When has something been too mean-spirited or cruel for you to enjoy?

[EHKOS]

Funny everyone is mentioning Family Guy because it did bring up one good point. Peter had a panic room built into the attic where The Butterfly Effect couldn't find him.

I saw it when I was young so I didn't even really realize what was going on in the child pornography scene (looking back, holy f*$@ing shit man...) but there was a bit where this kid put a dog in a bag...and started covering it with lighter fluid. I noped out of there so fast. I don't care who did what to you, leave the pets out of it.

 

[IOwnTheSpire]

Throw in another vote for Game of Thrones. It amazes me when the creators act all offended when someone accuses them of doing things for shock value when much of the stuff they've done isn't in the books.

What really pisses me off is when they turned Margaery from a kind woman who treats her child bride like a little brother into someone who sexually abuses said child multiple times (he's older, but still underage, as Cersei said), jokes about said abuse with her friends, then gloats about said abuse towards Cersei AND the show portrays all of this as being cute, funny, and light-hearted. It's disgusting.

However, I will say this: those who think Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire is too dark and gritty need to check out the Second Apocalypse books by R Scott Bakker. They make Thrones look like a fairy tale.

 

[mduncan50]

Breaking Bad for me. When I first got Netflix it was the second show I watched (after Daredevil) because of how great everyone says it was. I got about halfway through the second season and I just couldn't do it anymore. Everyone was just so unlikable and mean to each other, that I just couldn't stomach pressing "Next Episode" again. And I know that they were designed to be unlikable people, and I'm not judging anyone that loved the show, but I got absolutely no happiness or enjoyment out of watching it.

 

[Chanticoblues]

Recently I saw You're Next, which is a pretty lame movie in a lot of ways (who wants to see Joe Swanberg and Ti West ironically banter about what's good filmmaking?), but it's mostly a cynical take on the home invasion movie where we're supposed to cheer on the grisly murders of a bunch of WASP douchebags while some Aussie survivalist lady combats the masked killers as the only capable person in the party.

I guess this transfers over to a lot of slasher movies, but I was wondering what I was supposed to get out of this. Joy of watching people die? Lame, it's been done before, and better. Ironic take on the genre? Scream was 20 years ago.

 

[Terminal Blue]

What really pisses me off is when they turned Margaery from a kind woman who treats her child bride like a little brother into someone who sexually abuses said child multiple times (he's older, but still underage, as Cersei said), jokes about said abuse with her friends, then gloats about said abuse towards Cersei AND the show portrays all of this as being cute, funny, and light-hearted. It's disgusting.

Umm..

You do realize that in the books most of the "young" characters are in their early or mid teens. Virtually everyone in ASOIAF was aged up for the TV show. Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon are in their mid-30s at the start of the books (Sean Bean was in his early 50s, Mark Addy was late 40s). Jon Snow and Rob Stark are 14 and (Kit Harington and Richard Madden were mid-20s). Sansa Stark is 11 and Margery Tyrell is 16 (Sophie Turner was 15, making her one of the closest actresses to her character's actual age, but Natalie Dormer was in her late 20s when she first appeared). Heck, Tommen in the books is nine years old when he marries Margery (Dean Charles Chapman is 18).

If children being involved in abusive or sexual situations shocks you, then you should stay very, very far away from ASOIAF. The world depicted is one in which, as with actual medieval Europe, young teenagers are already treated as adults. Women can be married and have children from the point at which they start menstruating. If anything, the TV show went to extreme lengths to avoid depicting the characters as being their canonical ages, presumably to spare the outcry which would result from putting children in these perilous and sexual situations.

Yeah, there's a lot of exploitative bollocks in the GOT TV show, but this strikes me as a criticism which is actually far more pertinent to the books.

Personally, I'm beginning to suspect I have a remarkably high tolerance for mean spiritedness and cruelty in media. It comes from liking old horror movies, I guess. I really can't think of anything which was too cruel for me to enjoy. I suppose the closest thing in recent years would probably be Archer, but even then I've never not found it enjoyable, just cringed a little at certain jokes or scenarios.

 

[IOwnTheSpire]

What really pisses me off is when they turned Margaery from a kind woman who treats her child bride like a little brother into someone who sexually abuses said child multiple times (he's older, but still underage, as Cersei said), jokes about said abuse with her friends, then gloats about said abuse towards Cersei AND the show portrays all of this as being cute, funny, and light-hearted. It's disgusting.

Umm..

