Photos
When A History of Violence first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott reported in an early version of a New York Times “blog” that there were boos in the audience. At least that’s how I remember it. The New York Times has done a bad job of maintaining their early blog experiments about old Cannes Film Festivals. It was something to the effect of people booing and Manohla Dargis being surprised and also maybe she yelled at someone in the audience to shut up? This story is starting to sound more and more far-fetched the more I recreate it from memory, but based on her glowing review, which IS still available, it’s clear that were someone to have booed in the audience, she would certainly disagree with them, if not to the extreme extent of actually shouting them down. The point of all this apocrypha, I suppose, is to point out that from it’s very beginning, David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence was a movie that spurred debate. Some people liked it very much, and some people shouted at it from their theater seats like a bunch of Joes Wilson.
As it turns out, I happen to be in the former camp. WOWOWOWOW! Did your head just spin around on your neck so fast that it twisted right up and popped clean off?
A History of Violence is based on a graphic novel that I haven’t read, so if that colors your opinion of my opinion, fair enough, but I am just letting you know the truth right at the beginning. Speaking of beginnings (A History of Segues), the movie opens at a motel where there are some mean jerks doing terrible things. Yuck. Totally hate these dudes! They are on a cross-country murdertrip, which eventually brings them to Small Town, Indiana, and into a Perfect Little Diner (I think that’s actually the name of it) run by mild-mannered Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen). When they start getting real rapey and gun-pully, Viggo Mortensen smashes them in the face with coffee pots, and blows their brains out. One of them goes flying through a plate glass window. Now Viggo Mortensen is on the news because that is where American Heroes are. The next day, ANOTHER mean jerk shows up. He might be one of the Men in Black? Except that he’s trying to get people to REMEMBER things instead of FORGET them. Namely, he wants Viggo Mortensen to remember that his name isn’t Tom Stall at all, but actually it is Joey Cusack, a notorious mobster from Philly. He makes everyone very nervous with his scarred up face and his goons and his attitude in general. When he tries to kidnap Viggo Mortensen’s son in order to coerce him into coming back to Philly (where he will presumably be killed), Viggo Mortensen kills everybody on his front lawn (well, and his son kills one of them, which is pretty chill) and that is how his wife learns that she is married to a liar. They have some very aggressive sex on the stairs. Yowza. Tired of being in the doghouse with his wife (don’t you guys hate it when wives won’t let you lead a double life as a murderer?) Viggo Mortensen goes back to Philly to confront his mob boss brother, and by confront I mean kill. He takes his shirt off and stands by a private pond and thinks about stuff. Then he drives home to his wife and children and sits down at the table with his eyes all puffy and no one says anything and Viggo Mortensen and his wife look at each other. Do you remember how at the end of Knocked Up you’re not really sure whether or not Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen will stay together? It’s like that. But NO LAUGHING.
To go back to Manohla Dargis’s review for just a moment, because she makes a point very well–whether or not you agree with the point–about what the movie is trying to do:
“A History of Violence” might have easily been called “A History of America,” but it would sell both Mr. Cronenberg’s art and his purpose short to reduce this film to an ideology. While transparently set in small-town America (Ontario passing for Indiana), the sheer unreality of the hamlet initially makes it clear that this story is not taking place in the here and the now, but in a copy of the world that looks – wouldn’t you know it – a lot like a movie. Mr. Cronenberg, a Canadian, is taking aim at this country, to be sure. But he is also taking aim at our violence-addicted cinema, those seductive, self-heroicizing self-justifications we sell to the world. Perversely, though, the more violent this film becomes – in time, the blood flows all the way to Philadelphia – the more real Tom and his family seem. He kills, therefore they are.
This seems like a perfectly textbook reading of the movie, although I’m not really sure this kind of trick is ever even possible to pull off. The problem with condemning an audience for its bloodlust is that in order to do so you have to give the audience exactly what it wants, and so the audience remains unchastened. If, as Manohla points out elsewhere in her review, the violence in this movie is ALSO exciting, then its deconstruction and/or criticism of how/why we are excited by violence seems kind of moot. To quote her, we are, therefore we are. But so, whether it proves its thesis or not, it’s actually an entertaining to watch. The college kids can have their Marxist interpretation of the film’s exploitation, I just like the part when Viggo Mortensen breaks that dude’s arm using his armpit! BOOM! Look out for the garrote!
I also just do not know what is not to like about a guy in a dark suit and sunglasses walking into a diner run by a guy named Tom and calling him Joey. It’s called INTERESTING PLOT TWIST. Look it up.
But mostly, uh, HELLO, MARIA BELLO.
Obviously, there are some people who disagree. Both in the city of Cannes, France, and also on this website. This movie has been nominated for the Hunt many times. But ever since I read that first report about the early screenings, I have yet to understand quite what might elicit “boos” about it. Even if one were to dislike this movie, it seems like a pretty strenuous and over-taxing argument to claim that it’s “the worst.” How could that be? I look forward to the counter-arguments in the comments. (Sort of.) (I mean, I look forward to naps and receiving presents. But I am curious about the counter-arguments.)
Of course, watching the movie for the column, even though I had seen it before and knew that I liked it, and even though I continue to like it still after a second viewing, I was certainly on the lookout for what was bad, or at the very least, for what might be perceived as bad, and I did notice in this reviewing that there’s a weird pacing to some of the scenes. People talk really slowly, and some of things they say come out really weird, as if the scene had first been performed by a group of ESL foreigners, and then re-performed here, some kind of Alta Vista Babelfish of acting through which everything comes out tonally wrong. For example:
Haha. YOU’RE A HERO, DAD! (Also: what 17-year-old baseball playing American dude with a punk girlfriend and a rivalry with the captain of the baseball team wants to hang out in the living room and drink tea with his parents?) So, that is definitely an overall tonal issue, it just didn’t really bother me personally.
Or maybe the people who don’t like this movie were just really offended by the egregious Honey Bunches of Oats product placement.
Or the WEIRD homo-erotic hugs the men were always sharing.
I don’t know! You tell me, grouches! Not that it really matters. You’re wrong. Somewhat forced cereal eating scenes aside, this movie is great. CASE DISMISSED.
Next week: American Beauty. As always, please leave your suggestions in the comments or in an email. And if you haven’t done so already, please consult the Official Rules.
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sorry, but you’re high. this is a great film.
Apparently the graphic novel is great. I have a professor who always uses it as an example of something that is good. But really, though. This movie is woof.
gabe, i’m ALWAYS high. this is a great film.
whoops! see, HIGH.
YOU’RE high. This is a great film.
Speaking of Men in Black…
DEAL WITH IT.
#greatfilm
Sorry, Gabe. Meant as reply to Apartment Tiger.
It works just as well up here. Or anywhere.
Viggo…why the long face?
Now THAT guy is suffering from Carpathian Kitten Loss.
Gabe I saw some spelling errors in your post it’s not Viggo Mortensen it’s actually Vijjo Morganstein. Just letting you know.
Bappy Hirthday Gremlin!
I’ve never seen it, but wow, do I wish we were all having a Videogum wake ‘n’ bake meetup right now!
No, you’re a towel!
I have no idea what’s going on
You should always bring one with you, no?
I totally forgot Mark Zuckerberg was in this movie.
You don’t make 500 million friends without shotgunning a few dudes on your front lawn
A HIstory of Violence: very great, very movie.
Sorry H8ers
http://cdn1.knowyourmeme.com/i/000/062/355/original/Pigboots-Haters-gonna-hate.jpg?1280364642
or maybe?
girlphilosopher, you have bested me. I am slain.
I can’t wait for Sam Mendes presents Louis CK’s White People Problems next week
BUT THAT PLASTIC BAG WAS JUST SO MOVING.
do you ever feel like a plastic bag?
I found American Beauty surprisingly enjoyable despite the fact I hated everything about it other than Kevin Spacey.
