Say, could you post a list of 5-10 other films you don't like?
I'd like to bring that list with me the next time I'm going to
rent some videos...
Thomas Gramstad
thomasg@ifi.uio.no
> Wow, I can hardly believe you're talking about the same Strange Days
> that I saw. I saw it as a very early preview at my university. Do you
> think the movie makers took our reviews seriously and re-edited the
> godawful thing before opening it a couple of months later? I think they
> must have because I can't believe you're talking about the same flick.
>
> I thought it was one of the worst movies I'd ever seen. I was offended
> at every turn by mindless, shallow dialogue and the heavy-handed
> attempts to stir feminist ire. I hated the ploys: see, the bad guys are
> really bad--they turn rape and torture into a fun, money-making scheme;
> see, the good guys are really good 'cuz they're weepy, they get upset
> when they see women treated badly, and they're nice to kids. The
> bad/slutty girl no decent-female-movie-goer can relate to gets treated
> (dismissed) like a bad/slutty girl; the good, maternal everywoman gets
> rewarded by good guys and almost-bad guys alike. The ending is beyond
> bad. When the big, white man came down from the skies like god to help
> the poor, frightened, brown girl (can you say white, middle-class
> guilt?) people groaned and laughed and walked out of the theater. Now
> I'll grant you that the reaction of the students may be stronger than
> that of the average theater-goer because my school has a larger than
> average proportion of African-American, Latino, and Filipino students.
> The biggest laugh of the night came at the end of the movie, after the
> ridiculously cliched chase through the crowd (with gratuitous violence
> perpetrated on innocent bystanders just to show how bad the bad guys are
> in case you were really stupid and didn't get it earlier), when the good
> folks get saved by the guy in the helicopter. A woman yelled, "Oh yeah,
> here comes da Man. I wonder how big his gun is?"
>
> I stuck around to fill out the questionnaire so I could express the
> depth of my disgust for this idiotic film. The embarrassing part is I
> was the one who forced my friends to go see it because it had a female
> director and starred a non-white woman. They only went because it was
> free. Needless to say, I'm not allowed to pick films for these friends
> anymore....
>
> I think they must have fixed the film before general release.
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