| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Armond White,
New York Press |
Borat |
"Sacha Baron Cohen... is one of those showbiz embarrassments that tasteless people defend as 'edgy.' He's down there in the pits with Andy Kaufman and Neil LaBute, flashing crassness as entertainment. And if it hadn't been for 9/11, Cohen might have stayed in the pits. [Borat] rises from the pits like sewer gas to pollute the movie landscape. [It] recalls one of those Madonna records whose flatulent sound and odious ideology get promoted into a hit... Borat is not about politics (the ways in which people get along and govern themselves). What makes it a political comedy is Cohen's calculated manipulation of our social confusion... Avoid the trap of calling Borat polarizing; thats a code-word of media-hipsters who long for social divisiveness." |
Apparently, we've had Armond figured wrong all this time. Turns out he's a uniter, not a divider. The only reason he blindly spews venom at vast swathes of society is because deep down, he loves them so. Can't we all just get along and hate on Richard Linklater together? |
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| Owen Gleiberman, Enterment Weekly |
Borat |
"At times, Borat talks like a bad amateur shock jock. He thinks that men are rapists, which to him is a compliment, that women are whorish receptacles (he longs to 'make sexytime' with Pamela Anderson), that Jews are devils; his view of homosexuals makes Pat Robertson's look lavender. Yet for all the glorious, and jolting, offensiveness of his closed-minded, pea-brained patter, Borat, from what we can see, has no hatred in him. He's as innocent as a child." |
If ignorance is bliss, then what is ignorance of ignorance? Also, where the hell were all these critics when Freddy Got Fingered came out? |
|
Manohla Dargis,
The New York Times
|
Borat |
"Commentators often imply that Borat wouldn't be funny if Mr. Baron Cohen were not Jewish, which is kind of like saying that Dave Chappelle wouldn't be funny if he were not black. For these performers, the existential and material givens of growing up as a Jew in Britain and as a black man in America provide not only an apparently limitless source of fertile comic material, but they are also inseparable from their humor. But no worries: Borat makes poop jokes and carries a squawking chicken around in a suitcase." |
I don't get it. Sacha Baron Cohen mocks characters from Muslim countries, and people say that he can get away with it because he's Jewish?? Those Danish cartoonists should have converted when they had the chance. Also: If Dave Chappelle were not black, he'd probably be in jail. |
|
Tim Grierson,
LA Weekly
|
Cocaine Cowboys |
"The film's greatest strength is its wealth of frank interview subjects — specifically, its bad guys (the smugglers and the enforcers), who are a mesmerizing bunch possessing varying degrees of blasé sociopathic behavior. (Little wonder that the detectives interviewed here still sound haunted by these criminals' viciousness.) Some will object to Corben's adrenalized style, dark sense of humor and seemingly amoral tone — the film even flaunts a synthesizer-heavy score from Miami Vice composer Jan Hammer — but Cocaine Cowboys' pulpy entertainment value merely lures us into a grim, kaleidoscopic look at how one city was both destroyed and, ironically, eventually saved by some of the worst human beings to walk the Earth." |
If we want three hours of global stupidity, we could just turn on the TV. Or stare out the window. Or read our emails. Also, is this really the first American film that Armond has seen that "condemns U.S. culture"? Where has he been for the last five years? Watching home movies in Pat Boone's rec room? |
|
Wesley Morris,
Boston Globe |
Saw III |
"The Daytime Emmys aren't until next spring, but for the voters' consideration, I'd like to submit the stars of Saw III. Yes, I know: the Emmys are for television, but whom are we kidding? Television is a state of mind. And the makers of Saw III have delivered the most despicable episode of One Life to Live ever. Amid the nasty dilemmas (Hmmm? To dive into a vat of pig guts to save the drowning judge who sentenced the driver who killed my son or not?) are shouting matches and cry-athons at the deathbed of an extremely talkative person." |
We always thought of those Saw movies as being more like sitcoms: Too Close For Comfort, say, or Night Court, only with Bull as Jigsaw. |
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