I’m pretty excited too. American Beauty came out when I was just entering college and I thought it was “powerful” or some shit. Watched it again recently and, yeah, it’s pretty stupid. It looks nice though.
Cosign. I saw this in high school and bought the VHS and, god damn it, I own it on DVD? When did I buy this? I do not remember that purchase at all.
Yes the script is a trip to Obvioustown, but it’s so pretty! It’s like cinematography 101! How can it be The Worst?
What’s even worse are two movies that American Beauty’s popularity spawned: Life As A House with Kevin Kline and Anakin Skywalker, and LIfe or Something Like It, starring Billy Bob Thorton’s ex-wife. Those two make American Beauty look like Gummo.
We all own it on DVD or VHS and we all regret it a little bit now, but still kind of like it, ya know?
Maybe the people who didn’t like it dislike lingering closeups of dudes with smashed in faces choking to death on their own blood and/or quasi-rape scenes on staircases? Just hypothesizing, since I thought this movie was pretty great even if it didn’t feature a naked steam bath knife fight.
That–I mean, not specifically those scenes, but you know, when the word “Violence” appears in the movie’s title, it is a good indication that it is not for me.
Anyway, that “Let’s make an exceedingly violent movie about modern movie-going audiences’ adulation of exceedingly violent images, with which we can condemn said adulation” argument is obnoxious and self-defeating. Because: What are you doing, movie-makers, but creating more (artistically!) violent scenes for your audiences’ viewing pleasure?
I would think that if you are going to make that argument, you ought to at least use images that already exist. Contextualized to make your own points, I suppose.
These guys know what you are talking about
He’s pretty
Cronenberg isn’t even saying anything that original with his “Isn’t American cinema just so violent! I’m going to show them how violent they are with more violence! Yeah, that’s the ticket!” spiel. That was the entire premise behind Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, which came out in 1997 (before being reshot, scene for scene, for American audiences a decade later), and was the first movie to cause me to walk out of a theater. Even if we accept Cronenberg’s argument, someone else already did it, and (in my opinion) did a better job of getting the viewer to realize “Oh my GOD, this is FUCKED UP.”
I don’t think the ONLY point of History of Violence is the Hanekian “violence is bad and you are bad for watching it” argument. Sure Cronenberg goes way out of his way to show the audience what the physical reality of movie violence would actually look like, but he is also saying something about the impact of committing violent acts on a person’s soul. Viggo starts the movie happy and with more an more violence become more and more estranged from the people he cares about and less and less at peace with the himself.
Funny Games is just 8mm with a different color palette.
I don’t think that Cronenberg is saying anything about violence in film. He has made his career on violent movies and I don’t think he has a problem with them.
I think in Roger Ebert’s review he described Cronenberg’s theory behind the title “A History of Violence.” He said that he thought it had three meanings.
First and most literally, the Viggo Mortensen character had a personal history of violence that prevented him from completing his reinvention as Tom Stall.
Second, the USA has a history of violence in that it was founded by war and that we seem to perceive ourselves as a violent populace. Or at least a nation that is perfectly willing to settle an argument with violence.
Third, evolutionarily speaking the species at the top of the food chain have survived by being the most successfully violent. In my recollection of the review, this is the idea Ebert really addresses. That ‘Tom Stall the nice country guy’ doesn’t walk out of that diner alive, but ‘Joey Cusack’ does because HE’S the über-violent alpha species in the room. Then on the lawn, and later in Philly again, the most effectively violent guy remains. HE gets to propel his genetic lineage. And the son’s violent outburst comes from that same instinctive evolutionary place, being his father’s son.
As a lover of the movie, I have watched it through this lens, and I think it’s kind of a masterpiece. I don’t really see the “Showing up American lovers of violence” angle that’s getting a lot of chatter. I guess that SORT of goes to that second idea of “A History of Violence” up there, but it doesn’t really seem to be a goal of the movie…
I was addressing that point because Gabe brought it up, which I think makes it pertinent–whether it’s applicable to this movie, I defer to you all who have seen it. Michael Haneke kann mich mal anyway, I can’t stand him and his hypocritical bullshit. If A History of Violence doesn’t get all shouty about “The violence implicates YOU, VIEWER!” then that is just fine, it is generally a poorly made argument.
Regardless of whether it’s applicable to this movie, I’ve never seen it, so I wasn’t proposing any ideas about its themes, etc. Sorry it looks that way, I try to keep that sort of thing to a minimum.
YOU, SIR, ARE FIRED.
I think it’s extremely telling that all arguments for this movie’s “goodness,” including Gabe’s, hinge upon the meta-argument the filmmaker is supposedly making about violence and audiences. But, um, this isn’t even Cronenberg’s work? It’s based very carefully upon a graphic novel telling an interesting story in a violent way, as they all do? And it is nothing more than a thinly veiled meditation on the cliche of how you can’t wash your hands of blood?
I mean, there are two sets of people, as Gabe notes: People who wanted to see a well-crafted and compelling film, vs. people who would like to over-analyze a simplistic story that is so simplistic it demands a slathering of analyzation just to make it feel worthwhile. I mean, two serial killers walk into a diner randomly and get owned by the owner, suddenly some Philly mobsters hear about it hundreds of miles away because its NATIONAL NEWS, so they come to harass the owner because he learned his murdering skills from them, so he murders THEM, then decides to drive across the country to kill a mob boss of a brother who ONLY APPEARS in the last 14 minutes of the movie, then goes home and sits down at dinner “symbolizing” that everything will be okay? PLEASE. If this coincidence-based movie were directed by Kevin Smith, this whole site would mock it into oblivion. And the half-baked story of a nerdy son who IMMEDIATELY turns to violence at school once his father kills some SERIAL KILLERS in self defense? But only now he’s not nerdy, he’s really incredibly angry at his father? Yet, oh so deeply, he is just like his father…
See, what I’m saying is, this is four poorly done movies rolled into one mishmash of a wannabe intellectual exploitation film that has no discernible story, no motivation for its characters, and a completely busted logic when it comes to cause-and-effect. Why did critics in Cannes boo at this film? Because anyone who’s not in grad school can see that it’s a poorly plotted film feigning deep subtext as an excuse for bland storytelling.
BRAVO!
I hope that is sarcastic slow clapping, since “everyone who can’t tell this movie is stupid and bad is an idiot” as a response to the people who liked the movie makes me a sad panda.
Hey! Grad students happen to be *very* intelligent. Too intelligent, in fact, which was kind of my point. I regretted the above post almost immediately because the tone is definitely more angry than I actually am. Not sure why it came out that way, aside from Gabe’s challenge that “I don’t care about arguments against this movie because they are patently wrong,” but I do think that it is a poorly done movie with an overt and distracting facade of deeper meaning. I do not, however, think that people who like it are dumb. In fact, I really love the first 25 minutes or so, and the cinematography is beautiful, as is the wonderful slow burn of the pacing. The story and its plotting are what bother me. Quite a bit.
Cronenberg and any other auteurs are officially dismissed from these proceedings.
I don’t think anyone is infallible, plus anything that would absolve Jack from the running is not something I can behind
get behind dammit
I think Videodrome might have something to say about that.
I don’t remember why, but when I saw “History of Violence,” I didn’t like it. I honestly can’t remember why at all.
I do however remember that “Videodrome” is ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME!
Mans it is increasingly becoming clear to me that we should have a movie club. We agree on all the movies! Last night I watched Blue Steel. Have you seen it? It is awesome. How about [REC]? I watched that on Friday. It was great. Hooray! (I am logging in much too late to actually get a response, and thus justify wasting precious thread space with useless blither blather)
Spanish [REC} or Dexters-annoying-sister-remake-[Rec]?
I have not seen Blue Steel or [REC], though I have seen [REC] mentioned several times in the past few weeks, so now I am curious.
