Your Most Controversial Film Opinions?

Then I'm at a loss as to your point, as it didn't address the whole?

Ah well, it's cool, we'll just move on then.

Kirk is better than Picard. Because Kirk has Spock. Riker's okay. But he's no Spock.

Last Year At Marienbad is a visual marvel, and as for the premise - it is what it is, take it or leave it.
So far, so good.
For me, it's the relentless narration and the misused score that drains the mystique out of it.
I guess I could watch it again with the sound off.

Ideally, this would have been a perfect short film.

i know everyone hates cancel culture (even though it's kind of a myth) but if a filmmaker does some stuff i personally find reprehensible i just completely lose interest in their work. like i don't really care about the artistic vision of racists, pedos, rapists, etc. and something like 40-50 thousand movies come out every year, there are so many movies competing for my attention that i don't really feel like i'm missing anything of value by skipping over Polanski or Griffith or whoever.

You can PM me about specifics if there's a tech issue. Though I'll say in advance, if someone's trying to do partial quotes on a phone, that's just gonna be unavoidably tedious and there's not a ton to be done about it.

Right, the issue isn't not liking it, it's not liking it for trite, superficial reasons. If a film is trying to do something through long, drawn-out sequences, you can like those or not, but any proper Criticism has to judge it, at least somewhat, on what its attempting. Otherwise it's like someone who hates romantic comedies and loves action movies complaining about the lack of explosions in Love Actually (or the total lack of emotional stakes in The Expendables, for the flip side). At some point it's: why did you watch this?

If there's no possible version of the film's core concept that you would have liked, then watching it made no sense. And if there is a possible version you might have liked (or liked more), then you should explain how that possible version would differ from the reality. That would be a serious critique that others might gain from reading.

Now, I still think you can make a thoughtful case that films like that are boring. It's just not by saying "it was boring, nothing happened."

Here here!


Although I don't believe it makes the film "bad" necessarily, I just don't enjoy them. It's tainted the experience.


Admittedly, there are a couple Polanski movies that are good enough that I still occasionally watch them. And I'm still waiting for Woody Allen to die so I can watch Love and Death again. Just didn't feel right when he's still alive, free, and collecting residuals.

"A loli lover goes to the Philippines..." YOU'RE CRAZY! It doesn't work that way! Or so I am told by certified loli maniacs.

Obviously. I made a thread about it. The point is what if it's promoting it, and how can you tell it is?

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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

If it's a semi-subconscious feel, then that's semi-understandable.

But I also think it's a sign of the inability of people to make a strong separation between an artist and their art, yet another issue some individuals have right after the inability to separate fiction from reality.

Many artists are/were icky people but it didn't take away from the brilliance of their art. I think in situations like these, the problem is with YOU, not with the artist. Maybe if the discussion crosses into the 'do I want to PAY them', then it gets a little bit more complicated, but only if you also swore never to buy a Nestle product in your life. Most people didn't. But at the end of the day, we're all inconsistent with things like these.

it is a problem with me, it doesn't negatively affect me in anyway though so whatevs.

While it may be true that it's an "inability", that ability is not somehow inherently noble and therefore its absence is not necessarily a valid critique of one's point of view or criticism.
And I think it's a long way from not being able to separate fiction from reality and certainly shares nothing in common but the word "separate".

Not sure it's a problem. If I tell you, "Hey, this guy rapes children, you wanna see his watercolors?", it is not a fault in you if you say, "No thanks."

If artists had to pass a purity test, we would have no art. They are changelings, idiots, wastrels, addicts, rapists, zealots, etc.

Most of the moving images I consume today are made, in whole or in part, by people who hate me or dislike me, and who hold my intelligence and morality in contempt. It's an enlightening experience. "Ah, so, in some tenuous way, this is what it was like for women to consume literature for oh... ...most of the last 2,000 years." "Hmm, in some small way, is this what it was like for a Native Americans to watch an old Black and White Western." If they could endure it, I suppose I can stomach most of these HR session written by nobs basking in luxury beliefs.

And so I will allow the industry that continued to give Polanski awards and resources to make movies to also give me continuing lectures about rape culture. I will accept that the best and brightest who watched Will Smith smack the taste out of Chris Rock's mouth and then give Smith a standing ovation and an Oscar will continue to lecture me about toxic masculinity. However, I must confess, that I find myself occasionally cheering for the "villains" in film and TV these days.

Myself, I will consume whatever I find to be of acceptable quality and I don't much care who made it. So long as the product itself is good, that's fine. I reserve the right to eat Ben and Jerry's ice cream and watch Bill Cosby in The Mack on an IPad made by slave labor in China while resting my head on a pillow made by Mike Lindell. I don't even like Harry Potter, but every time someone tells me that they won't put any more money in J.K. Rowling's pocket, I buy a new copy and put it on the shelf.

i just don't watch movies i'm not interested in man it ain't that deep.

I definitely don't see an issue with not watching films from reprehensible directors. Have Roman Polanski and Woody Allen made some really good/great films? Yes. By not watching them, are you missing out on some really good/great films? Of course. However, are they the only great directors throughout cinema history? Definitely not. There are thousands upon thousands of other essential films out there you can watch and you'll be just fine. And while there are plenty of other controversial artists, Polanski and Allen definitely lie on the extreme end of the spectrum.

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Being able to see the humanity, even in terrible people, is a good thing.


The more we try to pretend that people who do monstrous things arent also human, aren't also sometimes possessed with good attributes as well, also might have things to teach us about ourselves, is to not deal with the terrible things they do honestly.


Not that this makes it incumbent on anyone to participate in their artwork or seek it out. But to try and distance ourselves from these sorts of people by labelling them Monsters, and treating them as something other than human who arent also capable of painting a nice watercolor, is I think to let humankind off the hook for it's worst deeds.


We have to see bad people as human if we have any hope of understanding why they do these bad things.

Great art is often produced by bad people.

If your basis of interest is moral, you don't have access to it.

i'm not interested in great art either lol

It makes you not watch some potentially great films, thus creating a hole in your film knowledge. It also conditions you to keep looking for flaws in filmmakers instead of in their art, completely missing the point. Finally, it gives you an 'easy' way out of the dilemma, probably not even tackling it. Instead of wrestling with it and recognizing the obvious divide, you just cop out of it thus perpetuating your bias. This further conditions you to want from the world exactly what YOU want in the exact way YOU want: "Either you're a good human being, or I'll boycott anything you create, regardless of its quality!".

You become holier-than-thou and treat artists like role models, whom they're not supposed to be. The question is: where's your line? I bet you're not comfy with murderers (Caravaggio is out) and rapists (Roman Polański is out). What about adulterers (is Hong Sang-soo out?) and propagandists (is Joris Ivens out?)? What about films you disagree with politically and morally? And so on. You might have a cut-off point somewhere, but I'm not sure if you can give a defensible reason for why it's there and not somewhere else.

This isn't a contest in purity. Not everything in your appreciation of art has to be noble. In this specific case, you're just asked to separate art from the artist. Even hardcore proponents of the auteur theory understand that there's a difference between the two plus that there's a difference between the artist person and the person person.

It's closer than you may think, though it's more salient when discussing artists who willingly put the bad stuff in their films and thus actually or seemingly champion it.

People are always trying to tell other people how to live their lives. MoFos you're free to watch or not watch whatever the hell you want.

There are a couple of actors and a politician that have been in movies and I can't stand to look at them, so I don't watch those movies, they're sucky movies anyway.