up pretty early. You hope the writer is about 16 and will mature. Or a parodist.

[Grand Illusion]

Well, here's the dumbest goddamn thing anybody has ever written, and a smart rebuttal of it.

Anti-intellectualism is a art.

edit: Okay, reading further, this has to be parody, right? It's actually kinda funny if you read it as parody.

edit 2: I love this from the rebuttal:

When you put on a film from, say, 1941, you have destroyed 72 years. You have destroyed age, and you have for a brief moment, destroyed death.

[matrixschmatrix]

I also enjoy

Old films are not “boring”—you are.

because, while I'm glad the rest of the essay was written, that was all that really needed to be said

[tenia]

Well, that really reads as a parody. Either that or it's the shallowest writing on film imaginable. The impressive thing is it just seems to go on and on with ill-informed opinions.
I gave up pretty early. You hope the writer is about 16 and will mature. Or a parodist.

Indeed. That's how I thought it was supposed to be read too, because otherwise, it's just very sad.

[Jeff]

Unfortunately it's not parody. I looked at the author's other pieces. They're all the same. Take a look at this choice criticism:

I think the main thing you learn after watching movies from the French New Wave is that those movies suck. And I think you can safely apply that outlook to any genre, movement, or period because movies (or art) made solely ‘in spirit’ misses the point. Art’s not about pushing boundaries or abstraction as a fuck you, it’s about making a good thing. Making a good thing is often encumbered by era, technology, censorship, or pretension. This is why Signs, Back to the Future, and Raising Arizona epitomize the best cinema has to offer.

[matrixschmatrix]

Signs? The M. Night Shymalan movie? Really?

A common reaction to my negative reviews here is to say that “I don’t get it”. The real problem with movies like Husbands is that I do get it—I get what they actually are, as opposed to what they are represented to be by a sect of the culture desperate to bolster nothingness in a foolish pursuit to create icons and look smart. Any explanation you could possibly give me as to the point of the goddamn basketball scene, or the signing scene, is made up.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[zeroman987]

I think the best part of the comments was this exchange:

LK says:
Usually I blame NYFA for producing people that know even less about film than they did going in, but you’re so aggressively ignorant, so stunningly proud of how little you know, so aesthetically retarded, that there is nothing that even the greatest institutions in the world could have done for you. You are the Dunning-Kruger effect personified.

Greg DeLiso says:
You’re right it was NYFA.

I really believe that he would have benefited from a liberal arts education. Even if he were still ignorant, he would have at least learned to express himself in a more eloquent manner.

[AK]

Read a few of the writer's other pieces, too, and I think it's all tongue-in-cheek, really. At times he seems to be pushing it a bit too far, which might raise one's suspicions as to his true motives. Whatever be the case, the fact that he's written several pieces in the same style hardly proves he's not parodic.

I wouldn't be surprised if the writer turned out to be an avid reader of this thread for inspiration.

[cHiland]

I laughed when he said 12 Angry Men was one of the few films he found "a film" made before 1975. Looking at his two of his biggest gripes regarding films made in the Golden Age of Hollywood--melodramatic acting and stage production feel--you'd think it'd be one of his least favorite movies of that period. Don't get me wrong, I really like 12 Angry Men--partly for those reasons.

His point of view is one of the oddest I've seen for a self-appointed "cinephile." Ghostbusters as one of the greatest pieces of film in cinematic history? Enjoyable movie, but...okay.

Anyway, longtime lurker, first-time poster.

[Drucker]

Regarding the upcoming Blu-Ray of In The Name of the Father:

I don't really remember a great deal about the film other than all the nomination's the film received , I hope it's as good as I think it was . M T L

The reviewer gave the film 4 stars.

[Gregory]

From the same reviewer, great insight into Ingrid Bergman's acting

Miss Bergman was at her best as a revengeful Bitch ,both she and Anthony Quinn shine . The print I bought however was not very good the transfer like a lot of what 20th C Fox are doing are done with the least expense possible If the film is grainy too bad that's what you'll get .

and bitter frustration that more than one aspect ratio exists:
(Gentleman's Agreement, 1947)

Problem with this film on blu ray is ....... It doesn't fill the entire screen therefore I sold it if Fox Films can't enhance a movie to use rage full screen there's something wrong it's been done on DVD .

(Titanic, 1953)

20th century fox should have transferred this movie in widescreen therefor it sucks , I sold the blasted movie .

[swo17]

Ok I am not a fan of 1990 and older movie, since the quality is grainy. But the movie started extreme right from the start. Pigs slaughter house and its like more like a documentary and I was getting sick. And I was ok why not give it a couple more min. And I end up watching the whole movie. How the characters go through a transformation through the movie, just interesting. The story is not only sad, but the whole scene, it shows how poor people live in certain countries and it was just jawopening.

[Oedipax]

Is that for In A Year of 13 Moons? Funny.

[MichaelB]

What happened in 1990 that made films miraculously non-grainy all of a sudden?

[RossyG]

It's funny, though; my teenage cinema memories of Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Rambo etc are of very grainy images.

But my memories of BTTF 2 and 3, Memphis Belle, Die Hard 2 just four or five years later are of much slicker, glossier and far less grainier film stock.

And another four years later, stuff like Stargate, True Lies and like were glossier still.

Something certainly happened.

[swo17]

Is that for In A Year of 13 Moons? Funny.

I don't know that it matters, but it was for Lino Brocka's Insiang.

[Michael Kerpan]

I don't know that it matters, but it was for Lino Brocka's Insiang.

You know what -- Even if the mini-review sounds a bit naive, I don't think that this was a "ridiculous" response to Insiang at all. Rather, I think the writer deserves a pat on the back for sticking with the film (despite the gruesome beginning) and being touched by it. (My mind obviously had blanked out that opening -- until my memory got refreshed).

[swo17]

Well I haven't seen the film yet, I just found the review amusing. Certainly, sticking with a film that you are initially biased against is admirable.

[Michael Kerpan]

My wife has been somewhat averse to Philippine movies ever since encountering (the opening of) Insiang.

Unfortunately, there is no good DVD of this (ought-to-be) indispensable film -- and possibly the source materials are too degraded to ever really restore properly (as is the case for pretty much all of the Philippine films from the same era).

[Matt]

Ghee whiz, good for him for having the curds to stand up to the cheeseballs criticizing this set. Instead of Universal buttering you up and trying to milk every last dime out of you with that first overpriced set, yo gurt the cream of Hitchcock's work in an affordable set.

[Jeff]

How dairy you subject us to such cheesy wordplay, Matt?