"Horror Pornography" and a Drug-Abusing Grandmother

Eli Roth's Hostel is being described by some critics as "horror porn." That means it is exists to encourage and excite our baser appetites by serving up killings, mutilations, and torture—not to mention explicit scenes of sexual misbehavior—for our "entertainment." It's all designed to shock and to horrify audiences.

Guess what? Hostel is also the No. 1 film in America, tops at the box office. That means we're bound to see a lot more of this kind of thing over the next few years, in which other movies try to outdo Hostel—and the two Saw movies—with increasingly intense and explicit violence.

Hostel is about three hedonistic fools who indulge in all manner of unethical pleasures until they find themselves trapped in a game where others fulfill their own appetites for cruelty by torturing human beings and killing them in slow and grisly ways—decapitations, throats slit, heads smashed in, digits being cut off and body parts diced and tossed into a furnace, point-blank shootings, eyes being pulled from sockets, flesh drilled full of holes, a person throwing herself in front of a train, and more. It seems designed to delight people who share the unhealthy appetites of the movie's villains.

Nathan Lee of The New York Times says Roth's immature revelry isn't even good at scaring people. "Inspired by the brutal exploitation pictures of the 1970's and the nasty new breed of Asian horror films, Hostel is motivated by an adolescent urge to shock. And while it's true that no civilized person will remain unscathed by the film's relentless bigotry—this is one of the most misogynistic films ever made—Mr. Roth's gory spectacles are too calculated to deliver the transgressive jolts they so obviously seek."

We could only find one Christian film critic who bothered to suffer through the film (Christianity Today Movies opted to skip it). Marcus Yoars (Plugged In) says, "Days after seeing the film, I'm still wondering how it didn't get slapped with an NC-17 rating, because it pretends to be a porn flick for the first 45 minutes."

Yoars mentions how the filmmaker got the idea for the movie, and then sums up the film. "Roth was captivated with the warped notion that individuals could be so numb to the 'ordinary' vices of sex and drugs that they'd resort to inflicting extreme torture upon someone else as their next high. The result of his twisted fascination is grotesquely misshapen and transparently gratuitous."

Just as disturbing as the film's box office success is the fact that many mainstream critics are applauding it.

Grandma's Boy needs to be punished

Alex is a 35-year-old video game tester who moves in with his grandmother, and before long, he and grandma's social circle are sitting around sipping marijuana tea. That's the premise for Grandma's Boy, another movie for the immature and misguided, now on the big screen.

Again, we found only one Christian critic who'd seen it. Steven Isaac (Plugged In) objects to the film primarily for the drug abuse onscreen. "Grandma's Boy opens with a 10-second scene from the classic arcade game Galaga. It's the only one worth watching. … A recent nationwide study of more than 6,500 children and 532 movies reports that 38% of smokers ages 10 to 14 started their cigarette habit after seeing it on the big screen. And that those who witnessed the most smoking onscreen were two-and-a-half times more likely to smoke than those who saw the least. I can only wonder if the same statistics apply to marijuana. Because we already know that lots of 10- to 14-year-olds see R-rated movies."

Mainstream critics regret this visit with Grandma. Peter Howell (Toronto Star) says, "I may require therapy after seeing this."

BloodRayne is all wet

Set in 16th century Europe, BloodRayne follows the efforts of the evil Lord Kagan (Ben Kingsley) to attain some magical talismans that will make him into a malevolent and immortal superman. Resisting him are warriors who call themselves the Brimstone Society, but they need the help of a human/vampire hybrid called Rayne … who happens to be Lord Kagan's daughter.

Sound ridiculous? Apparently it is—even despite Kingsley, a fine actor who has been in some really dumb movies recently (A Sound of Thunder, Suspect Zero and Thunderbirds, all in 2005). Mainstream critics are panning Bloodrayne almost unanimously. Peter Hartlaub (San Francisco Chronicle) says, "Uwe Boll is such a bad director that it must be intentional."

The only religious press review of this film that we could find appears at Christian Spotlight. Todd Patrick says, "Uwe Boll made a name for himself by directing two other movie adaptations of video games: House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark. Both were terrible, but for some reason, studios keep using him to make feature films. Apparently there is money to be made with movie versions of video games, even if they are ridiculously bad."

