'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[colinr0380]

Imagine: "An inscrutable, predictably 'deconstructive' genre movie in which Godard lashes out at his ex-wife again while executing a curiously hollow retread of his previous films -- replete with brow-furrowingly extensive references to mid-60's French politics!"

As someone who has an ambivalent attitude to the Godard/Karina relationship and like obviously deconstructed and hollow films can I say Hopscotch sold me on the film more than the Criterion blurb!

[knives]

The 1950's brought us some powerful filmmaking from fresh new French directors who were often raised on American films, especially noir. Bresson's Pickpocket is not one of those great films. Contrary to the genre listings, it is decidedly NOT a "crime drama" and anyone expecting one will be disappointed. In fact, this pure "slice of life" experiment in naturalism doesn't pretend or attempt to be a "drama" at all. There is simply no plot and no attempt at plot. Yes, it looks and sounds like a kind of noir-inspired French crime movie, but it is not. No one smiles, no one has motivations, no plot evolves. There is beautiful artistry in the cinematography, and 1950's Paris has never looked better in black-and-white (including the subways), and the film offers a startlingly realistic look into the amazing skill of professional pickpockets. But that's it. Truth in advertising mandates calling this a great film for professional students of the development of French cinema. For the rest of us, it is painfully slow and numbingly dull. (The reviewers who praise this do so to maintain their artisitic "cred.")

Guess this means I have some artistic credibility. Who Knew?

[swo17]

Rating a film based on its ability to play in your machine is nothing new, but I like the neighborly way this review (for Pinocchio) begins:

[Magic Hate Ball]

It's sort of funny in a way when someone completely misunderstands the concept behind a message or comment board and writes everything like a letter. I had an aunt who did this in MSN messenger:

MHB: So thanksgiving dinner's at 6?
Aunt: Dear MHB, Yes, that's right. Love, Aunt.
MHB: We should be up by 3.
Aunt: Dear MHB, Sounds good. Love, Aunt.

[SSF]

Ugh, can Jamie S. Rich just stop reviewing already. Between his Louis XIV write up and his Senses review, he's just embarrassing himself:

Senses is an extremely dirty movie. It's hardcore erotica and explicit enough that if Jerry and George were passing it in the locker room on Seinfeld, they'd use a copy of Tropic of Cancer to cover it up. Yes, Henry Miller is the less salacious of the two evils.

[oldsheperd]

Best review of Alien for postmodernbarney that makes me think, "oh yeah, weren't they delivering something?"

ALIEN: Ship fails to deliver cargo, crew don’t get bonus

[Lemmy Caution]

It's sort of funny in a way when someone completely misunderstands the concept behind a message or comment board and writes everything like a letter. I had an aunt who did this in MSN messenger:

MHB: So thanksgiving dinner's at 6?
Aunt: Dear MHB, Yes, that's right. Love, Aunt.
MHB: We should be up by 3.
Aunt: Dear MHB, Sounds good. Love, Aunt.

Maybe she was a Trout Fishing in America fan.

Drifting afield, I had an elderly aunt with hearing troubles and an inability to adjust to her hearing aid. When she didn't hear what someone said, she'd routinely ask "Who?" instead of "What?"

Lemmy C: It's a nice day today.
Old Aunt: Who?

I like to pull that stunt now and then when I'm in an inane conversation.

[Matt]

I won't name names, but there is a fair number of people on this very forum who think they are writing letters with each post, complete with complimentary close ("Regards," et al) and name.

[milk114]

Who?

edit - that was meant to be a stupid joke. maybe i should have said "what" than signed off with a "sincerely." oh well

[domino harvey]

I can think of a couple. It's actually against the forum rules

[cdnchris]

It is, though I've never been bothered by it in all honesty. With some posters it's just their style.

[Murdoch]

IMDB's Mini Biography for Paul Thomas Anderson:

Like Jean Renoir and Max Ophüls, Paul Thomas Anderson's films are characterized by a constantly moving camera. Like François Truffaut and Martin Scorsese, his films are the work of a true "cineaste", someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of film and film technique, who is able to make tried-and-true techniques as fresh and as vibrant as when D.W. Griffith first started to discover them. Like Robert Altman, Anderson thrives on working with large ensembles of actors. Like Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton, his films often depict suburban America as a place of alienation, and his characters are often alienated people who must in some way or another learn to assimilate themselves into some kind of family environment.

