October 21, 2008
Saw III (2006)
Should I see it?
Absolutely not.
This film actually makes the previous Saw films seem intelligent and meaningful. Delving deeper into the torture for fun horror genre that has developed as of late, this wretched work can only do society harm. If you haven’t seen this, please don’t. If you have seen this you probably have already moved off this web site since there are more words than pictures and there’s no porn to be found.Absolutely not.
Related Reviews:
Saw (2004)
Saw II (2005)
Other Critic's Reviews:
The Onion A.V. Club
A Nutshell Review
Labels: film, movie review, saw, torture porn
posted by Michelle Obama's Left Nut at 9:00 AM
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October 20, 2008
Saw II (2005)
Should I see it?
No.
No.
Short Review: This movie tries to have a moral. Are you kidding me? It’s like getting etiquette advice from a porn star.
You create an unnecessarily violent and juvenile film. A film that feeds into the most lurid parts of our natures thereby lowering the cultural standards another click for a buck. What do you do next? You create an unnecessarily, albeit less violent but more juvenile film. A film that feeds into the lowest parts of the film industry’s nature thereby holding our cultural head underwater inside the toilet you and your colleges have been filling for the last thirty years.
In some respects, I have more disdain for this film than the original Saw. The original was at least original…well, it was derivative of the brilliant Se7en, but let’s not get picky. This smear is wholly unneeded, and was made for no other reason than to squeeze the final cents from the original concept…again, an original concept that looked at great deal like the original concept of Se7en, but hey, no one is perfect.
This isn’t an embarrassing movie. It’s actually not the worst movie I’ve seen. In some areas, the production outdoes its itself, if only for brief moments. What this movie is – is sad. I find it a pathetic statement, but not about the filmmakers. They are looking for a quick buck and don’t give a crap about the foul spew they have to slop at society to get it. It is a pathetic statement about us since there’s a quick buck to be made this way. It’s not the gore; it’s the thinking that disturbs me. We know this movie is a faded copy of the first, which in turn appears to be a faded copy of another film (again, Se7en.) I look at the films that have been released and those coming out and I get a sick feeling in my gut. The sequel can be an important part of a story (The Lord of The Rings for example) but in almost all cases today, it is there to make an extra dime and nothing more. I understand this is show business, the business is starting to ruin the show. With the advent of more and more remakes and unneeded sequels to marginal movies, original material appears dead. Then again why make something new if something old will do. People like recycling right?
With the drop in standards over the last fifty years, intentional crap like this is shoveled at us more often and we keep asking for seconds and thirds. We have allowed our children to consume this filth and moreover we have allowed the marketers to train our children and ourselves to accept it. We’re standing at the business end of a manure spreader and smiling while they tell us its rain.
This is a bad movie. It will only serve to lower you. Trust me, even though we do not know one another I can promise you one thing: You are better than this film. You’re above watching it. Why put this filth in your head? Just ignore it and try to keep the kids away.
Related Reviews:
Saw (2004)
Saw III (2006)
Other Critic's Reviews:
PopMatters
Huge Reviews
Labels: film, movie review, Saw, torture porn
posted by Michelle Obama's Left Nut at 8:00 PM
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Saw (2004)
Should I see it?
Of course not.
Of course not.
Short Review: I’d cut through my leg with a hacksaw to get away from this movie.
More horrible than horrifying. There is a big, fat juicy line between suspenseful horror and plain ol’ cruelty. This movie is not creepy, its not clever, it’s just cruel.
The story revolves around a couple of guys who wake to find themselves chained to the walls of a filthy bathroom. The men discover a psycho has kidnapped them. The psycho has laid out a plot wherein one of the men will have to kill the other man to survive.
In itself, this is an interesting premise for a story. But like intentions, a premise is useless without good results. There are so many areas in the making of this film that are below par, I can’t decide which one to tackle. The best thing is to lump all of the problems into this one statement. Films like this are killing American cinema. This is a cheap, juvenile flick with the depth of a Saturday morning cartoon. Weak films like this are sold to the public as pretending to be the real deal. People watch this drivel and come out thinking they have seen a horror movie. They’ve seen crap and now the bar has been lowered to allow for more sub par garbage to be made.
A final note: Can someone please let Cary Elwes' agent know its okay to only offer him roles where he plays an Englishman? Elwes’ American accent is slightly less convincing than Schwartznegger's.
