Truly Dreadful Film

A Disappointing Continuation

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I love this movie...best movie I have seen ... last 5 years... just brilliant... epic black comedy masterpiece... highly recommend.... There are so many things I like about this movie... a young woman possible having Aspergers trying to figure out who she is... thinking she could find herself in her new marriage... realizing that marrying a beer drinking sports guy ... who hangs out with football playing friends he has had since childhood... along with the cheerleader girls... then she gets divorced and goes punk...and the contrast between going punk and the yuppies...just brilliant.... Go Punk USA !!! and how healing that is. If ever have major heartbreak from any relationship..the best medicine is to heal with music... best yet "Punk Music" !! Where everyone is just rebellious and having fun in the process. Music is the magic that heals ones broken heart to heal again... listening... singing... dancing... partying ... celebrating... to the music... be the music... be free....

You know what usually happens when you watch an indie movie with divided 1 star/5 star reviews on netflix... 90% of the time you watch it, it's a solid 2 star (rarely a 3) out of 5 and you don't even think about it again. The rest of the time it's something "interesting" - not necessarily great. Last night we watched "Rid of Me" a 2011 indie movie. I can't stop thinking about it all last night and today. It totally touched me (mostly by creeping me out). The film is about Meris, a socially awkward, shy young woman who is in love and moves with her all American jock boy type husband to his home town in Oregon where a group of his frat bro buddies and their wives await. The friends are annoying and crass, and she has some mental conditions (depression, social anxiety). Things don't go well in terms of Meris fitting in. When an old flame of the husband moves back to town, the marriage is soon on the rocks. She goes through some difficult stuff and then the movie is about "finding yourself". Cheap movie and production is pretty bad and throughout the first half at least I felt incredibly uncomfortable, but this is the intention and possibly even the point of the film. First it was interesting that the movie was about a woman and her journey. This woman was not presented as classically attractive, nor is she the life of the party by any means. It's rare to have this kind of character focused on. At the same time, the focus on this character is what makes the movie both uncomfortable and poignant. Personally, I could not relate to the title character, the meek Meris. How can someone be so hapless and direction-less? It seemed she had no autonomy as she was being carried into further and further horrific situations that gave her no respite from herself or from the mean people she dealt with. I realise she was not meant to be a realistic character but the way the film is shot you are following her all the time and you feel like shaking her up throughout the first half of the movie. Meris, how can you not protect yourself from going to those places? Don't you grow a backbone girl?? I just found my mind in a logical bind that a person would let themselves get into situations like that. Perhaps I am forgetting how you can be so naive when you're in stupid young love and at that point in life when you have not yet understood that people are weak and disappointing and you should always protect your back.And the backbone, she does indeed grow in her own way and with a lot of mess on the way, as we all do - well maybe a bit messier than average. We see Meris develop all the way to the act of extreme defiance she carries out in the opening scene of the movie, which where she walks up to a plastic blonde woman in a supermarket and does something shocking and defiant. (Side note: This act is probably one that is extremely feminine in some ways, but it struck me as a very male scene to write - I don't know if I am going to be able to explain this, it's just a subtle thing, almost like a man envisioned what Meris would do). The finding yourself part, the main theme of the film, is not all blood. There is comic relief, plus some high school regression, friendship, 90s style girl power, smoking, aging goth characters ; and all that stuff works in the end and you have weird friends and you laugh and you learn to accept yourself and not to let a man have control over who you can and cannot be.I find it a hard movie to recommend in an unqualified way because the movie is uncomfortable but if you want to try something different, it's worth checking this out.

A grungy tale of post-divorce rebirth in which the cure looks about as unpleasant as the illness, James Westby's Rid of Me offers an acting showcase for "desperate" co-producer Katie O'Grady but sets her character in a thinly painted world with straw-man antagonists. Commercial potential is dim for its single-screen NYC booking. The pic's meant as a black comedy, but you'd have to read the press notes to know that. Most viewers will read it as a morose character study whose aspirations are closer to psychological horror than comedy, even if gestures in that direction -- portentous closeups, ominous musical cues -- aren't matched by other production values, like its flatly undramatic lighting and set design. O'Grady plays Meris, a devoted wife whose husband Mitch must return to his old hometown when a business venture fails. There he reconnects with a tight-knit circle of fratboyish bros and their Stepford wives, none of whom show any empathy for Maris's shyness -- and why would they, with Westby's scenario such a cartoon illustration of social anxiety disorder, littered with unbelievable gaffes? Maris travels through a goth-y heart of darkness after her divorce, acting out in some revolting ways best not described here. Though set in the Pacific Northwest and sporting a musician in the cast (Everclear's Art Alexakis shouldn't quit his day job), Rid of Me's take on riot-grrrl punk isn't nearly potent enough to justify the title's appropriation of PJ Harvey's landmark record: Neither its depiction of the world of squares nor its embrace of rule-flouting self-affirmation rings true, so the inevitable happy ending offers little joy.

First of all, let me be clear, we absolutely love indie films and saw this one at a little festival in Michigan about a week ago where we saw some wonderful films. This film wasn't one of them. Our biggest complaint is that this story is just all over the place and the director didn't seem to have a clear handle on the type of film he wanted us to see; a comedy, drama, thriller, who knows. His indecision lead to weak and uneven performances throughout, with a few disgusting elements thrown (and I do mean thrown) in for good measure and only to attract weirdo attention it seems. The tickets were given to us to fill the theater; otherwise we would have asked for our money back after the first ten minutes even though the film actually won an award as did almost all the films at the festival. If the producers have become delusional about the quality of their movie, it isn't entirely their fault because they have been spurred on by a few underground movie reviewers that I think see movie making and promotion as some kind of weirdo game that can be won with enough pranks and buzz. We won't give up on indie films, but this one doesn't measure up to the hype.