SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

MisterWhiplash I'll be frank: remember I sought this out because it was a) Joe Swanberg's first movie, and b) it seemed like it was, in part, a soft-core porno. No, it's not that. It has practically hardcore scenes with the director himself. Unfortunately I remember some of those scenes more than the scenes of drama, which involve the revolving lives of college aged people in love (and some of this looks like people in dorms).It's so naturalistic that it is trying for something different entirely, almost breaking the mold of both pornography films (the usual rough quality is at least given here a more direct shot-list, I think, than what is usually done by directors), and not unlike the other (must quote) "mumblecore" movies there is no firm script so the dialog and talk between actors and what is kind of breaking the fourth wall about relationships is extreme and intimate and extremely intimate all at once.When I mean extreme is that we get intimate with these actors to where that line is blurred between what is perhaps, arguably, exploiting the young actors who agreed to be in this (female and male, I mean this involves the cutting of public hair on camera), on top of the emotional extremes displayed. What this all amounts to is... maybe not a whole lot. But I was mesmerized watching this - it doesn't function as a typical porno despite the rampant nudity, and it doesn't function as your typical three-act structure dramatic narrative.It's experimental and in your face and primal and even philosophical and it doesn't give a good damn what you think of it. That's refreshing for a first movie. I just wish I could muster enough energy to watch it again.

Steve Pulaski Joe Swanberg was bold to make Kissing on the Mouth his directorial debut. Everything about it is a risk, and in 2005, do-it- yourself filmmaking had not gained the incredible momentum it has in recent time. This is the kind of film you make your fifth or sixth film, after you've established a name for yourself and your work and have created your own style of filmmaking. This is an uncommonly ambitious directorial debut from a man I admire quite heavily and have made an effort to pay attention to for the last couple of years. Since Kissing on the Mouth, Swanberg has predicated his film career off of making extremely low- budget films that often explore the themes of sexual exploration, technology, communication, the filmmaking process, and post-college life and his entry into the film world is one that steadily prepared us for what was to come. Ever since Swanberg entered film, he has been met with a sizable fire-storm of criticism for his low-budget style, which is often billed as mumblecore, a subgenre of film that is heavily defined by character, cheap production values, and excessive amounts of naturalistic dialog.The film follows Ellen (Kate Winterich), a twentysomething who has just had sex with an ex-boyfriend while currently seeing Patrick (Joe Swanberg), a fellow twentysomething currently invested in a personal project he's constructing that includes commentary on modern relationships and personal feelings on love. Patrick is the jealous type, while Ellen is the type of girl who possesses an "I don't care, you shouldn't care" attitude when it comes to issues in her life, and when the possibility of her cheating comes into question by Patrick, she increasingly becomes more closeted and alienating in her attempt to try to piece together what she wants without her entire love-life crumbling.A large part of this already short film (seventy-eight minutes) is sex, and by a large part, I mean roughly forty percent. However, the sex here is unconventional. It has an unpolished, imperfection to the way it is filmed, with Swanberg using extreme closeups on pubic hair, nipples, and unclear parts of the body. This style provoked intrigue as well as frustration for me because while I get a subversively shot sex scene I am also greeted with a shot that doesn't have accurate placement nor clear distinction of what exactly is occurring. Some will undoubtedly find this annoying and irritating, and, for that, it's almost too easy to dismiss everything the film has housed in it. Admittedly, Swanberg relies too heavily on these sex scenes, which scarcely come off as erotic more-so than as an anarchic attempt at creating style. Where Swanberg shines is in filming heavily-improvised dialog between the cast members, which is always a great time in my book. Because of the naturalism and inherent authenticity to the material based on its lack of gloss and polish, the actors could very well be expressing their own opinions to us and with that we naturally take away what we want from their monologues and discard whatever we don't want. While forty percent of the picture is made up of extended sex scenes shot with varying uses of the closeup camera shot, the remaining sixty is dialog or music montage. Obviously, the dialog takes prominence here because then we really can get a sense of what these characters are about and what their opinions on love are. The film's most revealing attribute is Patrick's audio montage of several different unseen people weighing in on subjects from marriage to hookups to relationships. This provides for a pleasantly relativistic look on other people's opinions of popular subjects. If sex/ relationships were political topics, Kissing on the Mouth would be the ultimate debate film.Just a few days ago I viewed Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless for the first time, a film that fundamentally and aesthetically changed the ideas of cinema by shamelessly bending the rules and toying with conventions that were long carried out by new as well as veteran directors. When Godard's directorial debut hit the scene in 1960, a breakthrough movement in cinema history was born. To compare Swanberg's Kissing on the Mouth to Godard's Breathless, to some, would seem like comparing trash and art but if one looks at how they fearlessly shatter all preconceived judgments and convention, one could view them as birds of a feather. It just so happens that one feather went on to leave an irrevocable watermark while the other left something of a lesser marking. For one of the pioneering films of the mumblecore subgenre in cinema - a subgenre I adore and simply can't get enough of - it's still quite fascinating and, at times, moving in its insights.Starring: Kate Winterich and Joe Swanberg. Directed by: Joe Swanberg.

