The Truce (1996) is a multi-national production that begins with the Russian liberation of Auschwitz, the point were most holocaust films end. Italian Jew Primo Levi, on whose book the film is based, observes, "Face-to-face with freedom, we felt lost." Indeed, they were suddenly faced not only with the indelible memories of what had happened to them and around them, but they were turned out into a world still at war, in poor health, and with no food or money, and no transportation home, to those that still had a home. Levi, played masterfully by John Turturro, begins to write about his experiences, and we see those around him, some larger than life, others nearly bereft of human spirit, through his eyes.

The nudity comes from Polish actress Agnieszka Wagner, as a nurse. In a purely gratuitous scene, she is seen naked from the rear in a mirror while showering, then full frontal when she flashes a German officer. I seldom read reviews before I watch a film. Once I have seen it and formed an opinion, I look to see what others have said. This is one of those cases where I am at odds with most reviewers. I enjoyed the film. To me, a film should either entertain or educate, and this one did both. The negative comments can be boiled down to two categories. First, it was not true to the book, and second, it was not depressing enough. As to the second point, there is room in my world view for a somewhat lighthearted look at a very sad event, as long as the event itself is not whitewashed.

Most of us have favorite books that are made into movies, and we are very disappointed in the results. I loved Semi-Tough, but had not read the book when I saw the film. Scoop hated the film for what they did to one of his favorite books. I was similarly disappointed in what they did to Tom Clancy's books, especially Patriot Games. I also hated Cabaret, because it was not like the play. This is a natural, but not a fair criticism of a film. A film should be judged on its own merits. I believe I would have relied heavily on fast forward had this film taken a more somber tone, and liked the fact that many of these victims of the Holocaust demonstrated the resiliency of the human spirit.

IMDB readers have this at a respectable 6.3 of 10, and it won several international awards, but only received 43% at Rotten Tomatoes, with a 20% from the top critics. Older women and younger men rated it higher at IMDB, which I find odd demographics. For me, this is a strong C, but your mileage may vary.

Updates:

• Updated volumes: Emmanuelle Seigner, Kristin Scott Thomas
• New volumes: Barbara Windsor, Marisa Tomei, Marie-France Pisier, De'Ann Power

Mailbox:

Mr Scoopy affiliates,

I have been reading your comments about films and nudity within films for many years now. I have gathered some useful and insightful comments on films in general and the nudity that they contain. Generally I have seen some kind of  intellect, either within or concerning movies. But OMG you are so fucking american in your review about Roman Polanski´s Bitter Moon that I could puke. American public enemy #1 is yours as well! So much that you completely fail to see the plot, Irony and erotic beauty of the film. I´m a little drunk now, but fuck if I´m going to read such shallow comments more! You dare to compare this movie to Two Moons Junction!!!!! Man o man you have lot to learn about films! ( guess where this quote is from)

Scoop says: Wow! And I was the one who liked Bitter Moon! Good thing he was too drunk to read Tuna's comments.

Despite the racist comments by the reader, which forever doom we poor, stupid Americans to a lack of comprehension of this unparalleled masterpiece, Roger Ebert reported that the film was not received any better in Europe:

The returns are in from Europe and the coasts, and the critics have found Roman Polanski's "Bitter Moon" an embarrassment: It is too melodramatic, too contrived, too overwrought, too overacted. Polanski has come unhinged. His portrait of a doomed marriage may be high porn but it is low art.

Ebert, however, goes on to say that he does not personally agree with that critical assessment. He liked the film, and gave it three stars.

Actually the reader may have raised an interesting point. Americans rate the film a deplorable 5.8 at IMDb, while others score it a sorta acceptable 6.8.

I think the reason is this - this may actually be a completely different film if you don't speak English at a native level. To the ear of a non-native speaker it may sound like they are delivering credible dialogue, and it may seem like the Peter Coyote character is intended to be taken seriously. To a native speaker the dialogue sounds like parody, and it is completely obvious from his voice-over that Coyote could not be a writer, or even someone who thinks he could be one. Coyote's character causes a confusion on the part of the American audience, which thinks, "I don't get it. He's supposed to be American, and his accent is American, but his lines sound like they are spoken by Apu on the Simpsons, or by some Eastern European with two years of high school English. And he's supposed to be an aspiring writer! Is it a joke, or what? All his lines sound like entries into that Bulwar-Lytton Bad Writing Contest."

Although I enjoyed the film overall, I hooted out loud several times at the dialogue, and once or twice at Emmanuelle Seigner's line delivery, but I guess it wasn't supposed to be funny. To tell you the truth, I'm just not sure whether it was supposed to be funny or not, but the point is this - if you don't hear it with the ear of a native speaker, you are probably not confused by such thoughts, and can accept the characters at face value. If you don't hear the clumsy artificiality of the lines, and can take the characters seriously, you are thus watching a completely different movie.

As Jon Webb wrote:

I couldn't tell if BITTER MOON was intended as a serious study of sexual obsession or as a too-subtle parody of the same thing. The strangest thing about this film is that Coyote's character writes and talks with consistently lurid, purple prose. He comes to Paris to be a writer, though it's obvious he can't write at all, as his style is straight out of the pages of a romance novel combined with Penthouse letters.

I have a suspicion that Polanski intended Coyote's character to have a comic effect, at which he is certainly successful, but then somehow in the editing the point of the film, which was to make a comedy, got strangely twisted by someone with no sense of humor. The overall tone of the film is entirely serious, if excessively cliché, and the direction never makes it clear how you are supposed to react.

