'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[knives]

I'd give that a pass. I can respect a film and not love it as much which I take as the poorly phrased intentions of the sentence.

[Jeff]

Not in my Top-10 but it is the greatest film ever made.

- Ben Lyons take on I Am Legend?

[zedz]

Well, I think calling anything "the greatest film ever made" - when you're disavowing personal opinion as a criterion for the call - definitely qualifies as "rediculous."

[mfunk9786]

[domino harvey]

I'm sure you just found that image elsewhere on the internet but part of me wants to believe you were browsing Amazon.co.uk for importable sexual aides

[Adam X]

I recently attempted watching Frankenheimer's Year of the Gun, and went searching for whether it was intentional that none of the Italian dialogue was subtitled (does anyone know?).
Anyway, in the process, I came across this stunning tangent of a 'review' for the film.

[mfunk9786]

I'm sure you just found that image elsewhere on the internet but part of me wants to believe you were browsing Amazon.co.uk for importable sexual aides

The American stuff has too much HFCS

[feihong]

I recently attempted watching Frankenheimer's Year of the Gun, and went searching for whether it was intentional that none of the Italian dialogue was subtitled (does anyone know?).
Anyway, in the process, I came across this stunning tangent of a 'review' for the film.

That's a wonderful read. This moved me the most:

"Once we abolish "Grisham" mentality, we edge closer to reality."

A call to arms if ever I heard one. But how do I tell anyone anything? Get on your short-wave radios, people, and get the word out!

[Rainman]

I haven't read through this whole thread so I'm not sure if this has already been posted, but I was searching through some reviews of Days of Heaven on Rotten Tomatoes when I came across this particular gem from some guy named Dan Jardine, though, in truth, he discusses the film with some other guy.

Ben sed:

In my defense, I hope you have noticed that I have been trying to be less of a snob. It's not working, but I am trying. It hardly matters anyway because the heart of the matter is that I'm an opinionated motherfucker and I suppose I would be even if I preferred Chuck Norris to Rod Stieger.

I just cannot judge a movie from the perspective of ''it's-great-art-compared-to-the-nine-other-Cineplex-choices-tonight''. It seems to me that such is the only perspective that could regard Days of Heaven as especially wonderful. And I mean this even with respect to the film' s strengths, nevermind it's weaknesses.

The most generous I can be about this film is to say that it is something of a Kagemusha lite. Itself a relatively lite Kurosawa, the chief power of Kag is the way Kurosawa brought his watercolor paintings to the screen. (For a genius director with a large body of black and white work behind him, this foray into color was a new statement.) DOH too, it seems to me, is essentially about the presentation of static color compositions, still-life shots that reverberate at the level of tint and hue. And like Kag as well, the great outdoors is utilized as simultaneously the canvas and color source itself. It is no wonder, then, that DOH caught my eye even in the little clips that were offered in that cinematogrphy documentary (Visions of Light?). It is very very pretty.

Too pretty in fact. We have had occasion to discuss the relative weights of comedy and tragedy but we have never put prettiness on trial. (I won't speak of "beauty," a much more difficult category, although I admit that "pretty" is already implicitly pejorative with the suggestion of triteness.) Opps. I stupidly sidelined my thesis in a parenthetical comment. Come at me with an axe Jardine but I would go so far as to say that DOH does not have "images" so much as mere "visuals." It's eye candy. Looks great, fundamentally vapid. Haskell Wexler was just doing his job, of course.

What about the story-telling? Again, if you usually watch Sylvester Stallone wave a gun around, the elliptical, evocative, fragmentary narrative of DOH may seem to be deep art at work. I thought it was kinda OK until I couldn't help feeling that it was an excuse for having no dialogue of substance. If you're going to have your characters speak so little, they better have something heavy to say when they do talk. Nothing but the most basic, banal utterances in DOH. The inconsistent exception is the voice-over narration, but I repeat, this is hit-and-miss.

As for the story itself, some rudimentary aspects of the plot are never explained - (why do they pretend in public to be brother and sister?, what exactly is the relationship of the little girl to the couple?, why doesn't the owner die after being given a death sentence by his doctor?) - and this is irksome, not hip ambiguity. The characters lack psychological complexity and appear to be going through the motions when dealing socially with each other. So the main conflicts in the tale pack very little punch.