I am pretty much a professional horror movie watcher (I wrote my college thesis on Torture Porn) and the last five minutes of [REC] (Spanish, not the fool remake “Quarantine”) scared the piss out of me. I actually can’t remember being scared by a movie in a long time. Not just unsettled and creeped out, deeply frightened. I usually don’t love the whole handicam horror thing but here it works really well.
I will seek out the original. Thank you for the recommendation. I am also open at all times to horror movie suggestions as they are my favorite (though I have a fairly expansive definition of horror).
Then I definitely recommend Blue Steel. It’s somewhere on the psychological thriller-horror spectrum. It’s from Katheryn Bigelow. Jamie Lee Curtis is a rookie cop tracking down a serial killer who is carving her name onto bullet casings he uses to kill folks, and it is a super tense violent action movie (like Hurt Locker) but also an incredible feminist horror flick.
I dragged a group of friends to a theater in Mexico City to see [REC] when it first came out. Half the people I was with had to leave the room 30 minutes in, and one of them wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the night. Definitely one of the more intense theater-going experiences I’ve had (though the most intense would be seeing Jurassic Park when I was 7).
I hear the [REC] sequel (not the remake) is also pretty worthwhile.
I think Danny Boyle falls into the “auteur” category and his movies got ISSUES.
No way, we should have more crazy auteur movies nominated for the Hunt. If only because Gabe’s amusing speed-summary of a David Lynch movie would definitely make me lol.
I nominate Eraserhead.
Guy pukes a weird spermy thing, baby radiator something something.
No way. Auteurs gone wrong is so entertaining. Example: Gus Van Sant’s “Psycho” remake. Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates.
All I remember about this movie is that in general it just made me bored in a particularly sweaty-nauseous-when-does-this-end kind of way.
Also, Viggo Butt Cheekz
No. No no no no no no. I hated this movie. With my track record of loving graphic novels, I should love this movie. But I hated it. It made no sense to me. Like literally. Maybe I saw it before my brain developed, but I hated this movie.
So, absolutely love this movie and the fact that it was even nominated is ridiculous, IMHO.
But, I really just wanted to relate a story connected to this movie. I was staying in a quaint little bed-and-breakfast with my parents, the kind of place where they still have VHS players in the rooms and you can check out board games and movies from the front desk. So my mother goes up to the desk where very nice, very chipper young woman awaits to fulfill whatever request she might have.
Ms. Chipper: Good evening ma’am! How can I help you?
Mama teacherman: Yes [pause] do you have A History of Violence?
Ms. Chipper: Um…excuse me?
It only took about a minute to sort it out, but that minute was priceless.
Lucky for her, A History of Violence was the last movie put out on VHS.
LITTLE KNOWN FACT! Lol! Oh bill, I forgot about that! That makes teacherman’s story that much funnier.
Whenever I tell people I like this movie, I get told that I must like rape because Stair Sex.
So, sorry, Gabe. That is what you like.
Rape-rape is bad. Stair “rape assimilation” sex is great. Don’t knock it before you try it, Huck.
*simulation, not assimilation.
Goodnight Benjamin.
Goodnight Daisy.
Oh, believe me, I am the last person you need to convince as to the joys of stair rape simulation sex.
Kinky Monster.
Alright, you two, get a staircase.
Not to start some sort of flamegum, but can someone please explain to me why people keep saying the stair scene is rape? I’ve heard people say this IRL too, and it baffles me. I see NO rape there, sorry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FchdTnEx638
I just see SMANGin, you know?
I mean, yeah, smangin’ at worst.
In other news
TONIGHT!
What’s the over/under on the amount of time it will take for this to happen?
Oh I timed it and it took about 13 seconds for him to do that goddamn string dance. That’s comedy.
If gabe writes a negative review of his new show I swear to God I will use this .gif
You will have my shoe.
I’ve got this one on deck.
Oh, that’s very nice.
There’s some mistake. We wanted you to review The History of Violins.
They COMPLETELY gloss over the Guarneri family!
Yeah, they made Stradivarius mistakes in that film.
One more Cremonese luthier pun and then Amati here.
And enough with the Samvel Yervinyan interviews already, sheesh.
I was just really bothered by the f hole scene in that movie.
Itzhak me a long time to get this list of jokes, but it’s a Perlman.
What about a Herstory of Violence ? Sorry, I don’t know what violins are.
I want to group hug this entire string of comments.
Seeing as everyone loved this movie, how did it get nominated? Someone needs to hate on it for pure entertainment value.
I lack an opinion.
Or at least we should review Wild Wild West, now that was a bad movie.
I second Wild Wild West. Worst Western ever and that’s saying something.
I actually remember really liking Wild Wild West. Because I was young and stupid, I guess? I’ve seen clips of it recently and feel like I should scold my parents for letting me convince them to buy it
but without Wild Wild West we would live in a world without that great Kevin Smith story about producer Jon Peters and giant mechanical spiders!
Wild, Wild West- of course, terrible movie…
What about the remake of The Women…? That needs to be WMOAT for so many reasons:
1. These women complain about men and base their lives around either having one or not having one, yet NOT ONE MAN IS EVER SHOWN IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE.
2. Meg Ryan looks weird.
I don’t think Will Smith is happy about where this conversation is going.
I nominated Broken Arrow, which I’m sure has been nominated before because it is just awful. For some reason I always think Nic Cage is in it, if that gives you a hint as to how bad it really is
Ha Broken Arrow is terrible in a fun way. Also, I liked it a lot when I was 17 or whenever because I wanted to be a guy who knew a lot about movies, and John Woo was the director. So I’d seen Hard Boiled and maybe some others, and I was all, “Leaping forward in slow-mo with a gun in each hand. SUCH a John Woo move.” It’d make me happy to see that get WMOATed!
Nic Cage and Viggo Mortensen both fall under the category of “actors my weird aunt crushes on”, so sometimes my subconscious unfairly equates the two in terms of worstness. I think that’s why I didn’t like this movie. Thanks for the breakthrough, slimer! (Just kidding, I didn’t see A History of Violence, but I assume I’d probably hate it, since that seems to be the prevailing opinion amongst the cool monsters. How is it that that NC can ruin movies he isn’t even in, before I even see them?)
I’ve always thought this movie was simply mediocre. I haven’t seen it in a long time, but I did see it in theaters when it was released. I just didn’t think it was that great or that bad. Completely average. And I think that feeling has evolved into actually not liking the movie because of the amount of praise it got. I’m not an, “I’ll hate something because everyone loves it” person, but I’ve never understood why some people laud this movie so much.
I think I may have been disappointed because I expected more from the people that worked on it. Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, and David Cronenberg are awesome, so I don’t know how they made something so yawn-inducing.
Also, I HATE the whole “confronting the audience with their bloodlust” schtick. I’m not trying to write an essay, so I’ll leave it at that (but I will add that I absolutely despise Funny Games).
I though Gabe was going to be reviewing A History of Violins today. DISAPPOINTMENT.
PLAGARIST! Sorry Patrick, I failed to refresh thoroughly enough.
And poor grammar. JESUS H. I’m out.
You said “Jesus” so you get this gif. It is meet and right to do so.
teacherman, you are now my hero for posting this. Upvotes for eternity.
In the world of Cronenberg/Mortensen collaborations:
Eastern Promises > A History of Violence
because:
Naked bath house fight scene > stairway sex
EVERY TIME.
In the context of the respective scenes, I think I might agree. Decontextualized, I SOOOOOO disagree.
The story might have been original, but the script is awful & the acting(aside from Bello) was Tori Spellingesque. Also, this is basically torture porn for nerds/people who were picked in HS. This movie aims for gritty realism but it really is just the product mind of a guy went: “what if i could fuck up all the people who picked on me? I would fuck them up real bad! Also, I would hate-fuck the hot cheerleader, with whom I would make movie star babies”. end rant
This seems like a decent (if colorful) critique, but obvs from the downvotes many of you disagree?
