Day: May 12, 2012

Perfect Sense

Ohh boy, Perfect Sense? I love movies about sense. I don’t love the notion that they like to assume that there is only five senses still, but I do like talking about them nonetheless.

But add in the possible end of the world? Well then yeah, that sounds like a double winner for me.

masks
Who knows what they are doing underneath those masks!

Ewan McGregor is being all British and living in Glasgow, as a pretty fancy Chef. He meets a girl who is not at all impressed by him at first, Eva Green. But he is consistent, yelling from the alleys and what not. She is an epidemiologist. Someone who studies health events, disease spreads and what not.

Which gives an inside scoop as to what is happening. They randomly have some dude who lost his ability to smell completely. They are keeping him quarentened to determine if it is contagious, and doesn’t appear to be.

Yet it spreads. First people start crying uncontrollably, and once they are done, their smell is completely gone. Soon after that, their taste. Needless to say, once smell and taste are gone, people are less likely to go to a fancy restaurant. Seems pointless. Yet still, people must eat!

These are the minor complications of what is going on. It shows how people react to them throughout the world, but that isn’t the main point of the movie. It is the love between the two characters that develop. Unfortunately, and no one has any idea why, eventually after taste goes, the ability to hear falters too. Well fuck. That makes everything difficult. And even further after that, sight.

Needless to say, something effecting everyone around the world to slowly lose most of their abilities to perceive the world is kind of a bitch. People flip out, looting, and a general fear of leaving the house. What if you leave and become blind and already can’t hear? Fucked then. TV stations seem to be flashing the message of hope, that they are looking for the problem, to stay inside, etc. But does it work.

Further more, once Ewan and Eva have a big fight and leave each others lives, will they be able to find each other again before it all goes black? Or you know, will it all go back to normal?

Also featuring Connie Nielson, as Eva’s sister, and Stephen Dillane, as another cook.

McGregor
But neither are worthy of a picture, when there could be a picture of Ewan sitting down instead.

Pretty crazy circumstances to build a love story around, I say. And It is AWESOME that they tried it. Well done.

But I think a lot of the delivery I overhyped, and was left wanting a bit more. The final scene? Yeah, it was good and romantic up to the gills. Which is what they really wanted to do. But I still think it was missing something.

The narrator of the movie bugged the crap out of me. She talked a lot, but not about a lot of different things. Just love, true love, etc. I got the point, and wished the movie could have just played out without all the interruptions.

Also took me awhile to figure out that some of the events were shown out of order. No need to play games with me movie. I am already dealing with sensory loss.

2 out of 4.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Ahhhh another documentary, run for the hills!

Thankfully, in a documentary such as This Film Is Not Yet Rated, it doesn’t really tackle an issue that people are 50/50 on. Most people I know are all on the same side of the argument.

Which argument? The MPAA sucks argument.

RATINGS
I have no idea what kind of pictures to show for this review.

Seriously. If someone actually before this was like “Man, the MPAA is great. They are so consistent with movie ratings,” then I would think that was a made up person.

It is one of the easiest things to bitch about when bitching about movies. “How the hell is this rated PG-13 when blahblah is Rated R? How have we gotten more strict on movies (Jaws is PG) and less strict on violence and gore?”

It went over the history of the MPAA, and how films get their ratings. There is a secret board made of parents with children from 5-17 years old, and apparently they can’t serve more than five years. Their identities are kept secret in order to protect them. They watch a movie, determine a rating based on what they feel are appropriate for their children, and that is it. They specifically are parents with no training in terms of film education or child up bringing, because they wanted an “Average consensus”.

Now what is wrong? Well, Kirby Dick, the director/narrator also hired private detectives to figure out the board. At the time, a lot of their members had their kids outside of the range stated, and one even had no children at all. Similarly, they found out that larger film producers were given more specifics on what to cut, specific scenes that earned them a hire rating and how to make it lower, while indie people were given a rating and said to resubmit with cuts with no hints.

It also showed a bias in the rating between sex material, and was more willing to give an NC-17 if it was homosexual sex versus heterosexual sex.

As an added bonus, he submitted his film for rating (which received an NC-17 for the scenes in it of NC-17 films). But also recorded that process as best he could (phone calls) etc, and also the repeal process. The repeal board is a different group of individuals, and also includes a protestant and catholic priest (which may or may not get to vote).

No cameras were allowed in the building, and for some reason they refused to release any individual names and quickly got pissed off and said no to his repeal. Thankfully the private investigators already investigated who was at those meetings months earlier! Oh yeah, most of the appeal people are movie theater and studio executives.

Uh oh.

PI
What have we learned? That PI’s ar pretty kick ass in real life too.

Now that it is 5-6 years later after released. What has changed?

Hell if I know. I bet board members were changed on the MPAA to fit the standards they claimed. But the repeal board? Eh, maybe just the normal changes over time. But as the MPAA gotten any better?

Hell no. So many ratings disputes still up for grabs, all of that Bully drama (which I might not disagree with. Wanting to show it to middle/high schoolers is not a reason enough to lower a rating. Also the Weinstein bros have said that the best type of advertising is free advertising…aka controversy), and you know, other stuff.

All this means is the movie did absolutely nothing to warrant a change. But as far as I am concerned, this and the FCC need to go, and we just have to make more people mad about it. Kony 2012 this bitch! Watch this movie, is on Netflix (eek!), who helped make it (oh okay). And if you want to hate the FCC more, feel free to watch Bullshit! episode on Profanity.

3 out of 4.