You do realize that in the books most of the "young" characters are in their early or mid teens. Virtually everyone in ASOIAF was aged up for the TV show. Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon are in their mid-30s at the start of the books (Sean Bean was in his early 50s, Mark Addy was late 40s). Jon Snow and Rob Stark are 14 and (Kit Harington and Richard Madden were mid-20s). Sansa Stark is 11 and Margery Tyrell is 16 (Sophie Turner was 15, making her one of the closest actresses to her character's actual age, but Natalie Dormer was in her late 20s when she first appeared). Heck, Tommen in the books is nine years old when he marries Margery (Dean Charles Chapman is 18).

If children being involved in abusive or sexual situations shocks you, then you should stay very, very far away from ASOIAF. The world depicted is one in which, as with actual medieval Europe, young teenagers are already treated as adults. Women can be married and have children from the point at which they start menstruating. If anything, the TV show went to extreme lengths to avoid depicting the characters as being their canonical ages, presumably to spare the outcry which would result from putting children in these perilous and sexual situations.

Yeah, there's a lot of exploitative bollocks in the GOT TV show, but this strikes me as a criticism which is actually far more pertinent to the books.

You're missing what I'm saying. The show EXPLICITLY says that Tommen is NOT of age. Margaery is clearly taking advantage of his vulnerability and naivete. Natalie Dormer herself corroborated this AND condemned her character's actions. The problem with this scenario is that they portray what is clearly sexual abuse as being cute and light-hearted (or as the creators of the show said, cheeky).

 

[FirstNameLastName]

What really pisses me off is when they turned Margaery from a kind woman who treats her child bride like a little brother into someone who sexually abuses said child multiple times (he's older, but still underage, as Cersei said), jokes about said abuse with her friends, then gloats about said abuse towards Cersei AND the show portrays all of this as being cute, funny, and light-hearted. It's disgusting.

Umm..

You do realize that in the books most of the "young" characters are in their early or mid teens. Virtually everyone in ASOIAF was aged up for the TV show. Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon are in their mid-30s at the start of the books (Sean Bean was in his early 50s, Mark Addy was late 40s). Jon Snow and Rob Stark are 14 and (Kit Harington and Richard Madden were mid-20s). Sansa Stark is 11 and Margery Tyrell is 16 (Sophie Turner was 15, making her one of the closest actresses to her character's actual age, but Natalie Dormer was in her late 20s when she first appeared). Heck, Tommen in the books is nine years old when he marries Margery (Dean Charles Chapman is 18).

If children being involved in abusive or sexual situations shocks you, then you should stay very, very far away from ASOIAF. The world depicted is one in which, as with actual medieval Europe, young teenagers are already treated as adults. Women can be married and have children from the point at which they start menstruating. If anything, the TV show went to extreme lengths to avoid depicting the characters as being their canonical ages, presumably to spare the outcry which would result from putting children in these perilous and sexual situations.

Yeah, there's a lot of exploitative bollocks in the GOT TV show, but this strikes me as a criticism which is actually far more pertinent to the books.

You're missing what I'm saying. The show EXPLICITLY says that Tommen is NOT of age. Margaery is clearly taking advantage of his vulnerability and naivete. Natalie Dormer herself corroborated this AND condemned her character's actions. The problem with this scenario is that they portray what is clearly sexual abuse as being cute and light-hearted (or as the creators of the show said, cheeky).

What exactly is this abuse you're talking about, because I don't remember anything like that (although it's been a while since I watched the show).

 

[IOwnTheSpire]

What exactly is this abuse you're talking about, because I don't remember anything like that (although it's been a while since I watched the show).

In Season 5, Margaery marries Tommen. In both the books and the show, Tommen is not a legal adult. In the books, Margaery treats him like a little brother, is nice to him, gives him kittens. In the show, she takes sexual advantage of him multiple times, exploiting his vulnerability and naivete to get him on her side (a form of abuse), then proceeds to gloat about it towards Cersei. The show portrays her actions as cute and funny, ignoring the clear (at least to me) immoral implications of what occurred.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Ehh, that's the kind of joke you could get away with in Family Guy, fairly tame as far as "adult animation" goes.

I know I'm veering a little bit off-topic here but it really does bother me that, in the west, "adult animation" is basically seen as exclusively gross-out comedy with offensive jokes. There aren't really many or any adult (even "young adult" of late teens to twenties) animations that aren't comedies with "adult" jokes (like the aforementioned implied child murder joke). There aren't even THAT many all-ages stuff, I'd include the Simpsons and that's about it.