The performances - don't get me started! Look, it has taken Gere 25 years since DOH to figure out some of the basics that an actor like, say, Sean Penn had scoped when he was a kid. I'm not even going to bother with this. What really bugs me is how Sam Sheppard wrote a handful of good plays but sucks so bad on screen. Another guy easy on the eye who may as well be a piece of driftwood passing by. Brooke Adams keeps up with both of them. Again, the only exception is the actress playing the young girl when she does the voice-over parts. But of course, she had the advantage of occasionally having something actually to say.

I will give it up to the staging of the agricultural work and the period detail in the machinery. But I found some of the costumes questionable, especially the white lab coat worn by Gere's character and the hairdos of two male leads, give me a break. Both of them stepped right out of All The President's Men. But what struck me as entirely lacking in veracity was the big house. It had no class gravitas. Looked like the main attraction at an amusement park. Too architecturally cute and completely without the historical signs of being the station of wealth and power. On the other hand, this might be the correct set for an actor I didn't believe either.

Finally, the coming of the locusts. The fact that it was perfectly credible within the setting of the story does not mean that the story earned this heavy-handed metaphorical event. Far from it. After all those postcard shots starting to look like a cross between a tourism promotion and a National Geographic special, the coming of Biblical meaning was sophomoric.

Alright, I will be shocked if you agree with any of this, with the possible exception of my opinion on the acting. So go for it. Tell me how wrong I am.

And Dan responds:

Okay, here's me not telling you how wrong you are.

Funny thing. Remember when you asked which was my favourite Malick, and I kind of hemmed and hawed rather than answer. This is partially cuz I wanted you to experience the films (especially Days of Heaven, which is the only one of the three you had not yet seen) without being influenced of my bias, particularly in the case of Days of Heaven which I had JUST finished watching a couple of days before. I hadn't seen the film in quite awhile, so the re-viewing proved informative.

In fact, I was unable to finish the film; it was such a disappointment. My fond memories of DOH (d'oh!) were almost entirely visual; the magnificent cinematography of the expressionistic landscape, which proves a better thespian than the humans in pretty much every frame of the picture, had overwhelmed my recollections of the effect of All That Bad Acting. I mean, shit, why Richard Gere, of all the actors available to him at the time? And was Sam Shepard stunt casting? I can only remember a couple of supporting roles where Shepard has proven himself to be even an adequate performer, so I can only guess that Malick was rewarding the man's writing skills by giving him a speaking part. While we all recognize the importance of a director to the success of a film, we often overlook the vital importance of casting. If an actor (or 2 or 3) ain't right for a part, no amount of audio-visual stuntwork is gonna protect us from the realization that s/he isn't working. And that's a fatal flaw for any film, no matter how glorious it looks and/or sounds.

Still, I think Malick creates a plausible WWI-era American rural experience.That said, he is not a realist, so some of the anachronisms you picked up on (I'm no expert of the hairstyles of 1916, so I can't say I noticed 'em) but rather a naturalist, and so I WAS affected by his evocative treatment of the non-human surroundings. Shepard's house was a jagged and lonely tooth, ill-fitted into the surroundings, and a pathetic attempt at aristocratic affectation. I also got a sense that these poor, desperately limited and deeply flawed individuals around him were trapped by circumstances outside of their control, that the natural world's rhythms and powers range far beyond our own, and that Malick wants us to realize that. So he hopes we might get attuned to and learn to live within 'em, because otherwise the puny world of humans would continue to have only a minor influence upon it all. Hence, the character's poverty of words and near-paralysis in deeds.

That said, I cared not one whit about any of the people in the story, mostly because the actors were so unconvincing in their roles, the sole exception being the young girl (who is supposed to be Gere's character's actual sister) you also singled out. I think that, even given the spartan and flaccid dialogue, in the hands of gifted actors, this could have been a much more rewarding experience. You will see that many of the same elements that appear in DOH re-appear in The Thin Red Line, but that film works, for the most part, and one of the reasons is that Malick has actually chosen good actors to play the important parts (but he's also chosen too many name actors to play cameos, which gives the film an unfortunate It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World kinda feel to it, but that's another matter entirely).

