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Early kneejerk reactions have piqued my interest

posted 8 years ago by Fleeeks
3 replies | jump to latest

This movie has so many SJW/PC types screaming in agony that it has piqued my interest.

Just last week Bret Easton Ellis (of "American Psycho" fame) had the brilliant Larry Clark (director, "Bully") on his podcast. Bret lamented about how cookie-cutter boring and palatable most films these days are and how a genuinely brilliant but disturbing film like Bully would be almost impossible to get made today . I empathized completely.

Rather than seek a safe space and hate on everything disturbing, I welcome a movie that'll put me out of my comfort zone. Perhaps it's because I, like so many others suffer from this condition that enables us to distinguish between on-screen fiction and reality.

[–] brandimarie86 8 years ago

I completely agree, Fleeeks. I have very little interest in new films anymore which saddens me as I love movies. I happened to see the trailer for this for the first time a few days ago and had to look it up. Reading all of the reviews and comments on here have only made me want to see it more. Thank you for posting this and going against the grain!!

[–] PuzzledHarry 8 years ago

I have seen the film, but I haven't seen a lot of reviews yet.
I think the film starts of very intriguing and I puzzled a lot and wondered how everything was connected and I was set for a nice experience.
However, the more the movie went on, the more I got irritated. Ok, the violence is revolting and the way it is shown is not really to the point, but that was not what bothered me (BTW, the director was present at the screening and he said he thought violence was laughed at in today's movies à la Avengers and he did not want to do that, he wanted it to be true. However, I thought what he did with violence was worse, he kind of ridiculed it).
The exaggeration, the hybris of the film (not so much of the characters but of the movie itself), the need to explain really everything...
The actors, Fanning especially, did a great job...

But perhaps you need to see it for yourself (I'm Belgian, I think there might be a difference in receiving this film between Dutch speaking people as I am and the Anglo-Saxon part of the world :-)).

[–] ofumalow 8 years ago

The problem isn't that this movie is trangressive and "disturbing," it's that it labors so inorganically to be so. The various tortures, mutililations, deaths, sexual abuses and such don't arise naturally out of any convincing plot/psychology. Instead, the narrative is just a thin pretext for these contrived shock-value elements to be hung on, and that is obvious throughout.

It's just not a good movie. Still, the strained "shocking" content might convince some people this movie is "daring," in the same way that some horror fans automatically think a movie is badass simply because it has a lot of over-the-top gore--in both cases, no matter how flimsy/derivative the story and characters are.

That said, the performances, photography and technical aspects are decent. A lot of hard effect expended on lurid, pretentious, one-dimensional material, unfortunately. It shouldn't take 2 1/2 hours to make the verrrrry simple point that religious hypocrisy is a bad thing.