It's Fun To Bash Stuff That Sucks

I love Roger Ebert....
He's easily the best film critic in the business today, and really, of all-time.


Roger has been so successful, I think, because he possesses the ability to be analytical and eloquent while AT THE SAME TIME appealing to the sensibilities of the common reader. Ebert is like Stephen King -- he's perfectly capable of writing for the New Yorker crowd, but he chooses to write for the USA Today camp. He's the Mark Twain of film criticism; he writes to all of us.

Even if Gene Siskel had lived this long, I still think Roger Ebert would have been more famous. As the Nostalgia Critic noted, Siskel may have been the perfect film reviewing partner for Ebert, but he was always more detail-oriented. You'd hear Siskel critique a movie more on its technical merits than on how it made him FEEL. Ebert, on the other hand, looks at a film as a whole -- he tells us about the experience. That's what us Americans care about, anyway -- the big picture.

I remember being a lad of about ten, and waking up early on Sunday mornings to watch Siskel and Ebert's At the Movies on the TV. I loved that kind of stuff -- nice, reasoned, and honest discussions of motion pictures. From it, I learned a lot about how one might react to a particular film. By that time (the early 90s or thereabouts), the two critics were a little more mellow than they may have been in the early days when they'd point fingers at each other and get all shouty. Still, I picked up a great deal about movies from their discussions. It was way better than the base, surface news about film provided by the likes of Entertainment Tonight or the E Channel. It was like the difference between NPR and the local six o'clock TV news.


Anyway, one thing at which Roger Ebert truly excels is bashing a bad movie. As a wannabe, hack film critic myself, I can tell you that it's often easier and more fun to trash something than it is to praise it, or merely explain why it's OK. And boy, when Ebert really hates something, WATCH OUT! He's a master of making fun of lousy films. Even when I disagree with him (which actually is rather often), I still stand in awe of Ebert's ability to tear down a crappy movie.

I recently reflected on this fact when I read Ebert's hilarious smackdown of Sex and the City 2. Now, I gotta be honest here -- I actually do agree with some charges that complaints of that movie are sexist in origin. I mean, plenty of stupid MALE comedies get a free pass from critics, or at least aren't bashed as hard and with such abandon. Don't get me wrong, though. Sex and the City 2 is no doubt an utterly mindless waste of time, and I feel just as irritated by its characters as Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells, who wrote that the Sex and the City franchise could be used as Al Quaeda recruitment films. STILL, I gotta admit that dumber things starring all men HAVE been treated with less vitriol.

In Ebert's case, though, I fully support the joyous thrashing of this movie. What can I say? The man is so good at making fun of crap that I'll let any underlying sexism on his part slide. Plus, he's a cancer survivor. What are you gonna do? Attack someone who's been through friggin' CANCER?? What kind of JERK are you, anyway???


I recently finished reading one of Ebert's books, Your Movie Sucks. It's a collection of Roger's most scathing negative reviews -- all one, and one and a half, star rants against truly terrible wastes of celluloid. I tried to glean as much from it as I could. After all, a guy like me, with MY particular viewing habits, ought to be well-versed in negative criticism. Let's face it, a large percentage of the pictures I watch are just plain bad. Thank you, Ebert, for providing me with some guidance in bashing craptastic films...like this one.

Martyrs (2008)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1029234/


Netflix description:
Years after she escaped from an icy torture chamber in an abandoned slaughterhouse, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) enlists the help of her closest friend, Anna (Morjana Alaoui), to track down the family who tormented her and exact her revenge. But when Lucie and Anna investigate further, they discover that they've only scratched the surface of an unspeakably vile secret organization. Pascal Laugier directs this ultraviolent horror film.

OK, so Martyrs is the lovely story of an upper-middle class suburban family enjoying life together. When the movie starts, we find these folks sitting around the breakfast table, laughing and discussing their plans for the day. What a charming bunch!

Well...charming, that is, until a couple of psycho girls suddenly bust in and unload shotguns into the entire clan. Then, they become a little less "charming," and a little more...you know..."dead."

Yeah, the psycho chicks, as it turns out, were once held captive and tortured by the parents in this particular family unit. They've come back for revenge, and my GOODNESS, is it of the cold variety! The girls' main targets (the parents), of course, take a little longer than the kids to die, so the first act of Martyrs is really an extended death scene, with a whole lot of really (REALLY) loud screaming. Seriously -- this movie takes the whole screaming thing to a new level. I had to turn down the volume on my TV for fear that my neighbors might think I was brutalizing someone. And most of the crazy screaming comes from our heroines, the shotgun-wielding Revenge Sisters!

These chicks are pretty mad. Really, though, I don't blame them. See, through frequent flashback scenes, we learn of the horrific ways in which they were abused by their former captors, who now lie in a pool of their own blood in a bathtub. The torture flashbacks in Martyrs are like what you might see in the Saw series, only more ugly. I mean it -- this movie is VIO-LENT!

Anyway, our heroines do a little snooping around the house, and find that there is still an active, fully-functioning torture chamber down in the basement. Yup -- another girl is down there being abused in all sorts of sick, bloody ways. SO, of course, the two main chicks (I don't know their names, and don't care enough to find out) decide to free her. Thus unfolds an increasingly-violent series of rescue scenes, the most disturbing of which involves the captured girl getting a steel helmet removed from her head. See, it's been literally DRILLED into her skull, so one of the main chicks has to yank out a bunch of industrial staples as blood spurts in her face. Yech.

As indicated, Martyrs is incredibly gory. In fact, it's downright nasty and repulsive. Everything about this movie is disgusting, even if it IS well-made. You get the sense that this picture's director, somewhere deep down in the darkest part of his diseased brain, kind of ENJOYED reveling in such nastiness. There's a term for it which I won't delve into here, but this film is intended for a specific audience, the less-hardcore members of which might get thrills out of the Hostel series.

Really, Martyrs is just plain unpleasant to watch. Sure, it's stylish and artsy, but that can't compensate for the fact that I didn't enjoy a single moment of this one. There's tons of nudity, but it all involves actresses who look like anorexic 14 year-olds, so you'll just walk away from the deal feeling dirty. Even without that element, though, the movie is slimy all over.


The plot thickens in the third act, when we're introduced to a secret society that's behind the whole kidnapping-torture thing; but by that point, we really don't care anymore. Martyrs is nasty, depraved, and pointless. The excessive, incessant shrieking that comes from our heroines is, by itself, enough to make this a jarring experience. Factor in the over-the-top cruelty inflicted upon the film's characters, and you've got one ugly, laborious motion picture.

I hear that an American studio is remaking this one (the original is French). Maybe the typical American "dumbing down" when it comes to remakes will actually serve some good in this case, since the source material it's based upon is pure sleaze. And just think -- this is coming from a guy who normally LIKES sleaze!

1 out of 5.

b.