Rating: Summary: Pure Garbage Review: This pile of junk is a sick and twisted waist of time. Seeing two punks killing cats is repulsive. Hearing small children using extremely vulgar language is very disturbing. The movie is a pointless series of sick and evil scenes of kids performing evry king of anti-social act possible. The scene where the boy kills his grandmother by turning off her oxygen is pure evil and shows how young people have complete contempt for the elderly. The spaghetti eating scene was equally disgusting. Eating spaghetti and drinking milk is disgusting enough. That whole scene was meant to sicken people. Do not see this movie or even rent it, it is pure one hundred percent trash. I gave the movie one star because there were no zeros. A negative number would even be better.
Rating: Summary: Quite Possibly the Worst Film I Have Ever Seen Review: I'm not going to tell you not to see this movie, because everyone should see it, if only because it simply must be seen to be believed. It is very possibly the worst film I have ever seen in my life. This movie severely disturbed me--not necessarily because of its grotesque images, but because they were empty, because the film's sole purpose is to sicken. Apparently there are moments meant to be taken as funny, but the few times I laughed don't make up for the sleepness nights that I experienced afterward, so horrified was I by what I had seen. Sick can be funny, but very rarely is sadism--and it takes a more talented filmmaker than Harmony Korine to make sadism funny.The film is nothing more than a series of horrifying episodes. There are numerous scenes of boys capturing, killing, torturing and mutilating cats from their neighborhood, and then selling the bodies to a resteraunteur. Boys visit a prostitute with Down's syndrome who is being pimped out by her own husband. A mother threatens to shoot her son in the head because he won't smile. Teenage girls put duct tape on their nipples, make out with boys in their pool during a rainstorm, and are almost molested by a man who helps them look for their lost cat (no points for guessing what happened to it). A little girl describes her father molesting her. Whole families get high together. Deaf people are openly mocked. And, in the film's most nauseating (but not necessarily most disturbing) scene, a little boy is bathed by his mother while eating spaghetti and gulping chocolate milk (when his candy bar falls into the murky brown bathwater, he fishes it out and continues eating it). Words cannot express how disgusting this is to watch--you have to see it for yourself to understand. The only even remotely funny scenes in the film include (1) an albino waitress dancing hysterically to music from her car radio and expressing her love of Patrick Swayze, and (2) a sequence in which a kitchen full of rednecks beat each other with chairs that is so endlessly long that, eventually, laughter is the only method of relief. I am an openminded film-viewer. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about cinema--and I can understand why some critics have compared GUMMO to the work of many celebrated film directors like Fellini, whose AMARCORD is a similarly unstructured, episodic film about life in a small Italian town. Both films are surreal and sometimes disgusting, but AMARCORD is also poetic, meaningful, and entertaining (in other words, worlds away from GUMMO). Some have said that GUMMO is comparable to the films of Fellini or Werner Herzog. I fail to see the connection. See GUMMO at your own risk--I found it the most reprehensible viewing experience I have had in many, many years.
Rating: Summary: in living color Review: this movie was one of the most interesting films i have ever viewed in my existence. emptiness? yes lack of plot? yes lack of emotion? correct. i actually laughed when the credits came. yes, laughed harder than i have in months. the movie ended with nothing. it had no impact on my life whatsoever, except, of course, in the fact that it was a waste of 2 hours of my time...
Rating: Summary: Misunderstood masterpiece. Review: I'm getting to be an "old fart". I'm 43. I have seen way more than my share of movies. I own scores of films. But I have never, ever, seen anything like GUMMO. This movie is not for everyone. This movie is not an artistic "statement". This movie is a (ta-da!!) movie. Don't let all the cynics scare you away. That all being said, let me wholeheartedly recommend GUMMO. I do suggest that you don't watch it alone. You definitely need someone in the room with you because you will not believe what you are seeing. There is nothing overly graphic or sick in this film. But there are disturbing scenes. And don't let anyone tell you that towns/people like this don't exist. They do. Rent it, buy it or steal it. But please watch it.
