GazerRise Fantastic!

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Neddy Merrill Slurring, lisping Slovenian-accented psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek applies a Freudian lens to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and other directors. The title comes from the psychoanalytic belief that all people become twisted by their upbringing and thus are perverted to some degree by the time they hit adulthood. As nonsensical as that notion is, it is still the most intuitive of the hodge-podge of Freudian malarkey Zizek pitches in his classic professorial, self-agreeing delivery. Beyond being hard to follow these reinterpretations are unnecessary when it comes to more comprehensible movies such the Hitchcock films (or ?fill-ims? in Zizek?s accent) that he covers. Yes, ?The Birds? can be interpreted as an Oedipal struggle between the mother and new girlfriend but it can also be enjoyed as a creature-feature. Yes, ?Psycho? can be viewed as the struggle between the superego (apparently the mother?s corpse when it is in the hotel) and the id (apparently the mother?s corpse after Norman moves it down to the fruit cellar) but it can also be enjoyed as a slasher movie. And yes, ?Vertigo? can be understood as James Stewart?s ?mortification? of the lost Madeline through Judy but it can also be enjoyed as a crackling good murder mystery. Zizek?s cartography rises in value when he surveys more alien territory - most especially David Lynch. Put simply, Zizek?s explanation of why Dennis Hopper?s Frank in ?Blue Velvet? is both a violent rapist and just a guy who just needs a hug may not be correct but it beats trying to figure it out for oneself. His explanation of ?Mulholland Drive? is welcome precisely because the film makes so little sense. ?Lost? fans would probably appreciate any help he could provide on its final episode. Ultimately what we learn from Zizek comes from the director Sophie Fiennes? excellent conceit of reshooting famous scenes with the hairy, frumpy, corduroy-clad Zizek replacing Jimmy Stewart, Anthony Hopkins and others. We learn that movie actors a bring glamour and charm necessary for the illusion of cinema and that putting an ordinary-looking person in their place makes them suddenly very ordinary. In summary, ?Pervert..? is the strangest of mixes: it is a must see but isn?t very good, it is educational without making any sense and it informs while it entertains.

kosmasp More like psychological analysis of movies, but Psycho does sound better as a header. The man in charge of the movie (the narrator if you will) does depict movies here in his own way. Most of them are classics, but all of them are listed here at IMDb and I'd strongly advise you to see them (especially the Hitchcock movies, Solyaris, Conversation & and the Lynch movies), because Slavoj Zizek will reference them! Or in other words, he might spoil them for you. I don't remember if he spoiled more than those I've listed (I think the Chaplin movies too), but as I wrote it'd be best if you watch them all beforehand! In the IMDb listing there is a movie missing, that I did report to them, so it might get up there pretty soon. It's a Meg Ryan movie, but it's a only a brief snippet not big of a deal anyways.Zizek views and opinions are crazy and fun to listen to, if you're open minded to see things through another perspective (even if that does destroy your favorite movie a bit for you ... it doesn't mean it will do that, but it could)!

Kirk Miller More akin to a lecture from a slightly eccentric professor than anything resembling a film, Sophie Fiennes sensibly allows the extravagant Slavoj Zizek to take centre stage throughout the three parts of this documentary. Zizek himself is a very amiable presence on screen, always humorous and entertaining even when putting forward some of his more extravagant theories. That's not to say it's just a series of stationary talking-head shots, in fact it is a beautifully conceived piece of cinematography. Zizek turns up appearing to actually be in the sets of the movies he is discussing, a technique that remains visually interesting even after 150 minutes. There are also numerous clips taken from the films in discussion that, for once, thankfully remain in their correct aspect ratio.I just never really understood who this was all intended for. As an aid to film-studies students some of the concepts and arguments are a little too abstruse, and the films covered are more than amply examined in any number of textbooks. At best it is a cross-pollination of Zizek's genuine understanding of Freudian theory and his obvious admiration for the works of Hitchcock and Lynch, without being particularly enlightening on either psychology or cinematic technique.An entertaining look into Freudian theory through cinema, but ultimately a little pointless.