It wasn't until the Griffith mention that I thought this biography(?) exceptionally rediculous.

[knives]

So Armond White is writing Bios now? Sorry, couldn't resist.

[domino harvey]

I can't believe you didn't quote the best line of the bio:

Like Paul Thomas Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson directs the films of Paul Thomas Anderson.

[domino harvey]

Utter piece of garbage. It's no wonder so many have dysfunctional relationships. Everyone is slowly being brainwashed by hollywood trash like this film. Anyone with traditionnal values should avoid this. Those with no values and who are liars and cheats will love this film.

And yet she gave the film two stars. How much worse does an "utter piece of garbage" have to be to warrant one star?

[knives]

You must sodomize a dog while eating a baby to receive one star.

[domino harvey]

***SPOILER ALERT*** for Peter Greenway's next project

[domino harvey]

I wouldn't rate this movie. It could of been cute if it didn't have the so called sex gestures. We stopped it after about 15 minutes into the movies, and that was a wasted 15 mnutes.

[zedz]

It could of been cute if it didn't have the so called sex gestures

Story of my life.

[Tommaso]

A guy called Alex da Silva on amazon.co.uk:

God knows who decided that Chaucer was a good author. Buy it and be prepared to be bored for 2 hours.
I've just tried to watch it again with my girlfriend to see if I have missed something...........No.......its terrible, and all I have to add is the awful wooden delivery by the American army bloke who is in it. He delivers his lines like a retarded 4 year-old and serves no favours to those who already believe that Americans are a bit "slow". Couldn't make it to the end on a second watch. You have been warned.

And after some other person commented on this, he wrote:

While we are on the topic, we should also drop those other 2 clowns - William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy - from the education syllabus. Its extraordinary how people waste their time with this sort of thing. Someone has to take control.

Well, I suppose you have guessed the film by now....

[jbeall]

"Neil Saunders" response excoriating Alex de Silva was pretty spot-on:

This is a cretinously stupid review of a cinematic masterpiece.

[Tom Amolad]

"Neil Saunders" response excoriating Alex de Silva was pretty spot-on:

This is a cretinously stupid review of a cinematic masterpiece.

Hmm. Although I'm closer to Mr. Saunders in my enthusiasm for A Canterbury Tale, I've got to say that I feel more comfortable with Mr. da Silva's novice skepticism than with Mr. Saunders's genuflections. To defend Chaucer or Powell and Pressburger on the basis of decades and centuries of being held in high esteem is pretty feeble; I'd much rather hear why Mr. Saunders loves them. Hell, defending A Canterbury Tale as a central cultural legacy isn't just feeble, it's downright bizarre, given the film's mixed reception history from the very start. For my part, the things I love about it are how very un-central it is: how peculiarly its characters are presented within an insider/outsider dichotomy, how strangely ambivalent it is toward realism, how English and yet non-English its story is (Powell always thought there was something distinctly Central European about the glue business).

And there are things I can't stand about it too. The message of cultural continuity that Mr. Saunders adores (to my mind more ambivalent in the film than Mr. Saunders allows, but there nonetheless) often strikes me as dishonest and manipulative. I'm thinking of things like that moment when Alison first sees the Cathedral in the distance and the music swells and we're meant to go jelly-kneed in awe of greatness just as Chaucer's pilgrims had 600 years before (surely an anachronistic sentimentalism, that, anyway: can there be a poem in English that speaks from a greater variety of warring subject-positions than Chaucer's?). The film invites historical and intertextual thinking, but what if I don't do it the way Mr. Saunders would like? What if that moment always makes me think of another scene from books past: Jude Fawley gazing out at the steeples of the Christminster colleges he can never join? I don't think that's the comparison the film had in mind, but it seems to me any honest approach to the past has to acknowledge its injustices.