Granted, Jardine's views are more perceptive and reasonable than his counterpoints, but his criticism of the film is still bonehead-idly obtuse and "out there." And then there's his laugh-worthy quip about The Thin Red Line, the perfect way to cap a perfect review.

[Lemmy Caution]

A review of Ida Lupino's Hitch Hiker

Reviewer: Kodachrome - 2.00 out of 5 stars2.00 out of 5 stars - November 28, 2010

The acting was fine, but the story was not plausible and I could not identify with the characters.

Perhaps it is because I find the whole "victim mentality" to be abhorrent, but in my world, I would have mocked the villain at the first stop and told him that he didn't have the testicular fortitude to kill me.

I won't be watching this film again.
I hate to give one star just because the story stunk, so I'll give it two.

I don't know what exactly is implausible about a hitchhiker pulling a gun and forcing two people to drive where he wants to go, as he tries to escape the police.

But I love that this idiot takes a macho right-wing pose which would ensure his death.
We see in the very first scene during the credits that the hitchhiker cold-bloodedly guns down a couple in their car. So yeah, he does have the stones to shoot and kill.

Also, during the first stop they are totally alone in the middle of nowhere with the gun-wielding killer, who is rather careful and detail-oriented. Not exactly the perfect time to try to determine if he is bluffing.

Anyway, amusing how this reviewer can't distinguish between what he calls a "victim mentality" and, uh, actually being victimized (by a ruthless killer with a gun).

Bonus: You can watch the film at the above link.

[Gregory]

The only IMDb review of Humberto Solas's A Successful Man offers this insight:

30 years of Cuban history includes a scene reminiscent of a Bugs Bunny cartoon
Humberto Solas's "Un hombre de exito" ("A Successful Man" in English) portrays three decades in the life of an affluent Cuban. . . . I admit that I may be the only person who interpreted a similarity to a Bugs Bunny cartoon (especially given the circumstances of the scene). In a scene set in 1937, some people are holding a party praising Nazi Germany's support of Franco's forces in Spain. So, they put on a performance of Wagner's opera. The music is the same that got used in Chuck Jones's "What's Opera, Doc?" (needless to say, here they don't use Bugs Bunny's and Elmer Fudd's lyrics).

Like I said, that's a very loose interpretation, and possibly inappropriate due to the portrayal of a Nazi-Falangist party. I just come up with all sorts of unusual connections. As for the movie itself, I thought that it constituted a good look at the eras depicted, although it helps to know Cuba's history. Worth seeing.

So is any film that includes a short piece of one of the famous Wagner operas somehow connected to the Looney Tunes spoof? That's an "interpretation"?

[feihong]

I like how the reviewer suggests that his interpretation might in fact be inappropriate. I would say, yes; it's fairly inappropriate.

Though when you watch Apocalypse Now, and you hear the "Kill the Wabbit" song, that's a deliberate name-check for the classic cartoon, right?

[Gregory]

If there were a cartoon allegory for the Vietnam War, Elmer Fudd would represent Cold War-era U.S. imperialism with its stubborn short-sightedness, doomed rage, and superior firepower, and Bugs would represent the inventive and resourceful Vietnamese guerrillas and villagers, so probably.
Or maybe instead we should look to the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote (with the military-industrial complex represented by Acme).

[Gregory]

Looney review on Amazon for Waltz with Bashir.

This is what happens when you take a silly Israeli pseudo-animator with a postmodern leftist agenda who has watched too much Tarantino (which already is unhealthy) and thinks he is the new-age Ralph Bakshi. This cartoon is so embarrassingly inept and ridiculous that it should be banned as pornographic for non-human primates. If I could give it zero (o) stars I most certainly would. We have seen a spate of silly effete 'animation' films from would be 'artistes' from Iran and now, Israel. Leave the postmodern filmobabble to humanities departments where it belongs please and leave animation to Disney and the Japanese where it properly belongs please....

For one thing, It boggles my mind that anyone would think a somber, slow-moving, animated sort-of documentary like this was anything like Tarantino or Bakshi. Other one-star reviews of the film predictably go into the usual raving about anything by an Israeli who dissents from the official truths as being "Israel-hating" or being a "self-hating Jew" or the like, but even those screeds didn't go as far as this guy, to say "stop doing animation, everyone who isn't Disney or Japan!"

[Kirkinson]

That guy is realllllllly going to hate The Congress.

