HOM:

Giving you something to read on the toilet since 2009.

"The mistake lies in seeing debate and discussion as secondary to the recovery of meaning. Rather, we should see them as primary: art and literature do not exist to be understood or appreciated, but to be discussed and argued over, to function as a focus for social dialogue. The discourse of literary or art criticism is not to recover meaning, but to create and contest it. Our primal scene should not be the solitary figure in the dark of the cinema but the group of friends arguing afterwards in the pub."
-Don Fowler (1996) "Even Better Than The Real Thing"

Monday, May 24, 2010

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - Melanie


Are you kidding me?
I can't believe this filmed was not universally panned. I've found undue comfort in reading blogs by other readers who agree this is the worst movie of 2009, or of their lives.

The adjectives thrown at this film: manic! disjointed! should be taken literally, not as irreverent faint praise. Herzog shows himself incapable of any restraint or cohesiveness. His quirky flourishes are so strained and obvious. The shaky iguana shots? please. Did anyone else notice that Cage acquired some strange accent about halfway through the movie and then lost it again? And why are people praising his performance? It's as though he reviewed all of his best subversive roles from the 80s and rehashed them here, without real heart, and without the benefit of a good director, script or supporting actors. The acting is uniformly terrible, did I say that? Did I say that it is clearly the fault of Herzog?

Did I state plainly enough that this was absolutely one of the worst movies I have ever, ever seen in my life?


2 comments:

  1. I couldn't disagree with you more. My review coming soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. worst movie of your life? oh, come on

    ReplyDelete