Anything that's animated without that kind of thing is treated as a cartoon for kids. It really does bother me, there's not a lot of artistic media formats that have this kind of one-directional approach to adult entertainment. Games, films, music, TV are all pretty diverse; but if you go for animation in the west it seems to be go kiddie or go disgusting.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Does anybody remember the movie Grandma's Boy? It came out around the time the Xbox 360 was about to launch and it seemed to have been aimed at...well...us (teens and early 20-somethings who were into gaming) and despite the fact that I was the target demographic, I didn't wind up watching it until it was on disc...after renting it from my then place of work...and turning it off after about a half-hour or so. I can't remember many details about the movie itself other than it felt like an incredibly lazy pot-comedy flick but with a bunch of references to gaming and how the people who enjoy gaming are losers and the people who MAKE games are sociopaths.

Speaking of Gaming, Gamer (the Gerard Butler movie) is a movie I've only ever seen reviewed and from what I've seen there it seemed to hate its target demographic...gamers...It included scenes of a Second Life type of game only gamers controlled the actual people (kinda like the much better Surrogates...but gamers control people instead of robots). The main gamers they seemed to focus on were a teen boy who kept getting hit on and a morbidly obese, un-named person who used not-Second Life to live out his rape fantasies.

 

[Terminal Blue]

You're missing what I'm saying. The show EXPLICITLY says that Tommen is NOT of age. Margaery is clearly taking advantage of his vulnerability and naivete. Natalie Dormer herself corroborated this AND condemned her character's actions. The problem with this scenario is that they portray what is clearly sexual abuse as being cute and light-hearted (or as the creators of the show said, cheeky).

There was a comedy show on British TV a while back called Brass Eye, which used to run fake exposes and stories in the style of a documentary or current affairs show. One episode, which I would link to but won't because it features nudity and I'm not sure on the policy, featured a "reenactment" of a Victorian man having sex with a child prostitute (played by a 25 year old actress) and shot in a highly pornographic style which emphasized the woman's bare breasts (which, the narrator helpfully reminded us, was inaccurate, as children don't have breasts), the joke being that the audience was being told that what they were watching was something unpleasant, but the visual impression didn't match the narration.

Dean Charles Chapman is eighteen. He in no way looks like a child. The visual impression given during those scenes was overwhelmingly positive because, while Natalie Dormer was about a decade older than Chapman, the actual visual impression is very much that nothing is wrong. The controversy comes entirely from context, and even then it's not actually clear why. Tommens age is never actually confirmed, I don't even recall when it was stated that he was underage (indeed, noone seems to know what the age of adulthood actually is in TV show Westeros, or why it should suddenly apply now when it didn't apply to Sansa Stark during her marriage with Tyrion, for example). A lot of the controversy seems to come from interviews Chapman did, in which he stated that he had interpreted his characters age at still being around 12, and thus found the scenes personally quite uncomfortable. The most obvious explanation is simply that he was wrong, or rather that his own character was poorly explained to him, which is a failure somewhere down the pipeline but does not in any way imply some intent to downplay child abuse.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

What exactly is this abuse you're talking about, because I don't remember anything like that (although it's been a while since I watched the show).

In Season 5, Margaery marries Tommen. In both the books and the show, Tommen is not a legal adult. In the books, Margaery treats him like a little brother, is nice to him, gives him kittens. In the show, she takes sexual advantage of him multiple times, exploiting his vulnerability and naivete to get him on her side (a form of abuse), then proceeds to gloat about it towards Cersei. The show portrays her actions as cute and funny, ignoring the clear (at least to me) immoral implications of what occurred.

Oh ... is that all?

In terms of the kinds of things that happen in the show, some young king being bedded by his queen too early is hardly going to elicit any kind of reaction. What's more, to me it seemed like her actions were pretty clearly portrayed as manipulative rather than cute.

 

[IOwnTheSpire]

You're missing what I'm saying. The show EXPLICITLY says that Tommen is NOT of age. Margaery is clearly taking advantage of his vulnerability and naivete. Natalie Dormer herself corroborated this AND condemned her character's actions. The problem with this scenario is that they portray what is clearly sexual abuse as being cute and light-hearted (or as the creators of the show said, cheeky).