[domino harvey]

Speaking of, is it ever coming out?

[domino harvey]

At first I thought this was a joke, but intentional humor is no match for cluelessness of this magnitude. Worth the tl;dr (Spoilers for Gravity, obv)

My favorite part is the tear drop coming towards me in 3D!

But the ending is horrible.

So here an idea for alternative ending to Gravity:

SpoilerShow

So she’s reentering Earth inside the Chinese pod but the location where it’s headed is the Himalayas. It hits ground around Everest and starts sliding downhill like a sleigh, dragging the parachute behind. She’s freaking out a bit. It reaches a high cliff in like 30 seconds, high cliff, maybe like a half or full mile fall. The pod goes over the edge so “oh no, she’s about to crash!” but no, because the parachute gets stuck on a rock on the cliff. So now she’s in the pod, hanging on the ropes of the parachute and she starts thinking that she should cut the cords and release the pod to fall down and grab on the parachute cords hoping that it frees it off the rock it’s stuck on, due to the lighter weight it’d carry. She goes out (thank god she still has the space suite cause it’s cold out and also hard to breath - altitude). Climbs to where the ropes, ties them around her and with a tool releases the pod. It falls down and crashed badly. Unfortunately though the lighter weight doesn’t release the parachute, so she hangs for a bit, about a minute, in desperation, and thinks of Matt Kovalski. But, the crash of the pod is a big blow and it echoes, so provoking an avalanche that brews up the mountain and starts sliding downhill until it reaches the cliff’s edge, thus releasing the parachute violently. She starts flying with the parachute trying to prevail under the falling snow above and around, somehow manages to do so. She’s now flying over the falling avalanche and starts to glide like on a glider. Tries to figure out where to land - the further down the better - when with the corner of her eye she see some tents in the middle of he snow on the right side, so we get that it’s an expedition camp of mountaineers. She’s like “i should steer that way” and she tries but these guys down there have another issue to deal with - a freaking avalanche coming their way which she kinda started. Anyhow, the avalanche covers the struggling mountaineers in some minutes and she lends on top of the settling snow not far from the expedition camp, now almost gone. She tries walking towards there to see what’s left and finds some debris and stuff and walks around and suddenly sees a guy unconscious. She tries to bring him back (mouth to mouth or whatever first aid type thing) and she does, after hard effort. The guy slowly gathers him self and tries to figure out what’s up. He’s played by Zachary Quinto. So he’s like “oh man, what happened” - she tries to explain. He’s like “let’s see if we can find more people around left”. They start digging for stuff and find some: a can of tuna, light, etc. No people. So they need a radio or something although they know help is coming - i mean the Chinese detected that the pod was falling down towards the Himalayas. But they need to pass the night or maybe another couple of days and it’s cold! So they try to manage - they dig out a broken tent and some supplies. But then he’s like “wait, did you not provoke this avalanche” and she’s like "I mean, no, like the pod fell but I didn’t know what was gonna happen, so who knows, might’ve just been an earthquake “. The guy: “no way, I have these measuring instruments, probably it was you. You killed a bunch of people trying to save yourself, are you happy? They were my friends!” She stars crying and then there’s some drama and the guy is like “ok now, there there, shut up. We need to focus until they get here to rescue us.” So they put up the tent somehow and eat some tuna and try to chill for a bit, but it’s cold man! They gotta cuddle and they do and tell each other stories. She tells him about space, he about mountain climbing a Harvard Law (he went there for school). So they kinda fall asleep, which is no good and then we go to a sequence where the Chinese and Americans are on a joint rescue mission with helicopters browsing the mountain side and trying to find them and after a while they do (there’s a blinking light device next to their tent) and land around there somewhere and find them barely alive and put them in a helicopter ambulance, Sandra is not breathing though. We see her traveling towards a bright light but all of a sudden she sees Matt Kominsky and he’s like “you’re gonna make it girl, don’t come towards here, I’ve seen your daughter, she wants you to go back” and she’s like “OK” so she tries to go back and wakes up in the helicopter, only to find out the it’s being under attack, heavy fire, by the Indian military who confused the rescue operation for a Chinese invasion. So then they’re trying to evade missiles, etc and some heavy stuff is going on and she’s like “oh no” and we see that the American pilot (played by Rayan Raynolds) is making some crazy maneuvers to get away, an air battle of a sort is unleashed. On the radio the pilot hears that China is preparing to retaliate and launches some missiles against the military base where the Indian aircrafts came from but that’s a no good move cause India launches nuclear strike against China and things suddenly escalate and look somber. So Sandra and Ryan battle Indian choppers and it’s pretty intense and dramatic (Zachary Quinto has a hard attack and dies, the two Chinese doctors get hit by shrapnels of Indian firepower and die, etc) but finally manage to escape, but now where to go? Indian nuclear heads are flying towards them and nowhere to go, or is there? Ryan realizes they are close to the Chinese space launch platform and knows that there’s rocket launch programed for like 25 min from now, just a couple of minutes before the nuclear heads reach them, so he has the idea to get there and get inside the rocket and go to space to the Chinese space station for a, while things on Earth cool off (nuclear winter passes, etc.) So they head over there but Sandra’s like “oh man, go back to space” but I guess there’s no choice. So they get there and in all the confusion somehow manage to get to the launch platform and climb up the stairs and open the hatchet of the rocket pod thing. Ryan knocks down the two Chinese guys sitting there, takes them out of the pod and he and Sandra strap on, ready to go. The Chinese controllers don’t notice the difference cause Ryan speaks Chinese (he’s been a pilot for Doctor’s Without Frontiers in China for a while, he also trained for NASA space pilot but although did really well was not accepted in the program due to his heavy drinking caused by the dead of his fiancee - we see a little bit of memory remembrance there) and because all the mess with the India-China military actions. Anyhow, so they get launched into space and barely escape nuclear hit (we see them flying out of nuclear blast following close behind them). All goes well, they get to the Chinese space station and then there’s the end - of part one that is!... It says “To Be Continued...” so we know there’ll be a second part of Gravity. I have the idea already but will post it later, after Alfonso decides if he wants to use my script. Only thing I can give up of the plot so far is that the opening sequence of Gravity 2 is of about a year after them in space in the Chinese station, Sandra’s giving birth of their child in 3D in 0 gravity (imagine blood drops floating towards the audience, placenta , etc) and later on in the movie we find out that Ryan as actually Matt Kobaltski’s son! We find that cause at one point Matt appears in a dream like scene in the Chinese station saying “Ryan, I’m your father."

