When Movies Kill

MoLT points me to another "bad Ebert review." This one is Stepbrothers, which he gives 1.5 stars. Pretty bad. In this one, as with Caligula, Ebert is brought to the point of despair.

Sometimes I think I am living in a nightmare. All about me, standards are collapsing, manners are evaporating, people show no respect for themselves. I am not a moralistic nut. I'm proud of the X-rated movie I once wrote. I like vulgarity if it's funny or serves a purpose. But what is going on here?

Putting aside his first couple of sentences for a second, I wanted to say that I've been brought to the point of despair from watching a movie, too. It was Todd Solondz's Happiness. Ebert gave it 4 stars, and I'm not saying he's wrong. But the movie hurt me bad. My wife and I cried and cried as we left the theater, and I got so angry I punched the dashboard as we drove away. Maybe that was the point of the movie, though? I'm not really sure. Another movie that did almost the same thing to me was My Friends and Neighbors, which Ebert also gave 4 stars. Again, not even saying he's wrong. As with Happiness, I left that movie scarred, wanting to drown myself or do anything I could to unwatch the movie. It wasn't that the movie was bad, though. It was just crippling to see a movie that almost enjoyed human beings descending into savagery.

Ebert's talking about pointless things, though. Pointless vulgarity. Pointless sex. I think those things bother me, too, but I see them mostly as empty and stupid. I wonder why Happiness and Friends and Neighbors didn't skewer his soul, though. They really did mine. I can't give an objective review of either one, and I can't really understand how someone could become emotionally involved with each of those films and be able to say positive things of it.