Rating: Summary: landmark Dogme 95 film Review: I wish that I had the time to do justice to this film. In fact, it's almost too good to review; it's the very kind of movie that you simply have to see to believe. If you've loved the French New Wave and New German Cinema films, particularly Werner Herzog's, you'll probably enjoy Harmony Korine's. Do not use "Kids" as a benchmark; bear in mind, although Korine wrote the screenplay, it was really Larry Clark's vision. "Gummo" is art cinema at it's best. By that, I mean "art cinema" as something unpretentious: The capturing of reality on celluloid. Yes, it's fair to say that the film ridicules "white trash." Let's be serious. White [less fotunate people are] worth ridiculing! It does not pretend to be Cinema Verite, so to call it biased film... well... all film (EVEN Cinema Verité despite its fancy title) is founded in some point of view. I think one does best to watch this film for what it delivers-- great images, great atmosphere-- not what it doesn't. In that sense, Korine brings an originality to the cinematic eye that hasn't been seen in the past 20 years. To discuss it further would [take away some] of its beauty, which lies in the myriad strong reactions that it will produce in any audience.
Rating: Summary: Flounder Can't Admit They Swim, But They Still Swim Review: And they don't even need swimmies. They just are in the water. The Green Yamo from the classic 1980's video game "Bruce Lee" says, "Why all negative stuff?" This movie is does what many great films have done, and hopefully will continue to do - turn pain into art. Next time you get a bruise on your thigh, watch this film, and then paint your kitchen with hash brown juice.
Rating: Summary: Nonsense for People Who Need to Be Told What to Think Review: ..."Gummo" has no plot; it's a series of vignettes about "life" in Ohio that (kind of) come together. There's all the stuff that's "commonplace" in the Buckeye State: rape, incest, cat torture, drug use, you name it, it's there. There's not much else to say about the movie; one could extol its virtues, but then one could extol the virtues of early Stalinist propaganda, or "Die Eternische Juden" as well. Extol all you want, it doesn't change the underlying ignorance and bias inherent in those films - or this one. That being said, "Gummo" is exactly the kind of bigoted [garbage] that people think small towns are like - specifically, people who have never been to small towns, or the only time they spent in small towns was driving through (or watching "Deliverance")."Gummo" was even filmed in Tennessee, using extras from Tennessee - they couldn't get the location right, and Korine's so-called experiment" by using "real Ohio people" is as false as Miss Cleo's fortune telling. In other words, it's not reality. It's a made-up bourgeoisie Candyland created by pseudo-intellectuals who like to turn their nose up at the very people they supposedly want to drag out of corporate oppression. If you REALLY want to learn about small-town Ohio life, go visit Ohio. I can suggest some very nice bed and breakfasts, and central Ohio is wonderful in the autumn. If you REALLY want to depress yourself with someone's invented fantasy and use your dollars to support ignorance, by all means, buy or rent "Gummo". It's your call. Final Grade: F
Rating: Summary: Pointless Review: This one is about two teenagers (whom we are made to consider them as 'tramps') killing cats, selling them to the supermarket and with the money, buying glue to sniff. While we're experiencing these exciting events, we also get to meet the town people who all seem to be repulsive and crazy. Actually, these could have been interesting if there was a visible point that the director was making but besides the impressive camera shots this is dull and pointless. At some moments it is also trying to be poetic but fails... Lot's of people like this movie. I think that this is because they find the trampness, poorness and brave life that the characters live attracts them...whatever. Still, how about writting a screenplay and having a point to make?
Rating: Summary: THE GREATEST PIECE OF CINEMA EVER FILMED Review: Cinema needs Harmony Korine. Just when u thought that we were at the pinnacle of human achievement, Korine invents a film which fits in to NO genre catergory. It is a style that is uniquely Harmonies own.That makes it the greatest film of all time. It's honesty and beauty comes straight from the directors heart and is the ONLY realistic portrayal of the beauty of life captured on film. Well that and KIDS and JULIEN DONKEY BOY.
Rating: Summary: Disturbingly brilliant Review: I first learned of this movie from the movie Belly when it appeared on the big screen in DMX's characters house. Two kids no older than 7 or 8 are dressed in cowboy outfits in a junk yard and was cussing out this other young boy dressed with rabbit ears on. I didn't know that it was a real movie at this point. Until another one of my friends introduced me to it. Gummo is definatly a work art. It protrays a small town in Xenia Ohio that got hit by a tornado. And since my introduction to this movie I have inturn introduced many people to it. Most have mixed reactions. If you are looking for something out of the ordinary then this movie if for you. If you have a week stomach and/or a cat lover you may want to skip it.
|