Must see movie...whoa!..just whoa!

[Ambrosio Spinola]

A friend of mine brought along yesterday a DVD he got recomended. Well...it was some piece of film. VERY brutal but on the same time very thought provoking. The movie is screen backwards...that is, it starts with the end and goes from there to the start by sequences. Each sequence makes you try to find answers which then get shattered in the next take back.

Maybe someone here has seen it too and would like to comment. In any case its definetly a movie to see. Perhaps not with your girlfriend and not in a casual "entretainment" mood.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290673/

Irréversible (2002)

http://www.sineport.com/poster/2002/irreversible.jpg

[6(sic)6]

I've seen that movie.. It is very brutal and very good made I must admit!
The reapeing sequence is a very good made it makes your blood boil and it really touches the nerves if i might say so...

I only watched the movie after the rape... Couldnt stand it more was pretty angry.
So I decided not to see the whole movie.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

I agree its very hard to watch through (even for nazees like me :p). But after its end its very thought provocking and clichee breaking. I do not want to spoil the story for anyone so I will refrain from going into details.

[Helios Panoptes]

IIRC, gay rights groups complained that this movie was homophobic. While this is a point in its favor, I thought it was just okay.

[Billy Score]

didn't see it, however will look into it. Any film with Monica Bellucci in it can't be too hard to watch:D

[Hakluyt]

Ixabert has continually recommended this film to me, so I've declined opportunities to see it.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

I´m sure it will keep your heads thinking for a few days. And Monica just looks great..that is, before the thing that happens to her.

Yeah, homosexuals do not come very nice out on this film at all.

[il ragno]

This is new to me but it's now on my list. (I just hope it's better than BAISE MOI, the last 'shocking' French film I had reco'd to me.)

Thanks for the heads-up, Ebus

[Count Eustace II]

Irréversible was definitely mind-blowing. Another new French mind-bending film out in the art theaters now is Caché. These films might be bizarre or contain graphic scenes of violence but one thing that French films do is make you think, and think some more. Both of these films I mentioned here haunted me for days and days.

[sainte-marthe]

Sounds very gimmicky, both for the backwards storytelling and sensationalistic scenes.

[Pablo Escobar]

Sounds very gimmicky, both for the backwards storytelling and sensationalistic scenes.

It is... it's one of those boring French movies made to shock you with cheap manipulation. I hoped this style would die by the end of the 90's. I was very wrong.

It's backward storytelling is nothing more than a gimmick.
( for example, Memento's backward story had a lot to do with the mystery,
since the suspense is reversed ).

[Ambrosio Spinola]

Sounds very gimmicky, both for the backwards storytelling and sensationalistic scenes.

Give it a shot and report back ;)

So you saw the movie and it did not produce anything in you Awar? You are one tough SOB :p

[Pablo Escobar]

So you saw the movie and it did not produce anything in you Awar? You are one tough SOB :p

A good movie first makes you feel for the characters, it sets up the world etc.
It doesn't just shock you with a few gruesome scenes featuring random people,
and then bore you with someone else's life.

When violent shit happens to you or your loved-ones, it's of a much higher magnitude than just seeing stuff happen to people you don't know.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

I do not know but while the story was unfurling I did feel for that trio and how events just fell on them. What I liked alot about it was actually this sense of helplesness you get since you know already the ending and you can only hope trying to explain yourself how these fellows got into this situation. At the start you think he is just a thug, then one back, he seems like a racists abusing the Chinese cab driver, even Monica herself is shown in a scene as pretty slutish talking smack in the subway and on the party..its like provoking you to say "Oh, maybe she "deserved" it somehow"..but one hope after the other gets beaten down to the begining. For me it was not about the gore, the blood or the shock..it was just the real brutality that can unfold upon someone just like that.

The scene with the two "friendly" thugs is just great, you can see how this guy got manouvered with some fine choice of words into trying to take vengance from a point he might have just gone home trusting in the police actions.

[leondegrance]

Nothing better than hot chicks (Monica Bellucci) speaking the French language.

The rape scene was brutal.

[Crowley]

I like feel good movies like Groundhog Day and Run Lola Run.

[Billy Score]

I like feel good movies like Groundhog Day and Run Lola Run.
Run lola run sucked ass.

Give me some good Cannibal films or Silent Night Deadly Night

[Crowley]

Run lola run sucked ass.

Give me some good Cannibal films or Silent Night Deadly Night

I liked Run Lola Run. Cannibal films are boring. In fact most films are boring, hardly better than television, about on the same level as reading novels.