I too disliked this film. I remember thinking “sweet Jesus when is it going to end?” and then the really stupid stair sex started…. I just didn’t enjoy it.
But I don’t think I’m this movie’s target audience. I generally don’t see movies with this much graphic violence. It’s just not my cup of tea.
CT, what?! How on earth could you think Cronenberg is trying for ‘gritty realism’? There are so many scenes (particularly in the first act) that are obviously filtered through perceptions of 1950′s, Leave-it-to-Beaver, idyllic suburban America culture. This is at dramatic odds with the occasional spurts illuminating the brutal reality of violence. I think that disconnect is one of the most interesting things about AHOV. What if we saw Mr. Brady kill a couple guys and hate-fuck Mrs. Brady on the Brady stairs?
Also, where are you getting the idea that this is revenge fantasy? Is it the high school fight scene? That’s ONE SCENE of a subplot that is obviously about a teen idealizing his father’s violent actions, the apex of which is that teen straight-up MURDERING a dude.
A History of Violence is torture porn for nerds who were picked on in High School in the same way that American Pie is about a high school nerd who just really wants to fuck a pie.
I didn’t mean just high school. Viggo represents the everyman trying to leave by the rules, then a couple of bad guys(the movie’s term, not mine) come fuck up the town for no other reason that they are bad guys and the everyman stands up to them. Also he hate-fucks her because she doesn’t want to be with a guy who lied to her all these years?
Also, there is no way you can defend the acting. The acting!!!!!
I will re-watch this and i will present my counterpoint at monster’s balls.
Actingwise: I remember being annoyed at the “gee-whiz” dialog and acting in Act One and wondering how an actor as good as Viggo could go so wrong. And then I decided that this is the point: his character is a bad actor. He wanted to leave behind his life of violence and so he adopted a fake persona and gradually became it. (He’s not after revenge — he’s doing everything he can to hide from that world and from who he really is.) But it’s only an act, and the act isn’t good enough to erase the underlying reality. Also I think he’s only “everyman” in the sense that maybe this is what the movie is saying we all are? I mean we didn’t get to the top of the food chain by winning Miss Congeniality, Paleolithic Era.
That said, I’m not sure the acting worked 100% for me. But it’s defensible!
Yes, I think this is exactly right. The “normal guy has to stand up and go vigilante to defend himself and his family” cliche is what’s being deconstructed. Calling it out for being clicheed is totally missing the point.
I think what you all are talking about is what I didn’t like: that is, by the time I realized that the movie was giving me a riff on comics/50s/Leave it to Beaver/etc., I had already decided it was just bad acting and couldn’t go back.
EXAMPLE: Once, I ate eggplant parmigiana, unaware that what I was about to eat was eggplant. I thought it was going to be beef or something, and biting into the spongy mass, I felt my whole body roil in revulsion. Now, I am sure it was perfectly good eggplant parmigiana, but if you are expecting something else, it is gross.
Does that make sense?
YES. Like getting coke when you’re expecting root beer.
Once again, I nominate SYNECDOCHE, NY.
For the record, I love this movie. I just want to see Gabe try and summarize its plot/narrative for pure entertainment purposes.
I was going to downvote you really, really hard, but then you managed to redeem yourself. I’ve always wanted to nominate Magnolia for the same basic reasons. Dare I?
I love Magnolia (but I love anything P.T. Anderson does). I say nominate it. Why not?
Also, Upvotes… downvotes… it’s all good because in the end, I drink your milkshake.
PTA can’t get his Scientology movie off the ground, you guys! This saddens me.
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I will second this. I came out of that movie just feeling sort of numb to everything in the world, particularly that movie. I desperately scoured the interwebs for an opinion that would help me unblock my emotional floodgates, because I was just extremely frustrated that I couldn’t figure out how I felt about it. Not that that even makes sense.
What I’m saying it, I second this nomination, because I too would love to see Gabe’s thoughts.
Y’know, I agree with this. I still haven’t made up my mind if Synecdoche is one of the very worst or very best films I’ve ever seen. I’d like to see Gabe wrestle with it.
MAGNOLIA= one of my favorites…but like wertthrew said about Synecdoche, I’d like to see Gabe tackle it.
It’s the only movie that Tom Cruise has ever been good in, because he’s playing an inverted, heterosexual version of himself.
I had that same problem until I realised that movie hated me back. Burning home selling aside.
Roger Ebert wrote some beautiful words about this movie in several different forums. I particularly remember what he said about that burning house — something about unhappy homes always seeming to be ablaze, and how we all just want to ignore them.
There were some terrific moments but for the most part I felt like……I get it….can we stop now?
I thought that at first too, but realized that it’s one of those movies I’ll revisit time and again over the course of my life and somehow find a new way to better understand a specific scene or metaphor or even the movie as a whole. I just love art that has a seemingly limitless shelf life.
When I rented Synecdoche, NY I watched it first in the evening, then I watched it again the following morning. Then later that day I listened to Charlie Kaufman on the Creative Screenwriting Podcast where they were asking him question about the film and he wouldn’t answer anything along the lines of “How/What did it mean when you ______?” Just a really fun experience. i got a lot of visceral stuff out of the first viewing. The second viewing blew me away. The interview afterwards was like I screened the film twice and then got to go to a Q&A with the writer/director whom I already greatly respected from his previous work. It was just a good time for a really strange and beautiful film.
(Dammit. I put too many underscores in my comment and its awaiting moderation. I always forget about that. ANyway, my underscores have now been replaced with *blank*)
When I rented Synecdoche, NY I watched it first in the evening, then I watched it again the following morning. Then later that day I listened to Charlie Kaufman on the Creative Screenwriting Podcast where they were asking him question about the film and he wouldn’t answer anything along the lines of “How/What did it mean when you *blank*?” Just a really fun experience. i got a lot of visceral stuff out of the first viewing. The second viewing blew me away. The interview afterwards was like I screened the film twice and then got to go to a Q&A with the writer/director whom I already greatly respected from his previous work. It was just a good time for a really strange and beautiful film.
Dammit again. The moderators are quick today.
I don’t really think of this movie in terms of being good or bad. I do know that it absolutely wrecked me. I cried for about 3 hours after it was over. It hit some kind of primal nerve or something. For that reason alone I recommend it to people. Also interested to hear what Gabe would have to say about it.
Uh… Were the people who didn’t like the movie in line for popcorn during the “wife wears a cheerleader outfit while he heads down to the south of France” scene or something?
*the product of the mind of a guy.
Not ONE mention of the most awkward (and I think only) “69″ scene in mainstream cinema? That scene almost ruined the movie for me!
This movie should have been called A History of Awkward Sexual Positions.
I’m glad to see that universally well regarded movies are being reviewed for The Hunt. I believe American Beauty is the only film in this column that has won the best film academy award. Can’t wait to read that!
I believe Crash was nominated, and won Best Picture? And that’s a legitimate contender for WMOAT.
I didn’t like this movie when I first saw it, but I watched it on a friend of a friend’s 12″ tube tv while I was house sitting one weekend. I really hated that weekend because I had to sleep on a smelly futon in an unfamiliar place, and I think that’s probably why I thought I hated this movie. Maybe I’ll give it another try.
This marks the first time since Caligula that a WMOAT convinced me to see a film. (I fast forwarded through Caligula because I couldn’t believe that it was actually 3/4 pornography. I now believe!)
That is inappropriate for babby, Chrissy is so fired
I had no idea what they were doing. I just assumed they were hugging, and kissing each others thighs.
WMOAT almost failed to convince me to NOT watch Amelia. A while back, when my head was yogurt cup and I was vulnerable, I didn’t change the channel when it came on. I got two dialogue lines in before I shouted, “NOPE. NOT DOING IT!” and watched Seinfeld reruns instead.