thesar-2 I admire 'Kissing on the Mouth' for its frankness – pubic hair cutting and masturbation, especially from the lead/director Joe Swanberg. They weren't afraid to show trueness to everyday "private" occurrences. Unfortunately, the film falls under the 'The Brown Bunny' realm, though with a slightly more developed plot of jealousy. Yes, it mirrors 'Bunny' with a whole lot of nothing going on, or too many cinematography shots focused (or sincerely unfocused) on absolutely nothing – feet, hands or genitals. Again, unfortunately, I can see why this film was released, and why people are renting: true life sex scenes and full frontal (equally, both male and female) nudity. Other than that, it was a complete waste of time. We quickly learn of a post-college male/female roommate pair in which the male has obvious feelings for the female that sees him as just a friend while continuously having sex with her ex-boyfriend. Other than that, we are subjected to the every-day events of their boring lives: she works for her parents; he works on an extremely uninteresting sexual awareness project on his computer. For this all to work, the dialogue has to be interesting and the acting real. Neither work and it's as boring as watching someone drive for an hour, i.e. 'The Brown Bunny.' The only actor that stands out is Kate Winterich, and even she does some questionable acting. (The DVD extra with her in front of a mike is actually worth watching/listening to.) Again, I admire the filmmakers, especially Swanberg, for baring it all and not being afraid to expose themselves or shower-habits, but overall the film falls flat. It has narrations that doesn't fit the scenes, too many boring everyday events and unconvincing acting that you wonder, other than the soft-porn factor, why you rented this.

fedor8 "It's like hard to like describe just how like exciting it is like to make a relationship like drama like with all the like pornographic scenes thrown like in for like good measure like, and to stir up like contro- like -versy and make us more like money and like stuff." - Ellen, the lost quote."Kissing, Like, On the, Like, Mouth And Stuff" is like the best like artistic endeavor like ever made. Watching like Ellen's hairy arms and like Chris masturbating was like the height of my years-long movie-viewing experience and stuff. But before I like begin like breaking new U.S.-20-something-airhead records with the my "likes", let me like just briefly list like the high- like -lights of this visual like feast: 1. Chris doing the deed with his genitals. And not just that: the way the camera (guided so elegantly by Ellen and Patrick) rewards the viewer with a full-screen shot of Chris's fat white-trash stomach after he finishes the un-Catholic deed - that was truly thrilling. I can in all honesty say that I've never seen such grace. Chris, you should do more such scenes in your next movies, because that is exactly what we needed as a continuation of what that brilliant, brilliant man, Lars von Trier and his "Idiots 95", started. A quick w*** and then a hairy, fat, white belly: what more can any movie-goer ask for?! Needless to say, I can sit all day and watch Chris ejaculate (in spite of the fact that I'm straight)... Such poetry in motion. Such elegance, such style. No less than total, divine inspiration went into filming that sequence - plus a solid amount of Zen philosophy. Even Barbra Streisand could not get any more spiritual than this.2. Ellen's hairy, thick arms. The wobbly-camera close-ups, so skillfully photographed by our two directors of photography (I can't emphasize this enough), Ellen and Patrick, often caused confusion regarding the proper identification of the sex in question. There were several scenes when we would see a part of a body (a leg, arm or foot), yet it was often a guessing game: does that body-part belong to a man or a woman? Naturally, Chris and his fellow artists, Ellen, Patrick and whatsername, cast themselves on purpose, because their bodies were ideal for creating this gender-based confusion. It was at times hard to guess whether one is seeing a female or male leg. Patrick is so very thin and effeminate in his movements, so hairless and pristine, whereas Ellen and the other girl are so very butch, what with their thick legs and arms. Brilliant. 3. Brilliant - especially the way that neatly ties in with the theme of role reversal between the sexes: so utterly original and mind-blowing. Ellen behaves like a man, wants sex all the time, while her ex Patrick wants to talk - like a girl. Spiffing.4. Ellen's search for a Leftist mate. "He must love 'The Simpsons', which is quite Leftist." I am glad that the makers of this movie decided to break the long tradition of offering us intelligent Leftists. Ellen is such a refreshing - and realistic - change. The number of "likes" that she and her liberal friends manage to utter in less than 80 minutes is truly phenomenal (3,849, to be exact). They have managed to realistically transfer their real-life ineptness onto the big screen with a minimum of effort, and I applaud them for that.5. The close-ups of toes. Plenty of stuff here for foot-fetishists, which I think is a very liberal, highly commendable way of reaching out to sexual minorities. After all, shoe- and foot- fetishists are offered so little in modern cinema, so it's nice to see that someone out there CARES.KOTM, or rather, KLOTLMAS, offers more than meets the eye. It is not just a modest little film about shallow people engaging in hollow relationships while indulging in meaningless conversations. No, it's much more than that. It's about the light that guides all silly creatures; the guiding light that dominates the futile lives of various pseudo-artistic wannabes who just dropped out of film school, and plan to assault our senses with dim-witted drivel that will hopefully play well at pretentious festivals like Sundance and Cannes, enabling them to gain the necessary exposure hence some real cash for a change, with which they will later hire the likes of Sean Penn and George Clooney in promoting the saving of this planet and the resolving of ALL political problems this world faces. What better way to do that than by making porn at the very start? If Chris and Ellen did the camera here, as is clearly stated in the end-credits, then who held the camera while the two of them were in front of it? They probably hired some passers-by and shoved the camera into their hands...