Gummo

Rating:
Summary: a sadly true american story
Review: Gummo is disgusting, repulsive, and not for the weak stomache. But Gummo, also is a very true and very accurate tale of the lives of many American children. This type of misery exists in our country, and Harmony brings it all out in this film. It is a great film to watch, and atleast watch it for the rabbit(you'll love the rabbit!)

Rating:
Summary: Nothing as Great
Review: This film to me is one of the greatest works of our time. Its contains everything that is true to culture. The truth in it is there, Kids do sniff glue, listen to Black Death Metal and Eat food in the bathtub. Its all there, kids do everything in that movie,its also a true work of art, visually its extordinary. This film is great and the people who don't see the genius in it are looking at it from being programed to only like one type of film with one type of plot. Life and rality has no plot, if you like the film read "A crack-up at the race riots" by Harmony korine (who wrote and directed this film). Anyway mabey only kids can understand it, I'm 13 and i saw it when i was 12 and thought i was great. See the film. - Rust

Rating:
Summary: Possibly The Greatest Movie Ever!
Review: After hearing my friend Carpe Dawg recite line after line from this great movie, I knew that I had to see it. It was much better than I expected. I think that this "documentary of Xenia" could be said to be a masterpiece. Don't hate, enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: THE FORGOTTEN MARX
Review: I first watched this film by chance on IFC about a year ago and started recording it before it even started. As the movie unfolded I was stricken by awe and amazement. I realized that most people will probably not see this gem so now I show it to all my friends who are still awake at 2:00 am. Korine's film debut is nothing like KIDS, but is everything like his book Crackup at the Race Riots. Harmony Korine is now my film idol...always inspiring me to create art no matter how ugly it is.

Rating:
Summary: White Trash, Home-Style
Review: From Harmony Korine, the writer of the equally disturbing "Kids," comes this glimpse into the miserable lives of a smattering of real-life citizens (not actors) of Xenia, Ohio. Watch in awe as two kids with BB guns tool around town on their bikes shooting cats to sell to the local deli. Gaze in wide wonder at a guy who regularly sells his own retarded sister for sex to the teens. Gasp as a little boy takes a bath in the grossest looking water you have EVER seen. Sound like a carnival freak show? Nope, just another day in paradise. "Gummo" churns the stomach and bends the mind with its white trash denizens who don't seem to notice the horrors which they both create and are subjected to.

Rating:
Summary: Don't love it, don't hate it
Review: I had heard a few things about the movie "Gummo" in the past: "really gross", "disturbing", "f#*$ed up", etc., and I guess I feel the same way, but the film holds a certain allure that can only be compared to looking at an accident scene: you don't want to look, but you do anyway. Aside from the killing of cats, retarded prostitutes, and wrestling of chairs (yes, that's in it), perhaps the most disturbing part of the film is that it's hard to tell who's acting, and who's not. The film plays like a documentary, and it gives the film a realistic feel that's really creepy. For instance, the scene in which the two ex-Jehovah's Witness brothers beat the living crap out of each other looks absolutely real. These guys are really hitting each other as hard as they can--no camera tricks can simulate this. The scene in which the kid with the weird head, Solomon, is sitting in his filthy black-water bathtub eating spaghetti and then drops his chocolate bar in the water, fishes it out and eats it, made me want to puke. This film will definitely make an interesting addition to your collection, but it's not something to watch for fun.

Rating:
Summary: A Kaleidoscope of The Grotesque
Review: Cats. Dead Cats. Prostitutes. Prostitutes with Down's syndrome. Spaghetti. Spaghetti with blood red sauce. Water. Brown, muddy and infested water. An observant Pigeon chested delinquent. An observant Pigeon chested delinquent sitting in a filthy bath tub, in brown water, eating his loving mother's blood red spaghetti after a day of murdering cats and having sex with a prostitute with down's syndrome.

Yes, but where do the bleached sisters, the sexually confused dwarf, the four letter word spouting 6 years olds, the single and looking albino and the foul smelling brain dead grandmother of yet another cat murdering transvestite come in. Well all over the place really.

As a surreal inquiry into the traditions of rural America, Gummo should be taken with a jar of salt. The film is disgusted with its characters, pulls them from under their rocks to present them to us. Gummo is an articulate exploitation film by gifted visual stylist. Writer/Director Harmony Korine gives us alarmingly arresting scenes, almost all are grotesque, some are oddly affecting(the scenes of the pigeon chested boy lifting weights while his adoring mother tap dances around him is an example). Had Korine been able to achieve such an incendiary disquiting effect without resorting to cruelty(the retarded prostitute pimped by her husband is mindlessly ugly), his film would have been hailed as a masterpiece.

It is relatively easy to elicit an emotional response using shock tactics. Harder to move them through a conflict of character, loneliness and yearning. I don't regret sitting through Gummo because I know I will seldom encounter such a deliberatly uncommercial film. It is clear that Korine is talented. So talented that he managed to convince many that Gummo is something other then what it actualy is. A freak show. Which is not neccesarily a bad thing, certainly not a boring one.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most unique films ever
Review: Gummo is definitely not for everyone. Some people, upon watching it, find it difficult to watch. I say it's one of the most watchable films I have ever seen. And it is definitely the most unique. The opening scene consists of documentary-like footage of tornadoes and small town folk with quiet commentary by a young boy. The introduction ends with a shirtless kid smiling at the camera and flexing his muscles. The title appears in gothic letters; below it, what looks like an inverted cross.