MisterWhiplash There's the danger with the critic/philosopher Slavoj Zizek with his film, directed by Sophie Fiennes, which takes together a wonderful amalgam of silent, horror, sci-fi, surreal and other contemporary thrillers together to make his points ofr Freudian comparisons to overload. But in the Pervert's Guide to Cinema he also makes even the more far-reaching points a point of departure from any other analysis I've seen on a collective section of films. While it doesn't cover the expansive territory Scorsese's movie documentaries cover, the same attachments are there, and Zizek has a definite love for all of these "perverse" examples and films, primarily the work of Hitchcock, Lynch, Chaplin and Tarkovsky. Yet one shouldn't go into seeing this- if you can find it that is, I got to see it almost by luck- thinking Zizek will just try and dissect all of the psycho-sexual parts or parts referring it in an obtuse, deranged manner. If anything he opens up one to points that might never be considered otherwise- would one think of three of the Marx brothers as representations of the Id, Super-Ego and Ego (Harpo's example is most dead-on for me).He's not just one to take on the classics though, he also considers the food for thought in The Matrix and Fight Club- in representations of the split between fantasy and reality and if the matrix needs the energy as much as the energy needs the matrix for the former, and in the attachment of violence in dealing with one's own self as well as ones double in the latter. He even throws in a piece from the pivotal moment in Revenge of the Sith when Anakin becomes Darth Vader, and the implications of shunning away fatherhood under that back mask at the very moment his children's births happens elsewhere. The ideals of fatherhood, male sexuality, the male point of view in turning fantasy into reality (at which point Zizek rightfully points to as the moment of a nightmare's creation), and female subjectivity, are explored perhaps most dead-on with Vertigo. This too goes for a scene that Zizek deconstructs as if it's the Zapruder film, where he dissects the three colliding points of psycho-sexual stance in the 'don't you look at me' scene in Blue Velvet.Now it would be one thing if Zizek himself went about making these sincere, excited, and somehow plausible points just face on to the camera or mostly in voice-over as Scorsese does. But he goes a step further to accentuate his points of fantasy and reality, and how they overlap, intersect, become one and the same, or spread off more crucially into some netherworld or primordial feeling for some characters (i.e. Lost Highway) by putting himself IN the locations the films take place in. Funniest is first seeing him in the boat "heading" towards the same dock Tippi Hedren's boat heads to at the beginning of the Birds; equally funny is as he waters the Blue Velvet lawn he goes on to explain the multi-faceted points of Frank Booth; only one, when he's in Solaris-like territory, does it seem a little cheesy. But Zizek seems to be having a lot of fun with this set-up, and after a while one bypasses the potential crux of this gimmick and Zizek's words come through.There were some films I of course would've expected, chiefly from Hitchcock and Lynch, but a treat for movie buffs come from seeing two things- the movies that one would never think of seeing in a film about films titled the Pervert's Guide of Cinema (top two for me would be the Disney Pluto cartoon and the exposition on Chaplin's films, albeit with a great note about the power and distinction of 'voice'), and the ones that one hasn't seen yet (i.e. the ventriloquist horror film, Dr. Mabuse, Stalker, among a few others) that inspire immediate feelings of 'wow, I have to see that immediately, no questions asked.' Zizek is a powerful writer with his work, and puts it forward with a clarity that reminds one why we watch movies in the first place, to be entertained, sure, but also to have that actual experience of sitting down and having something up there, as he put it, looking into a toilet. It's probably one of the greatest films about cinema, and in such a splendidly narrow analysis of how Freud works its way into films regarding desire, the Id/Super-Ego/Ego, and of the supernatural in fantasy, that you may never see...unless distribution finally kicks in, if only on the smallest levels.