I saw this movie a couple of weeks, I saw the previews on tv, and I was like.. ohh ok this looks interesting. I think I was gonna see a inde film about teenage angst, with a lot of mind-breaking things. But it all look like one cf those commercials made to brainwash your head. I mean how stupid could this movie be.. I mean I myself wanted to kill ALL of the characters for being so stupid and sumissive, and because of the lack of a mentality on their own. The worst par was it, that it was based on a TRUE??!! story.. I mean if it was, it has to be byass.. because for real who acts or thinks that way. I think it was a really bad way to put how a person can abuse an control others.. in less words, to me it sucked.
yea this movie was ridiculous. i remember i saw it with some kids who were so into it and they just couldnt get enough of it, but man i was flabbergasted at how awful it was. you should see the commentary flint gives about it, this guys real serious about what he does. he did kids also, which was just a fucking stupid movie, painting a really poor picture and setting a really bad example. its like the guys living out some teenage dream
I rented it on DVD and thought the movie had no redeeming qualities what so ever. However, it was like driving past an auto accident ... you don't want to look but you just can't help yourself. Yes, it was based on true events and characters. The one murdered was abusive toward his friend and the guy did take the abuse, just to remain friends. After watching the movie I felt numb. As a side note, you should watch the extras ... they talk about sleeping with the director to get the part ... both the guys and the girls... all tounge in cheek of course.
i hope its the same movie that i saw!! seems to be getting lots of bad reviews...i thought it was just real funny...it had a geeky kid that was being picked on right!! Chubby with glasses???
the movie is very good and insightful, it may be hard for some to connect to just because they don't (or never have) hang out with those kind of people the ending is really good the only problem I saw in it was that mafia kid was really unrealistic a real mafia kid would have definently made sure they were better equipped
duck and lanalou ... I don't think we're talking the same movie. there isn't any "geek" that I know of nor a mofia kid. It stared Brad Renfro as the kid bullied and Nick Stahl as the bully. also Nick's character would watch gay porn while having sex with his girl friend.
yeah i didnt particularly like this movie but i did like kids though. it's very hard to believe that there are kids out there like that, but these are based on white trash american teens... i personally would not be so shocked that there are people like this. so i gave the movie more merit than most. but, it ain't no kids or gummo or ken park etc.
The Mafia kid he is talking about is Leo Fitzpatrick (Telly from Kids). The reason he wasn't "better prepared" I think is because he was a wannabe badass who wasn't quite old enough to handle it. I thought this movie and Kids were both great. Of course the average kid is not quite as submissive as some of these others, but these things do happen (i.e. Charles Manson, Adolph Hitler). The wrong people in the wrong situations can do some very wrong things. I wouldn't watch this thing religiously, as someone mentioned friends of theirs did, but I think it is an interesting look at a horrible situation that is disturbingly possible (enough adjectives for you?). Either way, it is not for those with a weak stomach. P.S. Gummo, on the other hand is definately not worth watching.
I liked this movie. It shows kids dealing with a situation that they thought would work out but didn't. It shows them telling people what they did and acting like it really wasn't a big deal after all..
oh what? gummo is the better movie out of kids, bully and ken park. these movies are meant to shock. i believe that is really the main purpose out of these films. nothing more... nothing less... gummo looked just as real as kids (you have to admit the acting in kids was amazing) and almost as shocking as ken park. gummo owns.
I haven't seen Ken Park, but after much waiting, I finally saw Gummo this summer and it became quite possibly the worst film I had ever seen. It tried hard to put forth the disturbing reality that Kids and Bully did, but instead became an uninteresting sick-fest. This to me is a perfect example of a filmmaking trying to gross out the audience so much that he forgets that he is making a movie; and it definately shows. To each his own, but from the drowned cat to the mentally retarded prostitute, I just didn't get it. P.S. how do you think Ken Park is in comparison to the other three? I was thinking about checking it out.
ok your summation on the movie gummo on how it's there to gross out the audience is how i would sum up ken park. it's banned in the us for a reason. i personally dont recommend this movie. but, since you've seen the other three films, you might as well and see it. to respond to your comment about "forgets that he is making a movie," i feel you don't neccessarily have to a narrative or plot to make a movie. a movie could just also be a collection of images. what do those images mean? thats for the viewer to figure out.
I like films like Eraserhead that challenge you to make sense of them, but in the case of Gummo, it seems like they have the very simple subject of "disfunctional small hick town" and they just keep re-affirming it in several scenes. It seems to me that if you are going to have a hidden plot beneath the obvious storyline, it should be a continuing story. I don't really see the symbolism that runs through this one, it just seems like more of a gross-out. I don't mean to argue, and I am not trying to demean you in any way, because I truly believe that every film is different for every person. To each his own. Also, I am sorry that this thread has turned from it's topic of Bully, if anyone has anything to say about this movie please continue, and I will stop sterring the thread in the wrong direction.
This is all very interesting because Roger Ebert, a well-known film critic, loved this film. Giving it four stars (out of four), he stated that Larry Clark's film "has all the sadness and shabbiness, all the mess and cruelty and thoughtless stupidity of the real thing." Roger Ebert believes these characters are meant to be "stupid", if you will. Is it here for entertainment? Probably not. But is it here to make you think? I believe so. It reminded me of Clark's previous film, 1995's Kids; a film not to watch with your spouse but a film to wake you up to reality. Not all of cinema is here for your entertainment. But, hey, I didn't like it either.
oh no im not arguing at all. in fact i like the direction that this thread is or was going. but about eraserhead, what did you think the movie was trying to say? did you think there was something underneath all that?
another movie along the same lines is L.I.E. I felt depressed aand empty inside after watching this one. I was like "well fuck, that was a certainly cheerful ending"
The thing is for me Bully is not a movie that made me think.. the only thing that I tought about the movie, is how fake everything and the irony that it was a true story. I mean the story could have worked, but I don't think they told it in the right way, I mean it needed to be more character focus, more of what this people felt, think.. I think the whole thing was treated in a superficial way. There was no depth in it.
