Dr_Gor
Posts 970
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11/19/2007 11:15 PM
posted awhile ago
Violence in movies...
There are certain movies that are all about the violence! (insert your favorite horror movie here) And then there are some which are more 'drama' but with at least one or two really violent scenes for an 'attention-grabber' . In other words, in some cases the violence helps to tell the story, and in other cases, the violence IS the story... here are some examples... The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and ALL of the Clint Eastwood westerns ... Up to, and including, Unforgiven ... ALL of the Bruce Lee movies and most of the Steven Segal movies and Jean Claude Van Damme and Don 'the dragon' Wilson and Jeff Speakman , etc ... No. My favorite violent movies are the ones about real warriors... THAT is what it's all about! Movies like The Warriors and The Wild Bunch and The Magnificent Seven and The 13th Warrior and 300 are excellent examples of movies which are all about the violence... not to mention the Kill Bill series and every movie ever made by John Woo as well... They ALL have one thing in common, what some would call 'excessive' violence...
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Phantasma-gore- ia
Posts 99
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11/22/2007 8:47 PM
posted awhile ago
Re:Violence in movies...
*flexes fingers, cracks knuckles, starts typing with wild-eyed, manic fever* There are, as the good doctor pointed out, movies that exist for no other specific reason than to portray, not necessarily encourage or glamorize, violence. Some necessarily contain it as a requisite for the story and not so much to pander to the baser of viewer instincts; others subsist on it as the basis of their storylines but only as a contrivance designed to justify the creation and depiction of violent acts. The Last Horror Movie - Max, a wedding photographer, moonlights as a wickedly off-the-hook, random serial killer. He beats their heads in with baseball bats and meat tenderizers, stabs them with knives twenty or thirty times, this, that and all sorts of sundry savage violence and furious anger. It features almost a dozen direct episodes of physical and mental brutality exacted under no guises and with no ulterior motives but graphic intensity of horrifying violence. It's played up as a documentary and shot as such: filmed from handhelds, dialogue delivered almost exlusively from talks directly to camera and open referrals to the audience. It's not made whatsoever to exemplify violence for the hollow predication of brutality for brutality's sake but rather a table-turning inquisition into the nature of violence from both sides of the fence. It's an indictment of the viewer who naturally professes himself to be innocent because he's removed from the action and not participating, actively or passively. He performs his flagrantly vicious acts of torture and violence straight to camera, the entire time sporting either a knowing smile or a self-satisfied smirk. This is not purely due to gratification of his sadistic impulses but because we are, as he forces us to consider, guilty as he is. Yes, he chose the victims, restrained them, tortured them and finally killed them - all on his own - but we watched it. Yes too, that's the point of the movie, but the moral questions raised are if we are still watching after even the first murder, we must have some measurable vested interest in the process. He indicts us with the grilling accusation that if we chastise and demonize him for his appalling acts, we are hypocrites because we kept with it and continued to hang on to his every word and deed, even though we disapproved on what we called ethical grounds. A poignant scene, if darkly and morbidly so, is when he has a couple tied to chairs in their kitchen. He stabs them relentlessly with fearless abandon - offscreen. He then turns to camera and asks us if we wanted to see what he was doing, if we really wanted to see. He was killing people - he knew it, we knew it, we knew that he knew, et cetera. Still, he asks, even after what's gone before and how terrifying it was, if we really wanted to see what he did. Guilty sentences are handed down the moment viewers realize, as they sit there in their warm, brightly-lit, secure urban dwellings, that yes - they do want to see it and they want to see it now. Violence - is it always wrong and under which circumstances could it be right? Which side are we on and is any judgment of it justified or overly critical? What do you think?
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joem18b
Posts 596
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11/23/2007 1:17 AM
posted awhile ago
Re:Re:Violence in movies...
was watching Dexter last night. nice-guy serial killer. is it too simple to say that in most cases, including The Last Horror Show, the issue on the producer's side is $$$, on the director's side is some mixture of artistic endeavor and professionalism in the industry, and on the viewer's side is entertainment? is there a difference in this respect between violence and, say, romance?
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