A Canterbury Tale is a movie I've seen I don't know how many times, and I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it, but it's always been ambivalent enjoyment. It can be manipulative as hell in its unquestioning worship of the past, and then transition straight into a scene like the one between Colpeper and Alison in the grass that can acknowledge and respect the "earthquake" of changes the war was bringing and, more importantly, render its characters' love for the past important not as something normative but as something idiosyncratic and personal, in a way I find quite moving.

[Tommaso]

Well, when I quoted that review my main reason for finding it 'rediculous' was Mr. da Silva's dismissal of Chaucer and Wordsworth. I completely agree with what you say about Chaucer, and the multiplicity of viewpoints in the Tales is one of the reasons why I think he is a great author, apart from the sheer power of his language; but obviously da Silva only knows Chaucer from the 16 lines or so quoted at the beginning of the film. But I even more object to his words about the performance of John Sweet, one of the most endearing actors/characters I ever encountered on screen. Everyone is free to dislike the film, of course. But I don't understand how one can find it 'boring'. However:

It can be manipulative as hell in its unquestioning worship of the past, and then transition straight into a scene like the one between Colpeper and Alison in the grass that can acknowledge and respect the "earthquake" of changes the war was bringing and, more importantly, render its characters' love for the past important not as something normative but as something idiosyncratic and personal, in a way I find quite moving.

My personal take on the film is that it almost constantly questions the worship of the past, without wanting to dismiss it, paradoxically; the lecture scene is the best example, of course, with Colpeper quite intentionally appearing as if he was one of the great manipulator figures from German silent cinema; the constant self-reflexity of the film, the way how it directs our attention to the 'fabrication' of its 'transcendent' images (remember all the discussions about film in the film?) makes it difficult for me to see the film as "unquestioning worship of the past"; Colpeper does it, but not the film itself, as you yourself say when you note its ambivalence. The question is rather whether an audience in 1944 would have regarded these self-reflexive moments to be as important as we do now; perhaps not; and as you say, the film wasn't a big success in its time.
In any case, the worship of the past or at least a clearer anti-modern stance, in a far less ambivalent way, can be seen in IKWIG.

[domino harvey]

Surely, it was as bad as anything I have ever seen, including a few cars wrecks I have seen. It was nonsensical, abrupt, disjointed, and without any rhythm. Had not the beautiful Rita/Camilla not been in the movie it would have been without a single merit. If my sentence structure is such that you do not understand the premise of this review: I hated the movie.

At least he recognizes his own grammatical deficiencies

[Tom Amolad]

It can be manipulative as hell in its unquestioning worship of the past, and then transition straight into a scene like the one between Colpeper and Alison in the grass that can acknowledge and respect the "earthquake" of changes the war was bringing and, more importantly, render its characters' love for the past important not as something normative but as something idiosyncratic and personal, in a way I find quite moving.

My personal take on the film is that it almost constantly questions the worship of the past, without wanting to dismiss it, paradoxically; the lecture scene is the best example, of course, with Colpeper quite intentionally appearing as if he was one of the great manipulator figures from German silent cinema; the constant self-reflexity of the film, the way how it directs our attention to the 'fabrication' of its 'transcendent' images (remember all the discussions about film in the film?) makes it difficult for me to see the film as "unquestioning worship of the past"; Colpeper does it, but not the film itself, as you yourself say when you note its ambivalence. The question is rather whether an audience in 1944 would have regarded these self-reflexive moments to be as important as we do now; perhaps not; and as you say, the film wasn't a big success in its time.
In any case, the worship of the past or at least a clearer anti-modern stance, in a far less ambivalent way, can be seen in IKWIG.

You're right to point to all of that, but I still can't say that the questioning is constant. How about the falcon-to-spitfire match cut that frames the film as a whole? It's ingenious, but it's also an unnervingly simpleminded a depiction of historical continuity that, paradoxically, doesn't leave space historically for the sorts of peculiarities, (even perverseness) of character and style that were usually Powell and Pressburger's stock-in-trade. At best, it contains them as quaint comic diversions within a unified history of unified Englishness. Can things within the frame really undermine the frame itself? Maybe, but the sense I get is of a pair of filmmakers who are both divided in their views, producing a work very much at odds with itself, in a way I find fascinating but not wholly comfortable.

Which is maybe just to say the same thing you said in slightly different terms.