There was a comedy show on British TV a while back called Brass Eye, which used to run fake exposes and stories in the style of a documentary or current affairs show. One episode, which I would link to but won't because it features nudity and I'm not sure on the policy, featured a "reenactment" of a Victorian man having sex with a child prostitute (played by a 25 year old actress) and shot in a highly pornographic style which emphasized the woman's bare breasts (which, the narrator helpfully reminded us, was inaccurate, as children don't have breasts), the joke being that the audience was being told that what they were watching was something unpleasant, but the visual impression didn't match the narration.

Dean Charles Chapman is eighteen. He in no way looks like a child. The visual impression given during those scenes was overwhelmingly positive because, while Natalie Dormer was about a decade older than Chapman, the actual visual impression is very much that nothing is wrong. The controversy comes entirely from context, and even then it's not actually clear why. Tommens age is never actually confirmed, I don't even recall when it was stated that he was underage (indeed, noone seems to know what the age of adulthood actually is in TV show Westeros, or why it should suddenly apply now when it didn't apply to Sansa Stark during her marriage with Tyrion, for example). A lot of the controversy seems to come from interviews Chapman did, in which he stated that he had interpreted his characters age at still being around 12, and thus found the scenes personally quite uncomfortable. The most obvious explanation is simply that he was wrong, or rather that his own character was poorly explained to him, which is a failure somewhere down the pipeline but does not in any way imply some intent to downplay child abuse.

In the previous episode, it was explicitly stated that Tommen is underage, which means by Westerosi law, he can't consummate a marriage. Another thing to keep in mind is that Chapman was cast as Tommen for Season 4 over the other much younger actor who DOES look like a child, which means the creators likely wanted to make the relationship sexual even though it wasn't necessary. [URL="http://theculturalvacuum.tumblr.com/post/117806525944/trading-kittens-for-coitus" (title,target)]This[/URL] article explains much of what I'm trying to say.

Oh ... is that all?

In terms of the kinds of things that happen in the show, some young king being bedded by his queen too early is hardly going to elicit any kind of reaction. What's more, to me it seemed like her actions were pretty clearly portrayed as manipulative rather than cute.

The manipulations themselves were portrayed as cute, not to mention Tommen being underage, what she's doing is illegal. Do you think if the genders of the characters were flipped, the reaction would be any different?

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

James Gunn's Super comes to mind. It's been a few years since I saw it, but mean-spirited and cruel were absolutely what I came away with after the credits rolled.

A couple of movies come to mind immediately. Dark Knight Rises is one of them, Zero Dark Thirty is another.

ZDT is a little more obvious, I think. I was unable to watch it all the way through, jumping ship shortly after the first torture scene. Way too gruesome for me.

Apologies if someone else has addressed this, given I've not checked out any posts or pages further into the thread, but I can't understand how anyone can suggest Zero Dark Thirty was either mean spirited or cruel. Besides, isn't it rather unfair and/or inaccurate to say that if you've not seen the whole film?

I think it's an incredible film, and whilst two notable scenes early on aren't exactly pleasant, they represent a kind of dramatitised journalism (of a culture and era of intelligence services, as well as the global climate re post-9/11 responses to terrorism. I see it as a bit of a companion piece to Spielberg's Munich - it's about a response to violence/horror on a collective and individual level) - the entire film is detached, sure, but only because it allows the viewer to parse what's going on and come to their own conclusions by the time the superb final shot plays out. It never leads by the hand, condemns, or judges (elaborating on what I think the film might 'say' or thematically imply would require spoilers, so I'll not go there. suffice to say the final shot is important to that).

As a pure piece of meticulously crafted cinema I think it's a must watch; from the acting, photography, sublimely understated score (by Alexandre Desplat), to how it doesn't pull its punches regarding tone. I've seen it a few times, now, and instead of mean spirited or cruel I'd call it cerebrally humane.

I've started watching everything by Lars "I'm a Nazi" Von Trier. On the one hand, I find his films weirdly fascinating and well made, but on the other I'm turned off by his overly bleak view of humanity. I wouldn't call myself an optimist, but his films are so cruel that they can be either unbearable or funny. I liked Melancholia, but antichrist left me feeling sick. It's not just that it was a cruel film, it was just so pointlessly disturbing. I don't really know where he was going with it.

I really don't have much time for him as an individual, and none of his films seem to be my cup of tea. The only one I've seen all the way through was Antichrist, and it actually kinda endeared me to him... I think he's a self-indulgent provocateur, who doesn't seem to even know himself whether he's just provoking for the sake or it (for attention, for a reaction), or whether he really believes in what he may say or put up on screen.

