Rating: 
Summary: ethereal, relentlessly disturbing, and close to home
Review: I am an artist and musician with plenty of twisted and controversial ideas in my head. I live in an impovershied town much like Xenia, Georgia in this film. When you put the two together, this is essentially the closest thing in films you can get, so no wonder I love this film so much...but I also dig William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard novels, films by David Cronenburg, and the wild music of Mr. Bungle as well so you can add up the rest...Anyway, this ranks along with FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, NAKED LUNCH, and WILD AT HEART as my favorite films of all time. It's a no holds barred, graphic, illrational, and relentlessly confusing detached even at times brutal portrayal of kids in an impoversihed hillbilly town so bored they do a variety of strange things: kill cats and sell them to a shop as food in exchange for their glue-sniffing habit and some spare cash, having sexual relationships with a mentally-retarted prostitute, tearing scotch tape off their breasts to make them grow bigger, pulling weights with spoons while listening to Madonna, and engaging in homosexual and bisexual relationships. Plus, there's a boy with bunny ears who plays accordion in abandoned bathrooms, girls not all there singing Bible songs, and gents going naturally insane to a mixture of dark death metal and ambient noise compositions... If this doesn't intrigue you yet, than you ain't desynsetized yet. Did I spell that right, you know what it doesn't friggin' matter...the overall effect of this movie has an aestethic like it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland of ruined and damaged beauty forms. Except that places like this actually exist, further proof that society is already falling apart, and the apocalypse might as well be here. And again there is no central story, just a bunch of random people doing crazy things, occasionally swapping ridiculous stories...and oh yeah, there is some racism too, but small towns have that anyway... The great thing is that the cameraman (which I'm pretty sure is the same guy from KIDS) gives everything a real yet unreal quality, matching the destroyed scenery perfectly. Simply put this film rocks, it's like an Errol Morris film if it was on acid and done by David Cronenburg...that alone should leave an interesting visual in yr. mind.
Rating:
Summary: Genius or incompetence? You be the judge.
Review: Gummo (Harmony Korine, 1997) Wunderkind filmmaker Harmony Korine, who sprung his debut film Kids on an unsuspecting and unready public when he was barely twenty-one, follows it up with Gummo, a film that makes Kids look like I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. The usual appellations-"darkly amusing," "compelling," "off the wall"-would all make the film seem less than it is. Either Korine has produced a film so brilliant or so far away from the center that it makes criticism irrelevant. It's not often that there's just nothing to say qualitatively about a film, but there it is. Gummo is the story of Xenia, Ohio, a town that never (at least in Korine's lens) recovered from being destroyed by a tornado in the 1970s. In fact, the legacy of the tornado lives on in the film's two main characters (if anyone here can be said to be a main character), Solomon (Jacob Reynolds, last seen in For Love of the Game) and Tummler (Nick Sutton, whose abbreviated film career includes only this and 1998's Underground), both of whom were born after the disaster. Solomon and Tummler are synecdochic of the soul of the town in many ways; they are the very definition of disaffected youth, living day-to-day lives listening to death metal, committing petty crimes without realizing that no one in their right minds could possibly suspect anyone else, and trying to get laid. But Solomon and Tummler are only a small part of the story; we see various members of the Xenia community here, and eventually the viewer is bound to realize that everyone in town, from the oldest inhabitants to the youngest, are all Solomons and Tummlers. Everyone in the film is this screwed up. Korine goes out on a limb by adopting the Errol Morris strategy of filmmaking with Gummo; this might as well be a documentary. He adds weight to the idea by handing us a cast of unknowns; in fact, only six members of the cast are actually actors with resumes, and three of those are Korine discoveries. (Aside from Reynolds, we have Max Perlich [Homicide: Life on the Street], Chloe Sevigny, Carisa Glucksman, and Korine himself [Kids], and Linda Manz [Days of Heaven], in her first screen appearance in fifteen years.) And yet, despite the preponderance of people in here who had never been in front of a camera before, Gummo is far more Gates of Heaven than it is American Movie; there is an overbearing sense of fatalism among the characters in this film. After that, Korine goes even farther out on the documentary limb by abandoning anything that might resemble a plot. Gummo is the celluloid equivalent of the Joyce Carol Oates slice-of-life novel, even farther out on the limb than Morris is willing to go; at least his documentaries have a concrete subject. Doing a film about a town, without focusing on some aspect of the town, is going to be a vague endeavor at best. Doing it in fiction requires the touch of a master. The question of whether Korine qualifies is left up to the viewer; I have little doubt that the majority of people who watch this film are going to hate it. However, your reaction to the film is less material than the lasting effect it will have on you; no one who sees Gummo will leave seeing through the same eyes he began with. A must-see film. **** ½
Rating: 
Summary: Boy, is this movie way off!