Related Reviews:
Other horror films
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
Land of The Dead (2005)
Other Critic's Reviews:
In Film Australia
ReelViews
Labels: Cary Elwes, film, movie review, torture porn
posted by Michelle Obama's Left Nut at 3:00 PM
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August 19, 2007
Torture Porn: The Kids Aren’t Watching Jason and Freddie Anymore
A young woman is chained to a metal chair. We see her face melt under the heat of a blowtorch.
A man is snared in a complicated piece of machinery that slowly turns his limbs until his bones snap and break through his skin. The final action for the machine is to turn his neck around until it too slowly snaps.
Another young woman having been raped and beaten is tied to a post. We casually watch as her captor loads a gun and then shots her in the shoulder. She screams but the abuse doesn’t stop there.
These are descriptions of the images served by Hollywood today (Hostel, Saw and Wolf Creek respectively). Today the most vile and disturbing works has infested the genre of horror. Many people have never enjoyed horror films. They are scary, they are intentionally violent and since the 1960’s, they are usually rather brutal and gory. These days however, horror has taken a turn for the worse (and yes, that is possible).
The term “torture porn” is becoming more widespread. It speaks to the latest development in horror movies. Instead of seeing the evil on screen from the point of view of the victim(s) we are now provided a view of the action from the killer’s side of things. This is not to say we are putting the knife into the screaming teenage girl’s stomach (although if that’s your thing, there are plenty of video games that will allow you that thrill.) What is happening is that we, as audience members, are shown extended and very realistic scenes of torture. Like the scenes described above, the horror films being produced around the world (in particular in America and Europe) now rely less on suspense and fright as they do brutality and shock.
What is important is that these scenes are without moral contexts. They are there to titillate and to shock. Less any moral framework, these pieces effectively support the actions of the killer by not overtly condemning their actions. With no moral structure frame what we are viewing, we are asked to indulge in the same rush of seeing someone else in pain that is driving the tormentor. The rush of seeing someone else in pain is a dangerous drug to get addicted to and filmmakers are more than happy to make a buck serving it to the masses. Many of the filmmakers see their works as art, as examinations of the human psyche and of evil itself. But this new brand of cinema reduces the tone of fantasy from the narrative. Its one thing to see Freddie Kreuger carving up teens in their dreams and seeing the vicious killers in extended ten minute rape scene in Gaspar Noé’s crime drama Irréversible that goes out of its way to be as real as possible. With basic morality cast aside and a premium on realism, these scenes of torment are cinematic candy for the sick. They cater to the deranged individual in the audience and effectively condone their ill thoughts.
Gone are the monolithic evil killing machines like Jason, Michael Myers or Freddie Kreuger. These villains have been updated for a new generation. In a post-modern world one cannot abide by mythical figures hunting down a gaggle of teens in the woods. That’s too comical and too connected our folklore past (think Little Red Riding Hood, Jason would be the big bad wolf in this instance.) Like the Big Bad Wolf, Jason, Leatherface, Dracula or Frankenstein the big villain in horror movies has traditionally been a tool of morality (of sorts). Its not an accident that the slasher films of the 1970’s and 80’s concentrated on a virginal princess type evading a brutal harbinger of death who kills the immoral. Jason’s victims were the sexually flamboyant, the drug users and the coarse people in the crowd. They sinned and then died. As sick as the slasher movies were, there was a real and notable morality at play. I know it’s a little like saying that eating a dog turd will give you extra fiber, but compared to what is being produced today, Friday the 13th seems like a Greek tragedy.
For Christians, the question we must look at is why are these films are being made. I believe it goes to our post-modern society. We (as a culture) have forsaken God. We have decided (the cultural elites have decided) that he doesn’t exist and his followers are all fools. At least two American generations have been raised with this mindset constantly being drummed into their heads. Once you remove God, you remove the roots for any real morality. You also remove the roots for any real purpose in the universe. The absence of real morality and purpose is at the heart of a post-modern (existentialist) worldview. The works at the cinema reflect this lack of direction. Anything goes now because the only moral force in action is that which the elites decide should be in place. When morality is placed in the hangs of people, morality begins to lose its stability. Good suddenly begins to look more and more like bad and bad becomes far more agreeable.
In generations past horror was used to scare people into correct ways of living. The witch in Hansel and Gretel and the story of Count Dracula served the same function as Michael Myers did for the kids in the 1970’s. Today with the moral vacuum the elites are promoting, this generation is getting the scare without the lesson. This is akin to giving them the poison without the antidote. Without a moral cure for the evil that is presented, the audience learns that their fate is sealed and there is no escape. Christians know better, but others do not
Categories: film, horror movies, torture porn, post modernism
A man is snared in a complicated piece of machinery that slowly turns his limbs until his bones snap and break through his skin. The final action for the machine is to turn his neck around until it too slowly snaps.
