If you are an aspiring documentary-maker, and want a good example of how to go about making a documentary that fails to prove its point, and skips over more interesting territory in favor of boring and irrelevant territory, this is the movie for you.
I think a lot of the good reviews here can be explained by its choice of subject matter alone. I too am interested in the subject, and that's exactly why I thought this film was mostly just pretty frustrating.
It really didn't explain very well what the NC-17 problem was, exactly. It was really obsessed with doing some stupid investigation to find out the names of the individuals who do the ratings for MPAA, where they lived, and who their children were. That, plus a few chopped up interviews with movie directors whining about their movies getting slapped with NC-17s, and that was most of the content of the film. Stupid.
It spent about one minute, maybe, on the main part of the NC-17 problem, which is that many movie theaters and certain DVD stores won't touch a movie with an NC-17 rating, or, I guess, one that just isn't rated at all, which makes your producer not like you much if you get one of those ratings. But mainly all it does is just point out that this problem exists.
Why, exactly, are businesses that show movies and sell DVDs treating adults like infants? And why do they have so much power over the movie studios? That's mainly all I'm interested in knowing about when it comes to the NC-17 issue. This movie doesn't seem to talk about the reasons at all. It just notes the problem and moves on, as if that's just as much a part of inexorable unalterable reality as the sky being blue, as if that's just as reasonable as laws against murder.
It's easy to see why an independent movie is more likely to get slapped with an NC-17 rating, y'know, because the MPAA is really just the arm of the big movie studios, but this film just kind of makes a bare accusation about the MPAA discriminating against independent films, and doesn't really provide much evidence for this. I have no doubt it's true--but it would have been interesting to see some actual evidence.
The movie argues that the MPAA is more likely to slap an NC-17 on a movie that has gay sex in it, or that has intense orgasms in it, or sex scenes involving views of actual sexual fluids, but it didn't provide much good evidence of this, which really kind of leaves you wondering whether the MPAA is really all that discriminatory against these kinds of movies.
I left the film wondering if the MPAA was really all that bad, just in general. I am not saying the MPAA isn't bad, and for all I know, the MPAA is Satan incarnate, but I can't tell just from watching this movie. Clearly the movie was trying to argue that the MPAA is in fact Satan incarnate, but it was doing a very poor job of backing up its argument.
I can see why directors would prefer if the MPAA used actual hard-and-fast rules or guidelines, spelled out in advance, about what gets you in NC-17 territory, or if you were allowed to base an argument in your MPAA appeal on precedent ("this movie got an R and it had worse stuff than mine" arguments, which apparently are just not allowed by the MPAA in its appellate process for who knows why), but the movie didn't really even spend much time talking about this kind of thing. Instead, the filmmaker seemed obsessed with actually tracking down the names of the individual MPAA employees and their children.
I think it was really frustrating and poorly done. It's an interesting subject that there really should be a good movie about, so it's really too bad that this is the movie that got made. I hope someone else comes along and does a better movie about this one day.
I think a lot of the good reviews here can be explained by its choice of subject matter alone. I too am interested in the subject, and that's exactly why I thought this film was mostly just pretty frustrating.
It really didn't explain very well what the NC-17 problem was, exactly. It was really obsessed with doing some stupid investigation to find out the names of the individuals who do the ratings for MPAA, where they lived, and who their children were. That, plus a few chopped up interviews with movie directors whining about their movies getting slapped with NC-17s, and that was most of the content of the film. Stupid.
It spent about one minute, maybe, on the main part of the NC-17 problem, which is that many movie theaters and certain DVD stores won't touch a movie with an NC-17 rating, or, I guess, one that just isn't rated at all, which makes your producer not like you much if you get one of those ratings. But mainly all it does is just point out that this problem exists.
Why, exactly, are businesses that show movies and sell DVDs treating adults like infants? And why do they have so much power over the movie studios? That's mainly all I'm interested in knowing about when it comes to the NC-17 issue. This movie doesn't seem to talk about the reasons at all. It just notes the problem and moves on, as if that's just as much a part of inexorable unalterable reality as the sky being blue, as if that's just as reasonable as laws against murder.
It's easy to see why an independent movie is more likely to get slapped with an NC-17 rating, y'know, because the MPAA is really just the arm of the big movie studios, but this film just kind of makes a bare accusation about the MPAA discriminating against independent films, and doesn't really provide much evidence for this. I have no doubt it's true--but it would have been interesting to see some actual evidence.
The movie argues that the MPAA is more likely to slap an NC-17 on a movie that has gay sex in it, or that has intense orgasms in it, or sex scenes involving views of actual sexual fluids, but it didn't provide much good evidence of this, which really kind of leaves you wondering whether the MPAA is really all that discriminatory against these kinds of movies.
I left the film wondering if the MPAA was really all that bad, just in general. I am not saying the MPAA isn't bad, and for all I know, the MPAA is Satan incarnate, but I can't tell just from watching this movie. Clearly the movie was trying to argue that the MPAA is in fact Satan incarnate, but it was doing a very poor job of backing up its argument.
I can see why directors would prefer if the MPAA used actual hard-and-fast rules or guidelines, spelled out in advance, about what gets you in NC-17 territory, or if you were allowed to base an argument in your MPAA appeal on precedent ("this movie got an R and it had worse stuff than mine" arguments, which apparently are just not allowed by the MPAA in its appellate process for who knows why), but the movie didn't really even spend much time talking about this kind of thing. Instead, the filmmaker seemed obsessed with actually tracking down the names of the individual MPAA employees and their children.
I think it was really frustrating and poorly done. It's an interesting subject that there really should be a good movie about, so it's really too bad that this is the movie that got made. I hope someone else comes along and does a better movie about this one day.