Ringer has a decent ring to it

Johnny Knoxville has been involved in some crude and/or forgettable projects before—including The Dukes of Hazzard, A Dirty Shame, and TV's Jackass (later also made into a movie). And now, in The Ringer, Knoxville plays a guy so desperate for cash, that he decides to gamble on the Special Olympics—after first attempting to "fix" the games by pretending to be a person with intellectual disabilities.

Interestingly, the film has the blessings of the Special Olympics, who were involved in the creative process. The movie is brought to you by the Farrelly Brothers, executive producers who are also responsible for such fare as There's Something About Mary, Shallow Hal, and Stuck on You. This film isn't as crude as those, and it's getting some decent reviews from the Christian press.

Tom Price (Hollywood Jesus) says the movie "does an excellent job showing the range of ways others interact with people with developmental disabilities. As a reporter who covered the 1987 International Special Olympic games, I particularly appreciated the accurate depiction of the range of competitors—from the highly skilled whose motivation is no different from any other athlete's to the more prevalent participant whose greatest reward is simply the trademark hug at the end of any feat attempted."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) calls it "outrageous yet surprisingly sweet." He goes on to write that the movie "is unevenly entertaining, with director Barry W. Blaustein walking a fine line between indelicate and uplifting—though never exploitative or mean-spirited. But ultimately, 'The Ringer' looks beyond stereotypes, acknowledging the commonality, dignity and humanity we all share."

Tom Neven (Plugged In) finds a couple good things about the film: "There's no condescension, no 'aw, ain't they cute?' moment. … There is also an emphasis on good sportsmanship." But he also notes some misgivings about its sexual content and bad language, concluding that the Farrelly Brothers' "intentions are great. Their execution is, as always, not. Once again, then, [they] have squandered an opportunity to do some genuine good."

More reviews of recent releases

Brokeback Mountain: Andrew Coffin (World) says, "Pundits are hailing Brokeback Mountain … as having the potential to do for homosexuality what Guess Who's Coming to Dinner did for race. The love story it presents is so sympathetic, goes the conventional wisdom, that even denizens of red states will be won over to accept gay love. But the movie is too condescending to ordinary Americans and too anti-marriage to make such an impact."

He adds, "Life with their families is all crying babies, demanding wives, and hard, frustrating work. Gay sex with a kindred spirit in the glorious outdoors is portrayed as so much better. But the symbolism is all wrong. The movie associates homosexuality with nature—magnificent mountains, big sky, clear blue water, teeming forests—as contrasted with the constraints of a tacky, empty civilization."

Munich: Josh Hurst (Reveal) says of Steven Spielberg's latest, "It's not his first Big, Important Movie, but it's unquestionably his finest—a work of art that transcends polemics and platitudes, shooting from the hip and asking questions that it can't always answer. It's just the kind of movie we need more of right now."

But the editors of World team up to offer a dissenting opinion: "No one's right. No one's wrong. Can't we all just get along? It's disheartening to realize that the most serious work in recent years (or, perhaps, ever) of one of the world's most talented filmmakers can be reduced to such a bland aphorism."

King Kong: Andrew Coffin (World) writes, "Peter Jackson knows how to produce a spectacle—and no word better describes King Kong than spectacle. But this surprisingly violent film is not for young children—the action is graphic and contains profanity."

Memoirs of a Geisha: Darrel Manson (Hollywood Jesus) says, "Leaving the theater after seeing Memoirs of a Geisha, I wasn't quite sure what it was that left me unsatisfied. To be sure, it is a visual pleasure of the highest order. Director Rob Marshall and cinematographer Dion Beebe made almost every frame a work of art. Add to this a wonderful John Williams score incorporating both Western and Eastern music and including gifted musicians Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman. On the aesthetic level, this is a film that may be without peer this year. … But in the end, I was disappointed, I think, because the film never picked which themes it wanted to focus on. Instead it gave us bits and pieces of many themes, but not enough to fill out any of them."

The Gospel (now on DVD): Mike Furches (Hollywood Jesus) writes, "Why did the church not get behind this film and support it as they have virtually most other 'religious' film of recent years? I was troubled by that and still am, especially when considering that this is a rather thought provoking retelling of the Prodigal Son out of the Gospel of Luke. While the story is contemporized, the reality of it is that the story is just as thought provoking as ever and addresses various spiritual themes that one would think the church would support.

"Are there easy answers to that question? I don't think so, one of the most obvious, which I would hope is not true, is that because the movie is centered around the black church . . . ."

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