[FerdinandGriffon]

Nope, pretty sure that's a joke. And a decent parody of how Gravity's script works at that.

[swo17]

I don't care what it is, I want to give that guy a movie deal.

[domino harvey]

Nope, pretty sure that's a joke. And a decent parody of how Gravity's script works at that.

It may well function as such, which is why I initially thought it was a joke, but it isn't. And swo, it's a woman

[FerdinandGriffon]

Why are you so sure? The kind of guy who invents action-movie sequels in complete seriousness has less than zero interest in realistically rendered zero-gravity placenta getting in the way of his explosions. These aren't just any old action movie cliches he's inserting into his "script", they're deliberate exaggerations of the cliches already present in Gravity. Even the placenta is a distortion of the already ridiculous tear moment he mentions in the beginning of his "review".

[domino harvey]

Again, she

[FerdinandGriffon]

Again, she

Why are you so sure? The kind of person who invents action-movie sequels in complete seriousness has less than zero interest in realistically rendered zero-gravity placenta getting in the way of their explosions. These aren't just any old action movie cliches they're inserting into their "script", they're deliberate exaggerations of the cliches already present in Gravity. Even the placenta is a distortion of the already ridiculous tear moment they mention in the beginning of their "review".

[Lemmy Caution]

That's so rediculous -- rediculously great!

[Gregory]

A hotbed of rediculousness lately is the 1-star ratings of Blue Is the Warmest Color on Amazon. One reviewer basically said, Amazon, can you keep gay stuff out of your movie listings please? My family and I don't want to see that. K, thanks. Also the usual comments that are essentially "Two women together? That's so gay," and some others that are either "It was too (porno)graphic" or "It wasn't graphic enough." And there was apparently a troll ("Drywater") who had apparently left dozens of trolling comments and in his own review (since deleted) he blamed lesbianism for his own ability to get dates.

Hey, it may be Saturday but I'm at work and still need to distract myself sometimes.