Kurt D

oh hell yeah

Norm de Plume

I wasn't all that impressed by Irreversible (at least, not enough to purchase for my collection), but the fire extinguisher scene is undoubtedly one of the most brutally realistic gore sequences ever filmed. Something never mentioned, but I found the breaking of the arm wincingly painful to watch. In my opinion, I Stand Alone is a much better, more disturbing film.

andicus

I watched this the other night and thought it was really good. Interesting story, very nicely filmed, and pretty heartbreaking, at times.




Lipid

Dancer In The Dark
Requiem For A Dream
Bamboozled

Dan

yeah, that whole scene was a tough watch...
​​​​​I own a copy of this... Really need to revisit it as it's been about a year and a half since I watched it. The Blu-ray has the short film version, but that (and the special features) unfortunately does not have subtitles. The feature film does though.

asianxcore

I recently watched the BD I had of this earlier today. As mentioned previously, I've had it for a while now but it just got buried amongst many of the films that I had purchased since.

I agree with you in the film is competently made, as it's shot well and the (combination) FX work is fantastic.

There were quite a bit of times that I wondered how much of the film was firmly rooted in the (actual) atrocities of the reign Dictator Augusto Pinochet and how much used the same basis just to be as extreme as possible. I will say though that in comparison to A Serbian Film (2010), this film's message is a bit more clear, even through all the gore & sexualized violence.

Fist of Doom Jr

Ok, you guys made me watch Atroz (by mentioning it's on Tubi). Should I feel dirty and ashamed because I thought it was a good movie?

Granted, the violence sometimes seemed like it was just for shock value (e.g. the twistedly comic POV dildo), but maybe that was the point. Some good gore effects for a no budget film. The most horrifying thing in the movie is the (true) statement at the beginning that 98% of murders in Mexico go unsolved. That, along with the exploitation-lens look at the poverty and Goyo's abuse, help sell the nihilistic attitude of the film. Can't say I fully understood the ending, though.

Norm de Plume

^ Yes, you should feel ashamed that you thought it was good, but one man's trash...

asianxcore

I finally got a chance to watch the film this evening and I agree with the point you mentioned.

While there were a lot of things I enjoyed about the film, its absolutely sluggish, even at 107-minutes.

L Everett Scott

I just finished two more titles mentioned earlier in this thread: Claire Denis's Trouble Every Day and Elem Klimov's Come and See.

The Denis film is an odd duck in that it dares you to turn it off with two extremes: graphic violence and mind-numbing boredom. The two violent sequences are stomach-churning and will test the mettle of even seasoned horror fans. But those parts of the film only take up about 10-15 minutes of the running time. The rest is Vincent Gallo wandering around Paris or Béatrice Dalle stuck in a bedroom; you get the feeling that this is what reality TV would look like without producers creating conflict to spice up the proceedings. This is definitely not my cup of tea.

Come and See, meanwhile, is a nightmarish vision of war that dispenses with the neat plotting of most classic war movies, such as Bridge Over the River Kwai, Von Ryan's Express, and The Great Escape. Klimov's film makes you realize how incredibly sanitized those movies are by forcing you to experience the madness and confusion of an armed conflict. There are no epic gun battles between equally matched forces or missions to acquire enemy codes or to rescue POWs. Instead, we get people unable to defend themselves being the playthings of heavily armed sadists. Klimov ups the ante by making the protagonist a child soldier who starts as an innocent boy and ends up a nearly insane shell of a human being. Like Trouble Every Day, this is a film I had to force myself to finish; I really can't see watching Come and See being anybody's idea of fun. Same goes for Claire Denis's film.

TomOpus

I see that Trouble Every Day is available on Hoopla, for anyone with that service that wants to check it out.

Norm de Plume

Interesting to see a masterpiece mentioned in the same breath as a piece of garbage. Trouble Every Day is probably the worst of the New French Extremity subgenre, while Come and See is probably the best war film of all time.

L Everett Scott

^ I guess calling a movie 'the best war film of all time' depends on the metric you're using. From the interviews I watched, it sounded like Klimov wanted to document on film the genocide in Belarus in a dramatic narrative. To that end, I believe he succeeded in spades, and if achieving one's goal in making a film is the measure of success then Come and See scores an easy A+. It's just that the movie falls under the category of a well-made film that I really can't see myself ever sitting through again.