Now that there is a reason for me to explain why I hated this movie, I can’t remember. Maybe because I saw it in 2005? But really, this movie has some elements that make good movies, and it’s definitely not the worst, but it’s not a good movie. I’m pretty sure it’s possible to make a critique of America about characters that I can give a shit about. Also, a critique of American bloodlust? So many movies are about that and it doesn’t excuse anything.
Aaahh!!! REAL (Monsters) TALK.
I henceforth now and forever nominate this:
…because I will never forget.
http://videogum.com/91201/the_hunt_for_the_worst_movie_o_71/franchises/the-hunt-for-the-worst-movie-of-all-time/
He can’t do it again, or can he, no I’m pretty sure no repeats
curse you zoidberg
How did I miss this?! Maybe it was something in the air? (sorry)
I think the space aliens may have been tampering with your memory
http://videogum.com/91201/the_hunt_for_the_worst_movie_o_71/franchises/the-hunt-for-the-worst-movie-of-all-time/
“Unforgettable!” -Ben Lyons
WMOAT: YBTB
Since you liked torture porn, can we get a review of the saw movies?
A VG classic, courtesy of Lindsey (RIP)…
http://videogum.com/8700/double_dog_saw_marathon_makes/double-dog/
Oh man, I enjoyed reading that at the time SO much.
I fall into the LOVE THIS MOVIE SOOOOOOOOOO MUCH camp. So here are bunch of my not-very-thought-out-thoughts.
As for the whole tonal issue, I think that could be the point? That before Tom is completely Joey again, that we’re supposed to notice how hokey their family dynamic is? That his son is much more natural once he acts out on what seems to be his inherent violent side.
From what I’ve seen in the comments, the sex scene on the stairs is one of the main points of contention for a lot of people who dislike it. To me, that scene serves as a counterpoint to the cheerleader role-playing sex scene in the beginning. Now that their family dynamic is changed, and violence (not wholesomeness) is the foundation of their family, suddenly cheerleader costumes and nostalgia no longer have a home in their relationship. I’m not saying it was comfortable to watch. It was totally uncomfortable, and it definitely may have/probably crossed into a depiction of rape. I guess I just never understood the critique that it was completely unnecessary/out of place/ruined the movie. For me, it makes perfect sense within the story. I’d love to read other monsters’ opinions on this scene, though.
There’s a lot going on here that, even if one dislikes it, should keep it from ever coming close to being a WMOAT. For instance, the references to film noir are really well done. I really liked how Cronenberg uses the traditionally quaint diner setting as a place of extreme violence. Tom/Joey fucks up a dude’s face with a goddamn coffee pot (like in The Big Heat I think!). Take that, small town USA! I also once read an article about how AHOV and Eastern Promises are commentaries on how globalization and terrorism have forever altered America’s self-image in relation to violence. I don’t remember where it was/who wrote it but it was very convincing!
Anyway. I love this movie. I’m happy Gabe did too.
I totally agree RE: stairsex. I mean, yes — it’s uncomfortable. That’s the point. And she doesn’t come out of it suddenly just back in love with him. If she was all smiles and happily in love after being pseudo-rapied, then yes, that would be a big, big problem. But she’s not. She’s more conflicted than ever, now disgusted by herself as well as him.
And it doesn’t glorify the kinda-rape either. It’s not a scene full of long, sexy shots of him f*cking her til she loves him (see: Mike Tyson); it’s gritty, and disturbing. You don’t have to want to see gritty and disturbing, but that doesn’t inherently make it bad. Just not your thing. Which is fine!
We’re just human you know? We like violence, we’re used it, we’re pretty good at it but then we try to run away from that fact and move to small town Indiana and change our name. So we’re living life and we make everything perfect to cover up all those scary truths about us being shitty. Then one day we gotta use violence again but we can’t just make it go away cause it’s gotta scar over one eye and it’s fucking with this perfect thing we have. So we go and do our violence thing, come back, and our perfect thing isn’t perfect anymore cause it’s been fucked with and then it’s like “What the fuck are you and are you gonna sit down to eat?” and we’re like “The most dangerous thing on the whole fucking planet, pass the mashed potatoes.”
I think that there’s enough room in all of us for a variety of sexual fantasies, even if they conflict with one another. Sweet and sensual versus rough and primal. Otherwise, what a vanilla existence, y’know?
Agreed.
Primal is the right word. I don’t think you can use the word “rape” (or even “psuedo-rape”). It is even possible (as I recall from her acting) that she is more attracted to him after the stair sex than she was before it, and/or has a new view of herself less rooted in her cheerleader uniform (and the social organization/sidelined-observer/fetishized-innocence it represents) and more kinda primal herself.
Everyone nominating movies for the Hunt can stop nominating them. Because I am nominated The Love Guru. A movie which is, quite clearly, the worst movie of all time. I would love for it to be the Amelia of this round of the Hunt. Basically, everybody should be on board with this movie being included in The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time. Even if it isn’t the worst movie of all time. But I think it is. For the record.
Carry on discussing Viggo Mortenson’s butt cheeks.
He also reviewed “Crash” for the WMOAT and as much as I’d like to pretend it didn’t win the best picture, it totally did.
This was of course supposed to be a reply to someone else. Oh well.
Gabe… review “The Other Sister” plz.
Gabe has been on the hunt for the worst movie of all time. He found it hiding in a coffee shop in rural Indiana.
I nominate The Haunting (1999) because why?
…because Catherine Zeta-Jones is the WORST EVER except when pregnant and ordering hit men to “shoot him in the head!”
Love me some Traffic
Agree 1000%.
EVERYONE in that movie is terrible, even the people I usually like.
The sets (though over-the-top) were amazing, though. I have to think the designer must have wanted to shoot Jan de Bont in the face after seeing the shitfest of terrible CGI and acting that was smeared all over it.
Ugh, second. I worked at a Regal Cinemas while this was in theaters and ended up watching it (in parts) many, many times (because there’s a lot of down time when you’re an usher and so you just end up watching anything and everything over and over again)
Told yas Eastern Promises would’ve made for a better review. YA TOLT! Or perhaps not. Whatever.
I thought this film was pretty ok though whereas I thought Eastern Promises was quite poor. What a world. Anyway, onwards and upwards.
Has Babel been nominated? So awful.
I liked it. It’s not a movie I’ll likely watch again, but I remember enjoying it. Did I miss all the people who unabashedly hated it and why they did?
I fall in the “I thought this movie was good, not great camp” if anyone was wondering.
The best part of the true WMOAT, Valentine’s Day:
this is the last time I will nominate Stranger Than Fiction because I’m pretty sure all the suggestions are getting archived or something. also it is TEARING ME APART. not really, I just think it’s a howling brain obliterating abomination of a film, and I think fits perfectly with the idea of a movie trying to be BIG IDEA and IMPORTANT and just being a grilled garbage sandwich. and it also reminds me of the Nick and Norah review where we as the audience were supposed to agree with, or at least understand how the characters could really love that stupid band, and how important and revelatory the secret show was supposed to be (until it wasn’t duh SCREEN WRITING) but it completely failed to accomplish that? that’s how I always felt about how Dustin Hoffman tries to convince Will Ferrell to let a woman MURDER HIM WITH WORDS because her art was so important. I mean, jesus you’re telling someone that a book is more important than their life and that they should just fucking die and get out of the way, yr an asshole by the way, and then you hear voiceovers from the supposed important lifechanging (AND ENDING) novel, and its just whatever? like, teenage girls that talk about how Chuck Palanhiuk is GOD wouldn’t get excited or inspired by that, but hey let her MURDER YOU. AND THEN WILL FERRELL AGREES WITH THIS CONCEPT TOTALLY. oh and there’s a punk rock baker because that is both a thing and she falls in love with Will Ferrell even though he is not a punk rocker or a baker and he’s auditing her but HE PLAYS GUITAR NOW. so LOVE.
so the movie is offensive and stupid and nonsense and irritating and thinks way too highly of itself is what I’m saying, and I think it would make a good WMOAT, because it totally already is the WMOAT. but I don’t this feature to ever end so maybe don’t review it? 2012?