Another young woman having been raped and beaten is tied to a post. We casually watch as her captor loads a gun and then shots her in the shoulder. She screams but the abuse doesn’t stop there.
These are descriptions of the images served by Hollywood today (Hostel, Saw and Wolf Creek respectively). Today the most vile and disturbing works has infested the genre of horror. Many people have never enjoyed horror films. They are scary, they are intentionally violent and since the 1960’s, they are usually rather brutal and gory. These days however, horror has taken a turn for the worse (and yes, that is possible).
The term “torture porn” is becoming more widespread. It speaks to the latest development in horror movies. Instead of seeing the evil on screen from the point of view of the victim(s) we are now provided a view of the action from the killer’s side of things. This is not to say we are putting the knife into the screaming teenage girl’s stomach (although if that’s your thing, there are plenty of video games that will allow you that thrill.) What is happening is that we, as audience members, are shown extended and very realistic scenes of torture. Like the scenes described above, the horror films being produced around the world (in particular in America and Europe) now rely less on suspense and fright as they do brutality and shock.
What is important is that these scenes are without moral contexts. They are there to titillate and to shock. Less any moral framework, these pieces effectively support the actions of the killer by not overtly condemning their actions. With no moral structure frame what we are viewing, we are asked to indulge in the same rush of seeing someone else in pain that is driving the tormentor. The rush of seeing someone else in pain is a dangerous drug to get addicted to and filmmakers are more than happy to make a buck serving it to the masses. Many of the filmmakers see their works as art, as examinations of the human psyche and of evil itself. But this new brand of cinema reduces the tone of fantasy from the narrative. Its one thing to see Freddie Kreuger carving up teens in their dreams and seeing the vicious killers in extended ten minute rape scene in Gaspar Noé’s crime drama Irréversible that goes out of its way to be as real as possible. With basic morality cast aside and a premium on realism, these scenes of torment are cinematic candy for the sick. They cater to the deranged individual in the audience and effectively condone their ill thoughts.
Gone are the monolithic evil killing machines like Jason, Michael Myers or Freddie Kreuger. These villains have been updated for a new generation. In a post-modern world one cannot abide by mythical figures hunting down a gaggle of teens in the woods. That’s too comical and too connected our folklore past (think Little Red Riding Hood, Jason would be the big bad wolf in this instance.) Like the Big Bad Wolf, Jason, Leatherface, Dracula or Frankenstein the big villain in horror movies has traditionally been a tool of morality (of sorts). Its not an accident that the slasher films of the 1970’s and 80’s concentrated on a virginal princess type evading a brutal harbinger of death who kills the immoral. Jason’s victims were the sexually flamboyant, the drug users and the coarse people in the crowd. They sinned and then died. As sick as the slasher movies were, there was a real and notable morality at play. I know it’s a little like saying that eating a dog turd will give you extra fiber, but compared to what is being produced today, Friday the 13th seems like a Greek tragedy.
For Christians, the question we must look at is why are these films are being made. I believe it goes to our post-modern society. We (as a culture) have forsaken God. We have decided (the cultural elites have decided) that he doesn’t exist and his followers are all fools. At least two American generations have been raised with this mindset constantly being drummed into their heads. Once you remove God, you remove the roots for any real morality. You also remove the roots for any real purpose in the universe. The absence of real morality and purpose is at the heart of a post-modern (existentialist) worldview. The works at the cinema reflect this lack of direction. Anything goes now because the only moral force in action is that which the elites decide should be in place. When morality is placed in the hangs of people, morality begins to lose its stability. Good suddenly begins to look more and more like bad and bad becomes far more agreeable.
In generations past horror was used to scare people into correct ways of living. The witch in Hansel and Gretel and the story of Count Dracula served the same function as Michael Myers did for the kids in the 1970’s. Today with the moral vacuum the elites are promoting, this generation is getting the scare without the lesson. This is akin to giving them the poison without the antidote. Without a moral cure for the evil that is presented, the audience learns that their fate is sealed and there is no escape. Christians know better, but others do not
Categories: film, horror movies, torture porn, post modernism
Labels: commentary, film, horror, torture porn
posted by Michelle Obama's Left Nut at 11:50 AM
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