But to call Antichrist 'existentially doom-laden and atmospheric' would be an understatement... So as a pure cinematic spectacle is was kinda compulsive viewing, and I've certainly never seen anything quite like it. So despite thinking he's a bit of a pretentious misogynistic prick, I'm kinda glad someone's making films that--- er, distinct. It had me mulling it over for several days, and I'd like to see it again sometime.

Melancholia's the film of his I'd most like to see next.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

...

Oh ... is that all?

In terms of the kinds of things that happen in the show, some young king being bedded by his queen too early is hardly going to elicit any kind of reaction. What's more, to me it seemed like her actions were pretty clearly portrayed as manipulative rather than cute.

The manipulations themselves were portrayed as cute, not to mention Tommen being underage, what she's doing is illegal. Do you think if the genders of the characters were flipped, the reaction would be any different?

I didn't really get that perception; I felt she was trying to act cute in order to manipulate him, but her actions when not around him show her true intentions as a desire for power.

As for the reaction towards a gender flipped version, I'm sure it would be different, though I don't see what this hypothetical situation has to do with anything. Even if it were a dirty old many trying to fuck an underage boy it still wouldn't make the top ten list of "immoral things that happen on GoT".

 

[IOwnTheSpire]

...

Oh ... is that all?

In terms of the kinds of things that happen in the show, some young king being bedded by his queen too early is hardly going to elicit any kind of reaction. What's more, to me it seemed like her actions were pretty clearly portrayed as manipulative rather than cute.

The manipulations themselves were portrayed as cute, not to mention Tommen being underage, what she's doing is illegal. Do you think if the genders of the characters were flipped, the reaction would be any different?

I didn't really get that perception; I felt she was trying to act cute in order to manipulate him, but her actions when not around him show her true intentions as a desire for power.

As for the reaction towards a gender flipped version, I'm sure it would be different, though I don't see what this hypothetical situation has to do with anything. Even if it were a dirty old many trying to fuck an underage boy it still wouldn't make the top ten list of "immoral things that happen on GoT".

The problem I have is that those other immoral things are portrayed and conveyed in such a way so the audience knows how immoral they are. I saw zero indication, based on the writing and direction of the scene, that what Margaery did was meant to be seen as immoral.

The gender thing is because there's this idea still present in the modern day that when a boy is abused by an attractive woman, he's considered 'lucky', which I've never heard to describe a girl abused by a man. Many people, including some of the cast and crew, still talk about Margaery as though she's some good-hearted person, and I can't imagine a good-hearted person manipulating and abusing a young boy for her own ends.

 

[beastro]

Family Guy is this for me these days and for the past few years. I mean the constant referrals to anyone on the right as a nazi for the longest time (which only stopped after Seth McFarland and Rush Limbaugh became friends), the use of stereotypes as jokes in-and-of-themselves (often times that didn't even make sense) and the poor attempts at mocking people McFarland disagrees with just turned me off, even more so then the gross-out ever did.

It feels these days that Family Guy is trying to be South Park on a lower TV rating, only with none of the wit.

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time, thank you. Mainstream American network TV, on Fox no less, is too mean to conservatives! I can see through what skin you have.

Spoiler

I kind of have to agree with Zontar. Not so much because I love conservatism so much, but because Family Guy is so heavy handed that it's not even funny any more. It's like FG brought an AR-15 to a paint ball fight - It doesn't matter if I'm on their side, because I didn't come here to be part of a shooting.

Old Simpsons, King of the Hill and other shows had a good nature about them that had you laughing along when you got targeted, regardless of who you were.

Family Guy during its original run once had that, albeit with more edge to it, but when it came back it got carte blance and ceased being amusing. A big part of comedy, especially on TV, is having censorship to work against and sneak things passed. It pushes the writers to refine their material and make it wittier than it otherwise would be.

 

[Fox12]

James Gunn's Super comes to mind. It's been a few years since I saw it, but mean-spirited and cruel were absolutely what I came away with after the credits rolled.

A couple of movies come to mind immediately. Dark Knight Rises is one of them, Zero Dark Thirty is another.

ZDT is a little more obvious, I think. I was unable to watch it all the way through, jumping ship shortly after the first torture scene. Way too gruesome for me.

Apologies if someone else has addressed this, given I've not checked out any posts or pages further into the thread, but I can't understand how anyone can suggest Zero Dark Thirty was either mean spirited or cruel. Besides, isn't it rather unfair and/or inaccurate to say that if you've not seen the whole film?