#moviesnotgettingreviewedthisweek
(no proofread-o)
Didn’t WIll Ferrell agree to let the lady writer kill him off because it meant that he was saving that little kid from getting smushed? Not just “for art”. Also why was Queen Latifah in the movie at all?
WHO CAN STOP LILY TOMLIN’S INSATIABLE BLOODLUST?
no one.
Dear you-effed-jeff,
YES.
Signed,
Lady B. Eleanor Worthington Pranks
“some people shouted at it from their theater seats like a bunch of Joes Wilson.”
Lines like this are why I’m a monster. Just masterful.
Also, I nominate Shooter. Danny Glover’s speech impediment has to be heard to be believed.
I think the fact that Mark Wahlberg’s character’s name is Bob Lee Swagger is grounds for nominating Shooter. Also it has the typical Wahlberg tough guy act and about a million plot twists.
Thanks for the review, Here’s where I hate. It was a boring “Long Kiss Goodnight” that took itself too seriously while not seriously enough to bother actually taking place somewhere believable. What exactly IS the point made so well in Dargis’ review again? I discern nothing but an opinion she already held and was reminded of. Your point about the film’s attitude to violence was spot on, Gabe. It’s exactly that central weakness I hated, a really pretty adolescent idea of what constitutes “grown up”. I love Cronenberg. He normally takes you somewhere new and scary and moving. This film let me go nowhere, and everypoint it made I’d seen made a hundred times before, far batter.
I wouldn’t boo it though. Come on.
Technically can’t nominate this for real yet because it’s still in theaters, but FUTURE NOMINATION: Hereafter
Holy mother of god, what a bad movie. It had potential to be something actually interesting and engaging about how we as people deal with death and the concept of the afterlife, and it missed it by the length of Russia. The pacing was atrocious, it fell into the worst cliches of using multiple protagonists, it was contrived beyond belief, and to top it all off, Jay Mohr.
I rest my case.
YES. I seriously considered suicide, then I remembered I had legs and could walk out, and then I thought about some other things, and then Matt Damon, and then the movie was over.
None of the three main story lines ever came together in a very meaningful way. I kept waiting for something to happen and nothing. ever. did. It was painstaking. You can’t start a movie off with a goddamn tsunami and near death experience and then have the rest of it meander and mill about like an alzheimer’s patient. What the hell kind of let down is that?
Fuck this movie.
TWIST! I enjoyed both A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, so I knew that they were both far from the WMOAT. Hey, speaking of the WMOAT, here are some NOMINATIONS-
The Saint
Spread
Hollow Man
Smiley Face
Operation Endgame
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li
Watching Hollow Man really made me rethink my soft spot for Kevin Bacon. But then I just watch Tremors again.
oh, God, The Legend of Chun-Li. i didn’t even think to nominate that movie for two possible reasons:
1) i think subconsciously i believe it to be so bad a movie that it would be unfair/unnecessary to even criticize it, or
2) i’ve tried to block it out of my mind forever and ever.
However, here is a list of reasons why it should be nominated:
1) Chris Klein
what’s wrong with Smiley Face? do you just want to see Gabe’s review, or did i miss the Worstness?
I’m not sure if it was KajusX who has nominated it in weeks past, but the argument goes that in addition to being REALLY boring and poorly acted/written, it was a massive letdown for those of us clamoring for a solid “girl stoner” movie. I have to say, as someone who is both a huge fan of the “stoner movie” oeuvre and as someone who tried to watch it “in the right frame of mind,” that I couldn’t make it past the 20-minute mark. And I’ve made it through ALL of Glitter.
okay, that explains a lot. i watched it straight and am ambivalent to the stoner genre– raised on cheech & chong, and of course was straight while watching those, too, as i was, oh, say– twelve at the time. that was family viewing for us, so stoner humor was just regular humor to me (see also: richard pryor in general and steve martin on comedy albums– dirty! and long before parental warning labels– good times!)
May I nominate Lovely Bones? I entered Lovely Bones + worst in the search engine and came up with a surprising amount of entries, but no actual review of the film which (not surprisingly) was THE WORST. Ugh. Just ugh.
I second this.
The book was the worst, so I’m happy to believe that the movie was similarly painful.
Gabe made a HUGE MISTAKE when he did not ban John Travolta movies from the Hunt, and therefore I am nominating Michael.
John Travolta plays Michael, an angel who is on his last “vacation” to earth! He is comically un-angel-like! He loves cigarettes, swearing, and the Beatles! It is hilarious, how much this makes him not like an angel, but he wings so eh.
He goes on a roadtrip with Andie McDowell and Bob Hoskins, who is the editor of a newspaper that has a dog mascot (???!!!).
This is one of my parents’ favorite movies (my mom loves John Travolta) and I have seen it six times.
I second the nomination of Michael. I nominated this a while ago and forgot about it. You could also go with Phenomenon too where he plays a mechanic who becomes telekinetic. Truly groundbreaking stuff.
BUT THEN (SPOILER ALERT!!!!!) it turns out he has a giant brain tumor and he is going to die, so happy ending! I will never forget my feeling of relief when it turns out John Travolta is not magic, he has a brain tumor and is going to die and this movie will end.
FYI, I will be submitting a John Travolta movie every week until Gabe picks one, so here we go!
If we’re being honest with each other here, AND IF NOT HERE THEN WHERE, I saw Michael a shit-ton as a child, and have such fond memories of it I probably couldn’t hate it as an adult even if I tried. Plus, I recently discovered that Calvin Trillin has a cameo in it?! So maybe I should revisit it? I can’t promise I’ll hate it, you guys. Also, I definitely know all the lyrics to Andie McDowell’s songs in the movie. So, if you need a source for those, find me.
that’s weird. i read a shit-ton of calvin trillin as a child, yet i never knew he was in a travolta movie! something for everyone, i guess.
“Wanted.” For the love of Christ, there is a “loom of fate.” And, Gabe’s favorite prime-time comedian Chris Pratt, is in it. I feel these two facts should warrant at least a little interest.
Based on a comic book, but NOT on a popular superhero comic book. It MIGHT be eligible.
I think that being based on a videogame should make a movie ineligible. Because NO movie based on a videogame has ever been more than merely watchable. So we don’t have to waste Gabe’s time reviewing Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Super Mario Brothers, et al.
“Wanted” is based on a comic book? That movie is not the first time someone told that ridiculous story?God, that’s depressing.
I would also like to apologize for my abuse of the comma in the previous comment. I guess that’s what happens when I let tequila do the typing….
While the basic set up of Wesley having a shitty life with a girlfriend that’s cheating on him with Chris Pratt and a big mean boss and blah blah blah, the comic is actually quite different from the movie. Some of the things the comic has-
- A Super-Villain cabal (complete with super-powers) that runs multiple worlds spanning several dimensions after organizing and killing off actual real-life superheroes about 20 years prior to the events of Wanted.
- No bullet-curving or adrenaline-based skills with guns.
- The main character is drawn to look like Eminem (seriously) and Angelina Jolie’s character is drawn to look like Halle Berry.
- The villain organization doesn’t recruit Wesley to trick him into thinking he’s supposed to hunt down his father’s killer. They recruit him because Wesley’s father wants Wesley to replace him.
- Wesley father is drawn to look like Tommy Lee Jones.
- There are lines like, (having just run a broken chair leg through a man’s skull and then asked how he feels having killed a man for the first time) “How do I feel? Like i just fucked Marilyn Monroe without a condom!”