[Billy Score]

I liked Run Lola Run. Cannibal films are boring. In fact most films are boring, hardly better than television, about on the same level as reading novels.
Any film that shows a woman forced to give birth then beaten to death with clubs/impaled and then have her offspring buried in mud, cannibals coming to New York City/Niagra Falls and assasinating people with blow darts and castration with a flint axe cannot on any level be boring. You are just a homo :(

[brigadier Biggles]

i DL this last night on ebustyanus rec and scrolled along to check it earlier and saw the face smashing with an extinguisher...bloody HELL that is hardcore, that guy looked like a cross between an asian and spaghetti bolognese by the end.

rest looks crap.

[Crowley]

Any film that shows a woman forced to give birth then beaten to death with clubs/impaled and then have her offspring buried in mud, cannibals coming to New York City/Niagra Falls and assasinating people with blow darts and castration with a flint axe cannot on any level be boring. You are just a homo :(

I don't like movies. Sometimes if I'm really bored I'll waste my time watching them. They remind me of the old simstim addicts from science fiction: simulation stimulation. I was a speed freak for ten years, I don't have any need to go scare myself at the movies. I like things nice and peaceful.

[brigadier Biggles]

i'm a late teen and like things nice and peaceful too...long train journeys with classical or chillout music, relaxing in the garden etc..

i also like loud and stupid things as well, hollywood films/games are ideal, balance it right and its fine imo.

[Crowley]

i also like loud and stupid things as well, hollywood films/games are ideal, balance it right and its fine imo.

I'm about the only person I know that doesn't care much for television or movies.

[infoterror]

Irréversible was definitely mind-blowing. Another new French mind-bending film out in the art theaters now is Caché. These films might be bizarre or contain graphic scenes of violence but one thing that French films do is make you think, and think some more. Both of these films I mentioned here haunted me for days and days.

Neither of these are better than "Crash" or "Brokeback Mountain." Boycott France! They hate our freedom.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

Saw it again yesterday at some friend´s house and the hopes I had for it to be less of an impact upon the second screening were dashed. Worse...I just noticed they actually killed the wrong guy in vengance.

Oh man

[Jimbo Gomez]

One of the best films I saw during the last year. The quiet guy is most interesting, he follows his doped up friend around even though he knows this will end bad, and in the end it is he who kills the (wrong!) rapist to protect his friend from a forced buggery. Brutal.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

The friend while all the time trying to calm his buddie was still very much in love with Monica (his ex) and when confronted with the fact that the bad guy (wrong guy) would end up victorious went out in full blown rampage.

The guys I liked the best were those two fiends that encouraged the boyfriend into the hunt by playing on his manliness and talking him into not trusting the police to fix this.

[Hakluyt]

Ixabert has continually recommended this film to me, so I've declined opportunities to see it.
I have since added the film to my list in the top 10 thread. :p

[Jimbo Gomez]

The friend while all the time trying to calm his buddie was still very much in love with Monica (his ex) and when confronted with the fact that the bad guy (wrong guy) would end up victorious went out in full blown rampage.

The guys I liked the best were those two fiends that encouraged the boyfriend into the hunt by playing on his manliness and talking him into not trusting the police to fix this.


Those big morrocans? :D

[Jake Featherston]

There's another film (in which the main character makes a brief cameo in "Irreversible") called "I Stand Alone." If you "like" one, you'll probably "enjoy" the other.

[Helios Panoptes]

Saw it again yesterday at some friend´s house and the hopes I had for it to be less of an impact upon the second screening were dashed. Worse...I just noticed they actually killed the wrong guy in vengance.

Oh man

Did they? I was never able to tell. I thought it was intentionally left open to interpretation.

[Helios Panoptes]

Did they? I was never able to tell. I thought it was intentionally left open to interpretation.

I reviewed it. The guy who gets killed and the rapist look similar, but they're dressed differently. I think the rapist is standing next to the one whose face is bashed in.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

Yeah, the boyfriend talks to two guys asking for the "Tenia", the one that walks of bored (and gets then killed) is the wrong one while the culprit was actually the other guy standing next to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwSc-uPsxfI

STRONG VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED

[Ahknaton]

The rape scene gave me a woody. That's just wrong. This movie makes me feel uncomfortable.

[O'Zebedee]

Couldn't get past the rape scene.

Talented director, though - I Stand Alone blew me away.

[Jimbo Gomez]

Why do you anglos translate every movie title? I stand alone = seul contre tous. Excellent movie by the way.

[O'Zebedee]

Because that's how I first came across the film - as a subtitled DVD box with the title I Stand Alone.

Plus, despite eight or so years in the theoretically bilingual Canadian school system, my French still just plain sucks.

[Jake Featherston]

Plus, despite eight or so years in the theoretically bilingual Canadian school system, my French still just plain sucks.

If it ain't English, it might as well be Charlie Brown's mother talking.

[il ragno]

I stand alone = seul contre tous. Why do you anglos translate every movie title?

To show support for our troops.