I'm tempted to put Trouble Every Day under the same category, but I don't admire Denis's filmmaking in that movie as much as I do Klimov's in his. I also have no clue what Denis was trying to say, so I can understand if TED isn't as popular as other New French Extremity titles.

Speaking of which, I also caught Sheitan. I can see why people upthread love Vincent Cassel's performance so much...he commits so totally to that wacko farmer. I have no idea why the kids were so determined to stay in the village after they saw their guide enjoy goat's milk in the most bizarre way possible.

Sheitan really worked for me...until the shit hits the fan on Christmas Eve and the narrative spirals out of control. I remember hearing in an interview (it may have been the making-of featurette that focused on Cassel) that the directors didn't have an ending in mind when they shot the film. If that were the case, that would explain why the wheels come flying off in the final act.

Still, it's 2/3 of a pretty solid movie, so I have no problem giving it a thumbs up.

P.S. This is a Christmas movie, folks. I'd be interested to see how it ranks when compared with Miracle on 34th Street or Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

Nesbit

Bamboozled stuck with me in a bad way. Others of mine have been mentioned - Last House on the Left, Kids, Gummo, and Dogville,.

Norm de Plume

I should have written, "one of the best war films", as there are other contenders, and it's all subjective besides. I haven't seen the Klimov opus in a number of years. I'll have to give it a fresh viewing. Denis's film I have no interest whatsoever in seeing again. I found it irredeemably boring. To me, genuinely disturbing and/or depressing films are mentally invigorating and deserve repeated viewings. I like to feel unsettled. It tells me the director has done a good job.
One of many lesser-known depressing (extremely depressing) films I'd like to see released on Blu-ray is Jeff Kanew's phenomenal Natural Enemies, with the one-and-only Hal Holbrook, a film that only ever had a long-ago VHS release.

andicus

I know I watched Trouble Every Day, because I like Vincent Gallo, but mainly as a writer/director. Strange thing is, I don't really remember it, and I'm sure it was within the last few years. I guess that speaks to how good I thought it was.

I did enjoy White Material, by Claire Denis.

Larry C.

I'm so happy this thread is still going......

Larry C.

Yes sir I remember being super active in this tread back in the day.

Kurt D

I finally took a shot at Trouble Every Day on Shudder the other day. Maybe it was a cut version? I understood what was going on in those particular scenes but they didn't seem terribly hard to handle to me at all. Maybe I'm just inured to such things.

L Everett Scott

^ I think for a lot of people, it's a matter of contrast. Most of the film is a like a Paris travelogue with Vincent Gallo telling you nothing about the places he's visiting. Those parts of the film are incredibly mundane, so the flesh-eating scenes by comparison are quite shocking. If you compare those scenes with graphically violent sequences from other movies, like Inside, for instance, then they'll probably seem kind of tame.

It also depends on how you feel about the depiction of cannibalism on film. The idea of consuming human flesh makes me queasy to begin with, so even though I know I'm watching actors pretend to perform that act in something like Trouble Every Day, it still gets to me.

Kurt D

For what it's worth, I thought it was a good, powerful movie. As far as cannibalism goes, scenes of cooking and eating human flesh bother me more than just mowing down on someone's labia while they're still kicking, for whatever reason.

Spiderbite

Bumping this because I love this thread and I watched a movie last night that I have seen on various lists that some consider disturbing.

The House That Jack Built is a decent movie with a couple of disturbing scenes but is bloated and almost dull at times. It is about a serial killer and split into 5 different scenes that are of varying "disturbability." Matt Dillion is good in it as are the other actors, but the movie feels too pretentious and self-indulgent to be considered great.

Don't believe the hype.

This thread needs to continue as it is the gift that keeps on giving.

d2cheer

I admit always wondering what "bumped" it.



Fortunately or Unfortunately I don't have anything recent to add...

PhantomStranger

The movie felt improvised at times with a couple of disturbing scenes tossed in to "sell" the movie beyond arthouse audiences. Not recommended to anyone but the director's fans and adventurous arthouse lovers.