Then at the end of the comic the main character breaks the Fourth Wall and tells all the readers to go fuck themselves and that he’s fucking all of us in our asses. It’s all fairly obnoxious. It also all comes from the mind of the man that also wrote Kick-Ass.
Oh, SPoiler Alert. WHoops.
Oh. And there is no ‘Loom of Fate’ in the comic book.
Oh, I fucked up. An addendum on the villain’s motives for recruiting Wesley (spoilers)-
The villains recruit Wesley because they also believe his Dad has been assassinated, and in the Dad’s last will and testament it states ‘train my kid, who doesn’t knw I’m a super-villain or even exist, to be as bad-ass as me and he will get all my super-villain riches.’ The Dad actually faked his own death, because he was finally getting old, felt that the super-villain cabal was about to start eating itself with a series of coups with major players usurped (Wesley’s Dad being one of those players), didn’t want to be killed by some asshole supervillain that would usually be nothing to him if he wasn’t so old, and instead preferred to have his son surpass his skills as a super-villain, reveal that he’s not dead, and then have his son kill him which he then does. Then Wesley tells all the readers to go fuck themselves and that he’s fucking all of us in our asses. Right after he (Eminem) shoots his dad (Tommy Lee Jones) in the head with Halle Berry looking at him with Fuck Me eyes.
So, what you’re saying is, the people who made the movie took what seems to be at least a semi-decent story and inserted a bunch of nonsense plot devices that make absolutely no sense. Awesome. One Fandango for the Rubik’s Cube movie please…
So, I was one of the people who nominated the movie! It’s honestly one of the worst movie-viewing experiences I can remember. Sorry!
In the same way that Gabe is sort of flaberghasted that anyone would reccomend this movie for the Hunt, I’ve always struggled to understand why people love it so much.
Tonally, the whole thing is very confusing to me. Actually, Glee is kind of a weirdly similar example. (I do loves me some Glee, though!) I can never tell how closely the writers on Glee intend their world to fit our own, and the ways in which it diverges aren’t always consistent.
This is something that REALLY bugs me about that show, and I think it was true of AHOV for me, too. The mix of the not-quite-realistic (but deadly serious nevertheless) small town with the absurd premise and characters just… feels like a WEIRD cocktail to me.
And… I guess I’m just not sure what the movie is even trying to SAY about violence. The characters are all so polarly drawn, that there’s never any ambiguity to the violence on screen, as far as I remember. Good guys brutally kill really bad guys. Is the message that violence exists in some form everywhere in our society, and everyone has a capacity for it? That’s not particularly interesting!
In any case, I saw the movie 5 years ago. So maybe I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Anyway, “Boo!” A History of Violence! Thanks for giving it a fair shot, anyway, Gabe.
I agree on the awkward tone and the muddled message.
I kind of feel like the strong defenders of the movie are giving it too much credit–or at least reading more into it than I think Cronenberg ever earned.
re. tone et al.–
what if it hadn’t been a graphic novel to begin with and were just a movie? i could see it getting an even harsher reception then. however, viewing it as a translation to screen, i am reminded of how much i liked tim burton’s Batman Returns, as it seemed the most like a comic book of any translation then or now. this really isn’t a defense of AHOV, though, as i am not settled on the source material even– just an examination of how a movie might have a tone that only makes sense within the context of familiarity with a certain medium.
Maybe! I also kind the tone of most “serious” graphic novels to be off-putting.
Also, guys: Is there a way to NOT be auto logged out of VG every time I log into Facebook?
All this talk of Viggo Mortenstein made me remember this perfect nominee for the WMOAT-
P.S. Photobucket is what I use to upload images to VGum, but they are assholes, and have taken down a gif I made from the Eric Warheim Major Lazer video with all the daggering, and most recently, one of my Mel Gibson Beaver movie cards images where he says “I need a beaver, a real beaver, not a little girl with a fucking disfunctional cunt.”
I need a new image-hosting site that isn’t such a fucking prude. Suggestions?
can you use http://tinypic.com/ ?
I’ll give it a shot. I figured it would be the one that got recommended.
amen. when i did my ducktales/inception mash up it was gone after 3 hours. dicks
I hated this movie because of the teenage son. Gabe highlighted just a piece of his awkward performance with “You’re a Hero, Dad!” A bad acting performance or character direction takes me out of a movie. I think the role is an important one too, but he felt like a transplant from a televised teenage drama.
When I watched it, I was wondering if I could forgive the movie for one trespass on my willing suspension of disbelief, but then William Hurt’s character was introduced at the end, and that whole character or performance was pretty unforgivable as well.
Some of the characters (I politely hesitate to blame the actors) were way to broad for this kind of movie. I’ll go ahead and blame the two actors I mentioned earlier because now that I think about it, Ed Harris was good in his role, which was also a very broad character, so it could have still worked as a pastiche of tones, but it bordered on the comical at times (especially with the characters of the brother and the son), which, for me, removed any tension I felt because of or for all of the characters. I was reminded every few scenes that these were actors and this was just a movie, and I don’t think Cronenberg intended this as “meta”. A few flaws begin to expose more flaws in the movie until they began to stand out like blemishes, almost as if I were watching the movie stoned and self-aware. Many comments pointed out the pacing issues, which doesn’t help with feeling a little fuzzy.
Dargis’s review reads too far in; I never got the sense that the more the father kills, the more real the family seems. Not all of the characters or actors fit in, and that makes for a bad movie, especially if it is trying to play serious. I think time and distance from this movie will reveal it more and more as unintentional camp.
Awww you didn’t like William Hurt? “What was it, barbed wire? That’s disgusting Joey.” So classic.
Next week American Beauty? This is quickly becoming the Hunt for the Critically Acclaimed and Enjoyable Movie That Some Random Videogum Reader Has a Grudge Against of All Time.
In that case, I’d like to nominate “Mulholland Dr.”
I like this movie a lot better the first time I saw it, when it was called BLUE VELVET
I nominate Remember Me (2010). The twist is 9/11 you guys, fucking 9/11. That’s all I need to say, okay also rich white people problems. Pattinson’s sad rich boy character is THE WORST. What is the deal with the scenes following his sister’s hair getting chopped by bullies. The family draw the blinds and in hushed tones basically act like someone actually died, like fully dead. We all know it takes terrorists to kill a person dead.
i’ve never in my life walked out of a movie before, but this almost made me break my one rule:
I would like to take a moment to nominate “The Lovely Bones”. This was a movie that was supposed to get a deep emotional response from me and the only thing it got was laughs. I mean really, death by icicle?
It was a good movie. Not very good, but also not bad. I thought William Hurt was really overwrought in his performance, kind of hammy. Other than that, it just seemed like an update on “Shane.” Not a big deal to get excited about either in admiration or vitriol. And I didn’t read the graphic novel.
I want to 3nd bobazine doll’s nomination of “The Lovely Bones.” It didn’t get laughs from me, but anger.
The idea that at the end of all this ordeal, as the rapey murderist is getting ready to do his thang one more time, a magical icicle sparkles because God is suddenly on the Job, and it hits the guy and he falls off a cliff – well, that was presented as a satisfying conclusion to the drama. The guy is not brought to justice. The parents never learn what happened to their daughter. The dead girl has a saccharine voice over about “…I was 14 when I was raped and murdered. And now I’m gone. And butterflies and sunsets.”
It was hokum. They tried to sell the idea of fun magical heaven, but what mortals are after a little more than magic icicles (I think) is a sense that the cries of those in need, in fear, or in danger, might actually be heard. Fuck this stupid movie.
And did we do “G.I. Jane” yet?
I’d like to nominate “Deception” starring Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams and Ewan McGregor
I nominate “What Happens in Vegas” starring Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. idk if it’s already been done but it should be!