Gummo is an astonishing, beautiful film. Harmony Korine's direction is brilliant and vibrant - the film exudes energy and life. He paints a very intriguing, multi-textured portrait of a group of people that are far removed from the lives of most people. I've known people that reminded me of some of the movie's characters, but it was still a strange film full of strange characters.

The performances are very good. It's interesting though - you wonder how much some of these people are acting. The best performance is given by Nick Sutton, who plays Tummler, the older friend of Solomon. Their main passtimes are killing cats and sniffing glue, but in some of the gritty intermission sequences, which really look as if they were shot with a home camera, he displays a violently nihilistic yet disturbingly intelligent outlook. He is an interesting character.

Critics attacked Gummo for it's lack of plot. I say that movie's shouldn't have to have a complicated plot - movies are all about what they make you feel. And Gummo will make you feel a lot of things. It will definitely disturb some people. I found it more interesting and beautiful than disturbing, but there's plenty to shock some people - i.e. many dead cats, disturbing sexual references and very young kids spouting ridiculous amounts of profanity. It will also make you laugh (if you have a sense of humor), and maybe even cry.

Gummo is a strange film. The review comment on the box says "Gummo is alive in a way that few films are." This could not be more true - the film exudes life and is full of simple beauty. The reviewer who said this is the film American Beauty wishes it could have been is right. The movie is full of beauty; you just have to know where to look. Just like life.

See Gummo - one thing's for sure: you won't forget it.

Rating:
Summary: On a worldwide crusade in the name of crusing Gummo-lovers
Review: Yes. That review was the single most pathetic attempt at pretending to be an intellectual I've ever seen. Funny, I thought true intellectuals didn't need to brag about their position as the highest form of being on the planet and then proceed to devalue the middle- and lower-classes. For an intellectual, the previous reviewer had seemingly-little to actually analyze of the film. A "It was good because I can't say why it's good" is what a lot of critics seem to say about this film. I'm sorry, but that is not a reason. You intellectuals are simply mirroring the kids on MTV who say, "This video's cool, 'cause it's dope!" except with less flair. It seems the Gummo audience has surrounded this film because everyone else can see the utter artistic void hiding within its poor excuse for a soul. I can just imagine the casual-Gummo viewer reading my review and saying, "Ewww! He mentioned MTV...He must reside with the commonfolk. I like Gummo and what I say goes because I agree that Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns were the Einstines of our century. Gummo has an exquiste texture that hasn't been seen since the aura of Kieslowski's trilogy. It made me feel a pollyannaism I have never felt before with its spiritual portryal of kids eating spaghetti in bathtubs. I cried which I don't usually do because I'm artisticaly and emotionally higher than the rest of modern-day society" I'm bitter and jealous.

Rating:
Summary: a stupefying tapestry of beauty
Review: What to say? In my fantasies it's the final word. I have come to feel that any attempts to conceptualize this film clouds its beauty. Its purity. Its truth. A truth beyond words.

Look, I can understand the criticism against it. And I know it's not because it's 'different' or 'disturbing.' I know people who loved Pink Flamingos and hated this. They love Godard, Herzog, Fassbinder, Lynch, Solodnz. etc... And hate this. I'm sure many of the people who reviewed this negatively here feel the same way. Why?

Here's an anecdote for why: My mom. Not an intellectual. A small town woman living in the place she was born. No college education. Not well traveled. Never watches art films or reads high-brow books. Likes movies like "Father of the Bride." The one with Steve Martin.

I'm not mocking my mom. I love her. But here's my point. I spend most of my time engaging with 'high art' and intellectual artifacts. So it's not odd at all for Gummo to enter my frame of experience. But when I saw this film, I felt something I rarely feel in my experiences with art. I didn't know what it was. I watched it and watched it. Transfixed by its beauty. My gut wrenching. And then I decided to show my mom. I don't know why. I never show her these kinds of things. But I felt the need to share it. With anyone. My mom included.

So we watched it. Towards the end of the movie, I looked over and saw her crying. It wasn't a sad part of the movie. And I said, "Mom, why are you crying?" And she said, "Because it's so beautiful."

I think the reviewer who said that Gummo is everything American Beauty tries to be had it right. I imagine my mom watching Gummo had the same effect as when the boy in American Beauty watches the bag floating around in the wind. He wasn't moved by the bag's symbolism. He didn't project a metaphor onto it, or intellectualize about how that bag signified a reality about humanity. It was just a bag floating in the wind. And it was beautiful.

That's what American Beauty was ABOUT. Gummo isn't ABOUT anything. Gummo is simply the bag in the wind. And this upsets people. Why bother with something if there's no point right? Because beauty isn't a point. It just is. And it doesn't take an artist or intellectual to experience it. Because there is no such thing really as beauty in life. Life is beauty. All of it. Beauty sustains itself. As the young character in Gummo says, "Life is beautiful...really it is...Without it, you'd be dead."

You don't need to go to the museum to see beauty. Look right in front of you.