I agree that the whole deserving-victim thing is more than a little ethically problematic. But I'll take Roth's version of reactionary filmmaking (target: frat-boy atavismn) over, say, Wes Craven's (target: hippies/promiscuous women/pot smokers/various signposts of the Left) any day.

I think that his audience surrogates—and protagonists—are the very people he wants to provoke. I hated (but knew people a lot like) the guys in HOSTEL and was happy to see their transgressive behavior duly punished. Their early visit to the sex club is mirrored exactly in the killing chamber, only they've become the…

During the hey-day of "torture porn," Roth's movies were mistakenly lumped in with the SAW series. CABIN FEVER and the two HOSTEL movies are a lot less ugly and a lot more fun than their reputation suggests. (Especially the unfortunately ignored HOSTEL PART II.)

At least with the HOSTEL series, the only perspective from which Roth comes off as a troll is from the frat brah POV: in the first, he aligns their sympathies with the hyper-misogynistic protagonists that end up the deserving what they get.

I don't think the Haneke-Roth comparison is too far off—they're just aimed at different subsets of the bourgeoisie. In terms of form and content, they pretty much both hit their targets too. Haneke, though, is a little less "subtle" (and we're in a hyper-narrow spectrum of subtlety here) when it comes to his execution.

And most people—except frat dudes—are too. The problem is, there are a lot of frat dudes out there and a lot of movies targeted at them. Roth is one of the few actually pulling the trigger.

I don't think she's saying anything new, but she's suggesting something—Roth isn't as dumb as he looks (or pretends to be)—that most moviegoers haven't wanted to consider given his persona. Like I said below, "to troll" is basically synonymous with "to provoke;" and, like most horror directors, that's what Roth does.…

Willmore's definitely onto something. It's too bad that "trolling" is now synonymous with "provocation," but that's what Roth has been up to since HOSTEL: subverting expectations and revealing the ugliness beneath his frat-dude persona. (I imagine he grew up around a lot of "brahs," and that he knows them inside and…

And EARRINGS isn't even their best. I'm surprised this whole article/thread isn't devoted solely to Criterion.

Thanks, Mike.

I wholeheartedly endorse your take on BIRDMAN, ROPE, and parts of CHILDREN OF MEN; but for the sake of the reductive argument du jour—and my own curiosity—what do you think of TOUCH OF EVIL?

What's with Criterion's new policy of repackaging every High Noir with a goofy, bubble-cartoon cover?

The finale's stakes were low enough that it could easily function as the narrative's end. Still, even without the hashtag, the episode subtly goes out of its way to set up a movie too—Abed ends up in Hollywood for chrissakes. It's pretty easy to imagine a big-screen "Community" that plays with filmic tropes:…

My read on it was that FIRST CLASS was a (relatively) low-rent reboot that turned out to be a surprise hit. So instead of a proper sequel to FIRST CLASS (which Matthew Vaughn wanted to center around the JFK assassination like his other did the Cuban Missile Crisis), Brian Singer wanted back on board and we got a…

I haven't been back since they tore down—or rather, redressed—the Institute of Future Technology; is the Simpsons ride really as bad as it seems?

While—following "Man of Steel"— I'll fight for "Superman Returns" well past whatever it deserves, that third act nags as the most miscalculated of all the movie's miscalculations. After 90+ minutes whizzing through a re-imagined zip-bang Metropolis, the nastiness and aesthetic repulsiveness of that swamp-green rock…

That's (underused) actor Jimmi Simpson—the grown Michael Mageau at the end of "Zodiac." He also used to pop up a lot on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

Sure, but there's 4 too…

*SPOILERS AHOY*

"Bright Flight" anyone?