I'll go ahead and disagree with that - I feel the dialogue, acting and particularly direction were substantially better than Irreversible, for example, with it's gimmicky camera work and it's laughably OTT rape scene. The violence and sexual content in A Serbian Film is much more visceral imo.

Goes to show how subjective all of this is is though. I found Serbian Film to be much better and more effective than anything from Noe. I've seen I Stand Alone and Irreversible.

How is the rape scene OTT?

The most stupid, OTT rape scene I've watched was in the remake of The Last House On The Left.

cuz one of my professors saw it and is into all that kind of gore/shock stuff, he's really a man-bro and I hate him and think he's a hypocrite when it comes to encouraging students to be their own artists as people who aspire to make films. Then his enthusiasm for the film just snowballed to all the other students around campus about the film and I hate it when I haven't seen a movie that other ppl around me talk about with enthusiasm (good or bad). But yeah, I can see people being affected in a disturbing way by this film, but with you since you also know a shitton about not only film but filmmaking techniques, then you'd be able to see through a lot of the setups and just laugh it off really.

Usually I can't really tell what constitutes as a gimmick anymore, but he demonstrates the same camera work in Enter the Void also, which I can only assume that's just how he wants to do things and I tend to not discredit a director's style, especially if it's something that really no one else is doing or did (at least that relentlessly). And I dont see how the rape scene there was OTT in comparison to anything Serbian Film displayed. I'd be hard pressed to call something like rape in a film over the top, but I commend that scene and its duration because rape scenes in general that are depicted in fiction film are in there and out there in a jiffy and they are edited like mad. I guess you could call it laughable depending on who you are (I didn't laugh), but in terms of how it was directed in comparison to those type of scenes, I thought it was really in a class of its own.

I just looked up A Serbian Film, and I really have no desire to watch it. I don't know, usually movies with a plot like that tend to have a shitty style to go along with it, in my moviegoing experience. And the only thing I could see upping a film with that content is the style. I know Noe's been brought up a lot, but Enter The Void's style actually brought me in to the grotesqueries of the drug culture; if someone like Eli Roth directed it, it would have been laughable.

Also, is it just me, or is it really arrogant to title a movie "A Serbian Film"? It would be like me calling a film "An American Film" and have it consist of 90 minutes of Harry Truman dry-humping Castle Bravo.

(500) Days of Summer
9.3/10

Beauty & The Beast
9.9/10

Winter's Bone

This is one of the creepiest films I've seen in a long time. The whole film builds up this backwoods mystery of meth, rednecks, and murder into one of the most chilling climaxes I've ever seen. The story is really well devised, and has a frank and gritty reality to it. I always think the scariest films are the ones that don't ask you to suspend your disbelief. They're the real stories like this that make you think "this could actually be happening somewhere right now" This is in the vein of a film like Misery, though Winter's Bone is much more creepy and less terrifying. It doesn't make you jump out of your seat, but it will make you lay in bed with your eyes wide open thinking about it all night, While the plot is well thought up, it is a bit disjointed and a little hard to follow at times. The supporting characters are all kind of the same drug-addicted bone-faced hillbilly stereotype so it's a little hard to tell them all apart. A minor complaint, but the volume changes drastically. One scene you'll have to turn down the volume because background sounds are blaring, but the next scene you have to crank the volume back up because the characters are practically whispering. The music however is brilliant, and contributes to the chilling atmosphere. The atmosphere pretty much defines this film, and everything from the camera shots, to the composition and color choices, to the creeky background sound effects pushes the ambiance of the film. Really, aside from a couple of minor qualms, this was something of a gothic-country masterpiece. It's like if someone were to make a film with Violent Femmes' "Country Death Song" in mind, this would be it.

8.5/10

Monterey Pop- Not as good a film as Woodstock, but Pennebaker's movie also hasn't aged as badly because the music is just better. By not spending that much time with the crowd, we're spared bullshit hippie nonsense, and by selectively editing the film down to 80 minutes, Pennebaker separates the wheat from the chaff. There are so many gold moments, but the audience's freak out at the end of Ravi Shankar's set is one of my all-time favorite scenes in the cinema. 4.5/5

Winter's Bone- A Greek drama in the Appalachians, Winter's Bone is so bleak it resembles Threads more than Deliverance. Jennifer Lawrence is just magnificent and deserves all the hype she's gotten. It does play on Southern stereotypes, but in a Gothic way (and even a somewhat sympathetic one), not a condescension. 4.5/5

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade- More a comedy than an epic, but at least Spielberg finally gets comedy right on a big scale after 1941 failed. Connery and Ford make a great double act, and Spielberg finally starts to mature his daddy issues a bit. Which is weird considering how hilariously inane everything else here is. 3.5/5

You fucking male chauvinist.

Ah I'm kidding. I don't know how people can accuse this movie of being sexist.

Other Disney movies? Argubly, but I always felt this movie in particular had a pretty clear anti male chauvinist message to it.

I remember some bleeding heart liberal dumbass making a stupid youtube video and used Gaston as an example of the film's apparrent sexism. Yeah what with Gaston being the good guy and all.

OH Boo! Actually, I've been making my way through the classics for the past couple of months... Beauty and the Beast has far more charm than Cinderella, that's for sure. LOL Gaston's a prick! Yeah wtf, it's hardly sexist. Even when Disney is being 'sexist' it's only really reflecting the social attitudes of the time in their adaptation, and depending on the audience, adds either a lot of humour or none at all (Snow White being released in 1937, well, obviously they'd refrain from injecting her character with much sass as opposed to say Meg or Princess Jasmine) so meh. They're just being accurate really.

lol why does this reply sound so serious, idk

I got a Netflix Canada account recently so I'll be posting plenty more here.

Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny
I like their music because it's ridiculous fun but this was just so low energy throughout and boring as fuck. You'd figure they'd go all out for the movie with big and stupid comedy, but this was the opposite.
4/10.

American Psycho
It was enjoyable although on a mostly shallow level as the satire element of 80's corporate psychopathy grew tired and repetitive by the end of the movie although moments like the business card scene had the psychological bend of something like Punch Drunk Love and were really inspired. I did appreciate it on a comic level since there were plenty of moments where I laughed in spite of the horror of the situations. But it stopped being fun as it reached a climax which is not how that should work. There was just an escalation in scale with the same elements you saw before.
6.5/10

Office Space
A satire involving the folks a little down on the corporate chain that generally had a fun tone throughout. Moments in the beginning involving cubicle life were definitely inspired as were moments after the metamorphosis like when Peter just strolls by Bill. It was much less enjoyable when the fraud storyline was involved and characters were flanderized, but nonetheless this movie did easily give me the sort of smile you get in seeing a triumphant character.
7/10

Had to watch Adaptation for Film Adaptation class. Watching it after studying The Orchid Thief made it a lot more enjoyable and I have a lot more respect for it. I'd say it's far and away my favorite Kauffman film at this point. Can't say it's a particularly dear film to me though because there are so many things about its attitude that I find to be annoying and pathetic. But it's definitely a much more accomplished film than I had previously given it credit for.

Man I cannot wait until school is over and I can really dig into indies and foreign films again. It's just too hard to do while also being a responsible student. Most of my art-for-enjoyment time goes to music right now.