After learning that this movie was going to be a WMOAT entry & Gabe liked it I humbly wrote my own submission:
Man vs. Pinky & the Brain.
A history of Violnce is not really offensive, as much as it is ridiculous. I have not read the comic book, but I can’t help to think it would be better off as that. One, the story is episodic and drawn out. Two, the premise is very reminiscent of superhero stories-Three, girl it’s plain to see
That you’re the only one for me- Sorry, I’m listening to Brian McKnight let’s take us back to two & one: This is basically two stories, both of which feature a protagonist being picked on and overcoming their tormentors. This is Superman… if Superman hate-fucked Louis Lane & shot people in the back of the head while they are lying on the floor. Superman directed by a guy who calls himself “Darwinian”(?) On a similar note, let’s think of the last Batman Movie. That movie has tons of plot holes, but the pacing moves so fast that you never really notice them.
This movie is a sloppy direct to video mess masquerading as a cerebral thriller. The title alone suggests a deep study of violent actions over a period of time. This is the equivalent of naming Big Momma’s House “The Science of Transpeople”. Characters talk as if they were improvising the dialogue on the spot, the story drags on like a drunken uncle telling war stories & there’s not a single believable moment in the whole film.
The movie starts with two bad guys bickering casually about committing crimes. They drive a late model convertible & understand each other very well with a few words. The top bad guy has a suit on & facial hair to let you know who makes the decisions. He acts like his petty crime ideas are grand schemes that the lower bad guy has no way of grasping. Basically, they are one-dimensional throwaway characters. Think of them as an R rated Pinky & The Brain. Now, Pinky & the Brain are fun to watch but you wouldn’t want them in your home, especially if instead of building wacky inventions, they kill people just to get a couple of hundred bucks from a motel. Don’t worry, this is not our only hint that they are bad guys, the script specifically refers to them as bad guys.
So we meet the good guy, we know he is the good guy because he’s in the DVD cover, so no need to literally call him the good guy in the script. But just let’s go ahead and at least try to build a little character. Our hero has a nice wife & kids, he cooks, and he has an everyman job. He’s a good guy but not necessarily cool, kinda like our dad. He even looks like our dad, if our dad liked salads & Pilates. Our hero also lives in small town America where things are boring and you probably need a satellite dish just to get high speed Internet. Also the people who live in this town talk to the people who prepare their food.
But not everything is Ward & June in this small Indiana town; there is also the dark subject of bullying. It seems our hero’s son has been picked on all year by the local Biff Tannen & things are coming to a boiling point. Biff hits a pop up fly ball to right field, where our hero’s son happens to be standing. He casually lifts his arm and outs the prancing bully.
The Bully does not like to be shown up, so he confronts the young BJ Upton in the locker room. Luckily our young hero outsmarts the bully by doing nervous self deprecating jokes in a nervous voice.If you ever want to not be beat up act like this man:
Back at the everyman household our protagonist, Tom, is cleaning kid toys off the bed & his wife ,Edie ,surprises him by wearing a cheerleader outfit. They role-play quietly so her pretend parents won’t hear them having sex in the other room, where their kids actually sleep.
The day after this happens: yup, Tom kills Pinky & the Brain & saves the diner people, YAY! go Tom! He gets on the telly! The townspeople go wait outside the hospital to congratulate him & son gets so excited that his dad killed the bad guys that he finally looks up to dad his! Woo, cool dad! His son even suggests dad should get on Larry king (Kids love Larry King).
Larry king is the good news, now the bad: as soon as the TV station leave, mysterious cars appear & the next day another set of Pinky & Brains appear at Tom’s diner. The meeting is mysterious and it amounts to nothing much but the new brain saying that he knew Tom from another time. the scene is pretty much like his:
Bad guy:you are a mobster
tom: nope
Bad guy: yes you are
tom: nope
bad guy: yes
tom:uh uhh
bad guy uh huh
So Tom’s wife gets suspicious and she calls the sheriff whom she knows by name.
We then are treated to two scenes where the sheriff says the exact same thing twice: once to the bad guys & once to the good guys. this scenes are back to back, obviously. They probably cut a third scene where the sheriff talks directly into to the the camera and says it a third time.
In a scene that goes nowhere, Edie gets a shotgun after tom sees the mobsters. Tom’s son sees and hear everything & is shocked to hear his mom wielding a shotgun .
In another scene where the bad guys just dick around, they inform Edie that tom is a 50 year old mobster with super killing powers that stay sharp after 20 years of small town living. Edie is understandably skeptical about how they located tom. What she does not know is that the mafia have a google alert for hero shop keeper.
We then go back to our episode of One Hill where the bullies decide that they are not going to be defeated by the kid’s sharp tongue. They corner him and are about to beat him up when: BLAM! it turns out that the kid inherited dad’s super whoop-ass powers! he beats up two bullies so bad that they end up in the hospital. Unfortunately when dad hears about this, he’s so pissed he slaps the crap out of his son. http://i56.tinypic.com/27y1i6f.png That will teach him to use violence as a means of resolution.
So finally after 2 to 3 days of the bad guys dicking around (the mob loves to waste time, it’s their motto or something), they show up at Toms home with his son. Tom agrees to surrender(?) in exchange of his son’s freedom. The brain then orders a pinky to restrain Tom in the best way possible, by holding a gun at close range to tom’s head (gun 101: guns are only deadly at close range). tom then unleashes his superpowers on the pinkies until he is slightly wounded by a gun shot to the neck. the bad guy, being the gentleman bad guy that he is, does not immediately shoot Tom until he explain why he wants to shoot him, something about a woman or something, it doesn’t really matter. Tom is on the floor helpless. He reveals that he is, in fact, Jim the mobster. Just as the bad guys are about to shoot him, his son gets the shotgun and sprays the bad guy’s guts on daddy. Tom finally realizes that violence is the answer after all & gives his son a good old creepy hug.
Tom is then sent to the hospital again, except this time there are no reporters. A man defending his shop & killing two bad guys: national news; man defending his family & killing three bad guys: boooooring. His family is also not happy with him because their whole life is a lie. In fact when Tom comes home in a cab (no mention of where his fan club went), he is greeted by the corniest aftershchool dialogue this side of: “I learnt it from watching you, dad!” things like: “If I rob a liquor store would you ground me if i don’t give you a piece of the action?” & “What are you some kind of closet mobster dad?” You can see why the bullies where intimidated by the kid’s wit. http://i55.tinypic.com/a5gk1k.jpg (Working title)
So after Edie has to lie to the sheriff, the highest state authority in organized crime, she has a breakdown and tries to run away from Tom. Tom chases after her & then she slaps him, this unleashes the inner bad guy in tom. Tom overpowers her & after a short struggle Edie realizes that even though her lips say no, her helpless body says yes. http://i56.tinypic.com/1zceeme.jpg After a short struggle, they have loud sex on the stairway of the small family home.
After sex, Edie once again distances herself from Tom. Tom then realizes that he needs to sort out the pesky mob once and for all. http://i51.tinypic.com/35ncxo7.jpg
Tom finds his brother’s home (who is also a mob boss). they have a Vulcan mind meld upon seeing each other after years. Toms brother explains that he had to do a lot of things to restore his own standing after tom ran away & tried to kill the second brain (that’s right the second brain is the reason tom went in hiding [it is not explained why the one eyed man didn’t kill tom on sight]). His bro also mentions to tom that only his death will make things right, so then tom gets into a big anti climatic fight with trained killers and again kills them all with ease. He even casually shoots his own unarmed brother as he fumbles with some keys. http://i52.tinypic.com/357ldma.jpg Tom then goes to the best place in the mansion to clean himself up, the outside pond, and washes the blood from his body.
He then returns to his family and finally shows some emotion before the people who wanted him dead in the first place come and burn his house with his family in it. http://i55.tinypic.com/xn9a3n.jpg The end.