Review: I'd just like to start off saying this film is the worst I've EVER seen. And I've seen some bad ones in my time, but this takes the cake. First of all, let me mention that these filmmakers have never even set foot in the town of Xenia, Ohio. I've lived in this town all my life. I have never witnessed kids in diapers and rabbit ears walking around the streets aimlessly, nor have I seen kids shooting cats with pellet guns (well, not as a business venture anyway). These filmmakers did all of their filming in TENNESSEE! This film had no plot either. It was like watching someone's film of their dysfunctional family. It was just random weirdness sloppily thrown together. I still can't believe I paid money to rent this junk.
Rating:
Summary: Gimme Gummo!
Review: An amazing film that shakes up all we think we know about film making, script writing, and casting. I find myself telling people about various scenes from the movie. I never do that! I will never forget the junkyard scene with the two young boys berating rabbit boy. I want to sit down and transcribe that dialogue and study it! It could never have been written much less taught to child actors. Amazing. And the bathtub scene! Spaghetti and chocolate bar in muddy water. Wonderful. The white shirted chocolate bar salesboys... "tease the girls, just tease 'em." If you want to see a slice of Americana that is really out there in many senses of the word, see Gummo. See it once, pass it around, then watch it again. A real treat.
Rating:
Summary: You WILL be impacted.
Review: First off, forgive me if this review appears a bit jumbled. I guess I feel that if the movie doesn't have to make sense, its review doesn't either. ;)
This movie is a black hole of hopelessness. Everything is so drawn out and there seems to be no real point to anything...which is the way life seems at times. No solid plot, unexplained characters and events(?), dirty, dingy surroundings..
I would say that Gummo is an important film because it answers no questions but raises many... Are there really people who live this way? Has anyone ever escaped this town/fate? Do I ever come across that way? Is it ok to be like that? What do I think about people like this, and does that make me a bad person? In other words, it forces you to examine yourself and the way you view others.
Also, on the grander side, it asks what qualifies as a legitimate film? When does a movie become something other than art?
Gummo is definately more than art, because it captures very difficult sensations from real life and unapologetically subjects the viewer to them.
In conclusion, I would not recommend this movie to those who have a problem with unflinching ugliness, disorienting situations, and sincere self-examination.
Rating: 
Summary: Nasty but gutsy
Review: Sure, this movie is very disturbing in many ways. So is driving onto a lot of back roads in most areas of this country. But it's riveting, original & perversely funny. It's distressing that so many people ( professional & amateur) reviewing Gummo (or natural Born Killers, for that matter) seem to base their judgements on *manners* and *taste* more than anything. To me this movie is a devastating comment on a very real & sick condition which those who wince & hold their noses prefer to ignore. So what else is new?
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful in a sick depraved way
Review: It is beautiful art made from the most disgusting, depraved, sick, twisted stuff. I love it. It really gets to be too much at times and it's really hard to watch it all but if you can stay through it all you will never be the same again. It really changes your thinking and every go is better than the last. You have to have balls and intelligence to watch this movie and like it. Deffinately not something for the squemish. I think everyone shoul see it. Either you think its boring or sick or you think its great. Watch this. Watch this. It's hard to understand and follow but if your really smart you will understand it and think its funny as hell. Yeah you have to be really open minded as well. Oh yeah, i live in a small town and some people do live like that.
Rating:
Summary: Snore
Review: Aside from learning that I never want to visit or live in small towns in Ohio, I thought that this was unfocused and boring...
Rating:
Summary: One for the Ages!
Review: Gummo should go down as one of the best films ever created. I could - and have - watched it over and over. The soundtrack combined with the documentary-like fluidity evoked a compassion and disgust for the characters. It beckons memories of trailer kids in the town where I grew up and of shooting as many gophers as possible to get money from the county. These things really do happen, and the reason many people do not like this film, Kids, Happiness or Welcome to the Dollhouse, is because they hit a little too close to home, get a little too close to the truth. I will put this one in the library next to Zardoz and the amazing works of John Boorman.
Rating:
Summary: Insincere
Review: Low budget shouldn't dictate the intensity a film posesses, what should is the intellect of the writer. In this case, there wasn't much thought into constructing a plot; instead it was a bunch of pointless scenes put together to make a sad excuse for a movie. I am from Ohio, and we don't live like that.
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