MonsterPerfect Good idea lost in the noise

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

talisencrw This came in the outstanding 10-DVD boxed set 'Rialto Pictures: 10 Years', one of the finest things I've bought from The Criterion Collection (and a great deal too, one I'd heartily endorse).I had to wait an entire day, after watching the dreadful 'Disaster Movie', to get the acrid taste out of my mouth to watch this one, by my fourth favourite director ever ('Viridiana' is still probably my favourite of his, though). Luckily it had three of my favourite French actors from the period, in Bulle Ogier (just check out 'Maitresse' if you don't understand why), Delphine Seyrig and Fernando Rey (for the two 'French Connection' films alone)--even though for a director of Bunuel's strength, any actors could have sufficed. It's the ideas that stand out most triumphantly.It's most known for being Bunuel's Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film, but its OTHER nomination is what's almost neglected when people talk about him. Yes, they talk about Bunuel the director, or (from David Thomson) Bunuel the photographer, but people never realize his two nominations for the Calanda, Spain-native were never for director, but for writing (with another nod for his swan song, 'The Obscure Object of Desire').

jurgen-manycolored Not only are the lives of the bourgeoisie characters in the film pointless and irrelevant, but the film itself is pointless and irrelevant. To have people astounded by the "brilliance" of the film and the "genius" of Bunuel is to me astounding in itself. While someone like Fellini can entrance, Bunuel might have well produced a film based on alcoholic, drug-addicted ne'er-do-wells that said nothing worthwhile or did nothing worthwhile. A disjointed, badly acted, phony presentation of a group of individuals that are worth nothing yet somehow cunning enough (in the film) to elevate themselves to positions of importance. I found myself asking "What is the point of this film?" and the answer kept coming up "There is no point and the whole production is absurd." Contrived and unrelated dream sequences that go nowhere. Actions by the actors that mean nothing and make no sense in any context. Perhaps because the majority of viewers are in the same category as the actors in the film, they can relate to it. I cannot. There is nothing worthwhile to be taken from this film. If one derives intellectual meaning from such as this, I feel sorry for them.My inner self insisted on adding the following: A knock came on the door of my subconscious. I opened it, and it was a vacuum cleaner salesman who pushed past me and sat down on my couch."Did you have an unhappy childhood?" he asked, and continued without pause: "I did. I used to have a recurring dream where I was walking down a road. Did you eat lunch? It is curious that it is not raining out, is it not?" He then proceeded to begin a one-sided conversation of mechanical engineering from a feminist perspective. Without stopping after he had finished his discourse, he began to relate the mystical aspects of flatulence. Midway through this conversation, he stopped to say "I'm sorry, I have to leave now. I have another appointment. Thank you for your order." And left, leaving the door open.

oyason Six upper middle class jerks attempt to meet for dinner on a number of occasions and find themselves caught up in many a farce. In "The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie", the everyday becomes entangled with dream at every turn. The reality of the drug running foreign ambassador comes into direct conflict with the guerrilla forces his domestic policies engender, the gardener monseigneur of the church ends up taking confession from his parents' murderer while the culprit is on his deathbed, the cocktail party hosted by a general breaks down into a small battle in his dining room, a sexually frustrated couple are forced to elude their company and couple out in the garden, an afternoon luncheon is turned into an audit of fratricidal confession from a young army lieutenant. At every crossroads, the pretentious "civility" of professional society finds itself disrupted by the casual violence and mayhem that underscores their class privilege. Bunuel's use of the nightmare tells the audience what the bourgeoisie knows very well: they know what a bunch of casual gangsters they actually are, and sleep will not let them hide from themselves. And none of the charm of the bourgeoisie will be enough to break them away from their ongoing isolation from themselves and nature, expressed very cleanly by Bunuel's repeated image of the six professionals, in semi-formal dress, walking down a country road in the middle of nowhere. And it's all very funny, in an unfunny sort of way.Bunuel's masterpiece holds up well, almost forty years after its release. Here's a farce that demonstrates just how far a "satirist" like Sasha Baron Cohen ("Borat") really has to go before he has anything substantial to say with farce or film.

conedust La Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie is a celebrated film by a well-regarded surrealist auteur. Given that, and given my taste for such things, I went in with high hopes. But I rarely found it more than mildly amusing.It's undeniably clever. Bunuel's dry humor sparkles, and his gentle social critique hits its marks more often than not. The penultimate shot of Fernando Rey with a slice of ham stuffed in his mouth is one of the funniest and most memorable cinematic images I've encountered in quite a while. And Delphine Seyrig breezes through her scenes with hilariously blithe detachment. But the parts don't quite add up to a greater whole.The film reaches its peak about halfway through, once a pattern has been established (dinner parties will be attended, but dining will be teasingly withheld) and the central narrative has begun to digress and fragment. As the surreal intrudes upon the quotidian, a delicious sort of suspense sets in. Pity, then, that the last forty-five minutes squander this tension, retreating to tepid farce and a rather obvious critique of upper-crust social mores.Someone on the film's board once quoted the director as saying, "the bourgeois moral is the immoral thing for me, that which should be combated; the moral founded in our unjust social institutions as the religion, the homeland, the family, the culture, in short, the so-called pillars of the society." Thematically, the film consists of variations on this familiar counter-cultural conceit, and such thinking was certainly voguish in the late 60s and early 70s. It's an interesting and potentially valid argument, but I found the film's handling of the idea superficial, even clichéd.The same could be said, I suppose, of El Topo or Sweet Movie, but those films transcend glib adherence to fashionable ideologies and period style. I don't think La Charme Discret does that. Of course, it's more an urbane, low-key comedy of manners than a flaming art-bomb thrown through the window of middlebrow complacency, so perhaps the comparison is unfair. As a comedy, it is appealing, in a mild sort of way.Finally, I was disappointed by the film's look. I understand that the bland stage-set dining rooms are a device, and a successful one. But surreal detours aside, there isn't much to look at. The camera placements and movements are almost ploddingly ordinary, and while they capture the events adequately, they don't do anything interesting with them.I'm being unkind, of course, and terribly unfair. By stressing these complaints, I'm giving short shrift the wonderful performances and amusingly understated comic dialog. I'm overlooking the fabulously eerie dream sequences and Bunuel's masterful control of tone. I gave La Charme Discret a 7/10 because it IS charming, funny and somewhat intellectually intriguing. But I still came out of the experience feeling a bit let down...