I think it's an incredible film, and whilst two notable scenes early on aren't exactly pleasant, they represent a kind of dramatitised journalism (of a culture and era of intelligence services, as well as the global climate re post-9/11 responses to terrorism. I see it as a bit of a companion piece to Spielberg's Munich - it's about a response to violence/horror on a collective and individual level) - the entire film is detached, sure, but only because it allows the viewer to parse what's going on and come to their own conclusions by the time the superb final shot plays out. It never leads by the hand, condemns, or judges (elaborating on what I think the film might 'say' or thematically imply would require spoilers, so I'll not go there. suffice to say the final shot is important to that).

As a pure piece of meticulously crafted cinema I think it's a must watch; from the acting, photography, sublimely understated score (by Alexandre Desplat), to how it doesn't pull its punches regarding tone. I've seen it a few times, now, and instead of mean spirited or cruel I'd call it cerebrally humane.

I've started watching everything by Lars "I'm a Nazi" Von Trier. On the one hand, I find his films weirdly fascinating and well made, but on the other I'm turned off by his overly bleak view of humanity. I wouldn't call myself an optimist, but his films are so cruel that they can be either unbearable or funny. I liked Melancholia, but antichrist left me feeling sick. It's not just that it was a cruel film, it was just so pointlessly disturbing. I don't really know where he was going with it.

I really don't have much time for him as an individual, and none of his films seem to be my cup of tea. The only one I've seen all the way through was Antichrist, and it actually kinda endeared me to him... I think he's a self-indulgent provocateur, who doesn't seem to even know himself whether he's just provoking for the sake or it (for attention, for a reaction), or whether he really believes in what he may say or put up on screen.

But to call Antichrist 'existentially doom-laden and atmospheric' would be an understatement... So as a pure cinematic spectacle is was kinda compulsive viewing, and I've certainly never seen anything quite like it. So despite thinking he's a bit of a pretentious misogynistic prick, I'm kinda glad someone's making films that--- er, distinct. It had me mulling it over for several days, and I'd like to see it again sometime.

Melancholia's the film of his I'd most like to see next.

Melancholia tackles the same themes, but it is a bit more understated, and a bit more organized. Antichrist felt like Eli Roth trying to be artsy. Between the two, I definitely preferred melancholia. It's also a lot more surreal and dream like. Say what you will about Lars, he's certainly a one of a kind, haha.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

I'll echo the sentiment of a lot of other posts and say GTA V as well. I loved all the other games (which were pretty damn mean spirited at times), but they focused so many of the missions on the all-important plot that the horrific characters were harder to live with. I tended to put a small amount of my personality on Niko, Claude, and Tommy, but the three characters were so clearly defined (and obnoxious) in GTA V that it was hard to become engaged with the game. The game seemed determined to make the player not like it, like when Trevor bashes in the face of a previous series protagonist for basically no reason (and it's the first thing he does in the game). And you have to torture a guy, for basically no reason. And the minigame where the strippers "want" you to touch them. These felt more distasteful than the prostitute murders from the previous games, if only because these actions was basically mandatory. If you take away the choice element, it loses its novelty and is just vaguely uncomfortable. It crosses the line from interactive experience to "press button to commit atrocity to proceed to next level," which is what people used to incorrectly accuse the games of being.

 

[Chanticoblues]

I really don't have much time for him as an individual, and none of his films seem to be my cup of tea. The only one I've seen all the way through was Antichrist, and it actually kinda endeared me to him... I think he's a self-indulgent provocateur, who doesn't seem to even know himself whether he's just provoking for the sake or it (for attention, for a reaction), or whether he really believes in what he may say or put up on screen.

But to call Antichrist 'existentially doom-laden and atmospheric' would be an understatement... So as a pure cinematic spectacle is was kinda compulsive viewing, and I've certainly never seen anything quite like it. So despite thinking he's a bit of a pretentious misogynistic prick, I'm kinda glad someone's making films that--- er, distinct. It had me mulling it over for several days, and I'd like to see it again sometime.

Melancholia's the film of his I'd most like to see next.

Melancholia bored the balls off of me. Most of the thing is just an unpleasant wedding bookended by a pair of nihilistic perfume commercials. I'd recommend going older if you can. Europa and Breaking the Waves are both pretty good, though I can't say the same about a lot of his other works that came after.

I guess I'd consider Von Trier mostly unpleasant. Haneke too---I can't think of any other filmmaker that's been praised as much for being mean and didactic toward their own audience.