There are some things that are good about it and some things that aren't so good. The major conflict would be that if it isn't taken as a satire, the morality is suspect. Like, he finally gets a revelation that he is becoming uncivilised and has a sorta-Christian change of heart, yet the film continues to suggest that…

Except of course that I was kidding — although X is Kantian, it is only incidentally.

Panic in Year Zero is a disaster… because it is about the end of the world, and is awkwardly directed, very confused in its postulation and subsequent reflection of its moral values, is Hegelian rather than Kantian — when Milland fares far better in the Kantian milieu, ref. X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes — and also it has…

If you get the DVD, Matheson has only bad things to say about The Last Man…

That Kent Jones is one casual motherfucker.

Why was your encounter with Luc akward?

Don't worry, Between, I'll drive a jagged bottle of Absolut through my New Order Ceremony/In a Lonely Place t-shirt in tribute.

So how does my jerking off as a single consenting adult work into all of this? I suppose it automatically implies permission…

That is what I keep telling my GF about my colection of photoshopped nudes.

God, what a fucking mess that is. Well, I hope you can forgive, look past and extrapolate from my mistakes. While you are at it, throw in some sense and meaningful content, as well. Is that asking too much?

Too big differences of SPR and TBYOOL is that one is a war film and one a post war film, and Time's positive review described the Wyler films as being a "mass entertainment" with "moments of knowing hokum". I'll spare the rest, but if you look on Time's archives for the review, the way it came together is actually a…

(In a bid to clarify the pointless 'beyond film' remark, I'd guess I'd say that we sense as if we have a certain complexity of depiction and understanding which was not present in melodramas of the past; yet melodramas of the past were suggestive of a complexity that the viewer would be resonsible to…

I don't mean to say that people have changed in their viewing accumen, as the first principle; I mean to say that movies are made differently today than before, and the change in viewing habits is a result of that.

Part of Verhoeven's whole schtick is facile presentation. That is part of the cinema's whole schtick, and Verhoeven is as much a cinematic, let's say, "cut up" as Tarantino. Why he is more problematic is because his references aren't as clear cut — as in, there are no cutaways to a silent film-style vignette, or the…

Robert Brustein once described plays of a certain ilk as works of "middle seriousness". The Lives of Others is the movie equivalent of that.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean — I'm not exactly sure what anyone means — but the director did a pretty cut-and-dried commentary on the DVD.

Wallflower, I like the explanation you give in the forth paragraph (…spiritual values… don't relate to any humanistic values…)

Songs From the Forth Floor
Plus, it's a musical.

It doesn't have the commentary.

Wallflower, how do you see King of New York as being similar to this film? Obviously I disagree with you, but I'm still interested to see it from your perspective. My opinion is no better than yours.