If this is a serious film, it has been done better before, for example in the execrable WILD ORCHID or the mediocre 9-1/2 WEEKS. I never before realized how good these movies could look in comparison. Compared to Coyote as directed by Polanski, Mickey Rourke is Marlon Brando before he gained weight.

Here are some of Coyote's classic lines:

• We lived on love and stale croissants.
• She's a man-trap! Look what she did to me!
• In the eyes of every woman, I could see the reflection of the next.
• She was my sorceress in white sneakers

====================================

Uncle Scoop,

The website about the zero-g cumshot was copyrighted in 1998! Not only has "The Uranus Experiment" already been released, but also 2 sequels (OK, in porn they should be called follow-ups, or as Tim Burton would say "Reimaginings"). Most reviewers of the film said the much ballyhooed zero-G cumshot was not that spectacular:

"I did not really see a zero g cumshot. If the sex in space with the scientist is the cumshot, it looked like a regular cumshot only a little slower (due to the slow motion of the camera?)."    -"abe" http://www.rame.net/reviews/misc/1444.html


"The much advertised zero gravity cumshot seemed to be just an ordinary cumshot, only with the picture upside down to make it look a bit strange.   -"Espectador" http://www.rame.net/reviews/misc/1568.html

What's worse, the porn reviewers (people who watch and judge the "quality" porn) blasted the movie and its follow-ups.

"This video suffers from bad acting, awful dubbing and uninspired camerawork. All the non-sex scenes are static and boring, with people just sitting around, looking uncomfortable and talking with badly dubbed voices...  "The whole production looks cheap and cheesy. The space shots are done with crudely rendered computer graphics. No special effects, no eye candy. Boring, boring, boring."    -"Espectador" http://www.rame.net/reviews/misc/1568.html

"Tons of hype and heaps of money didn't help these movies become anything but one of the most tedious things I've ever seen in porn."    -Niklas Zypher http://www.rame.net/reviews/misc/3909.html


Remember, the reviewers are comparing this porno to other *pornos*, not to quality films such as "Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000," "Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace" or "Solaris". When people who watch a lot of porn think it's a bad film, that's saying a lot.

Other crap:

• The Sun finds a particularly appropriate road sign in the Isles
• Ya gotta love The Sun. Don't ask, just look. It includes a topless women with enormous breasts, beer, and ...
• The new Hollywood power couple -  Demi Moore, 41 and Ashton Kutcher, 25. Shouldn't Demi, a MILF, be dating Finch?
• Among Europeans, The Danes are most satisfied with their lives, the Portuguese least
• You may have read about the Vanity Fair article on Wolfowitz. FYI - here is the full transcript of the recorded telephone conversation between Wolfowitz and the Vanity Fair reporter
• The end of an era? That venerable sports newspaper, The Sporting News, is in serious financial trouble
• high-definition television, which is threatening to expose the previously invisible "flaws" of the world's most beautiful people.

   

   

   

  
   

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick Locke, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

First up...a little "Hankster Lite".

We kick it off with B-movie favorite Monique Parent giving us some breast exposure from a DVD called "The Girls of Sunset Strip".

• Monique Parent (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Next the sexy Nicole Kidman with some nice leg shots from "To Die For".

• Nicole Kidman (1, 2, 3, 4)

Next up, the old time machine goes all the way back to 1971 to visit to "Angels Hard as they Come", a biker flick.

The reason to visit this movie is for a look at Janet Wood as she becomes a "Babe in Bondage", threatened by a ball of fire. Sorry about the quality of the caps, it was a DVD, but very poor quality.

• Janet Wood (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)

A couple of quick extras...

• Jewel Shepard showing some boob in the back seat of a car in "My Tutor"

  and...

• Jaime Bergman with an almost see thru in a wet shirt on "Son of the Beach".

Some recently released DVDs...

Out Cold
Sophomoric snowboard/ski sex-comedy starring Lee "The SIx Million Dollar Man" Majors. Because it's PG-rated the nudity is limited to partial breasts with no nipple exposure and fully-clothed sex scenes (although hefmate Victoria Silvstedt riding the mechanical bull was pretty wild).

• Victoria Silvstedt: mega cleavage, partial breast in hot tub, spread-eagled on the mechanical bull.
• A.J. Cook body dube: pretty low using a body double for a bra flash scene.
• Caroline Dhavernas: sexy in bikini top, then in form fitting dress.
• Various: Left to right in first and second frames: Fawnia Mondey, unknown 1, unknown 2, Holly Eglington, Karen Robertson, Christine Caux, Odessa Munroe (Saving Silverman), and Kendall Saunders. The unknowns are Alexis Glabus, Nicole Amos, and Janette Wu. And if you've kept count only eight of nine actresses appeared on screen.
• Kendall Saunders: partial breast exposure by this star of "Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby"

Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice
Lame sequel to the Paul Newman classic pronounced dead on arrival and released direct to video.

• female fans: first Christine Caux topless in the shower then Christine Caux and Holly Eglington flashing their boobs at hockey game topped off with a lame hot tub scene.

The Shipment
Comedy starring Showgirls' Elizabeth Berkley who manages to keep her clothes on. No nudity by any of the stars.

• Elizabeth Berkley: bra-less pokies.
• Carmen Aguirre & Alex Castillo: sexy as two mexican hookers (the one showing her caboose is Alex).
• Karen Robertson & Laura Hargreaves: sexy as bikini girls in hot tub.

Avenging Angelo
Sylvester Stallone comedy.

• Carin Moffat: topless, side nude.

The Unsaid
Thriller starring Andy Garcia.

• Sarah Deakins: topless
• Teri Polo: pokies

The Outer Limits: Sex & Science Fiction DVD
Caps of all the episodes except for "Caught in the Act" with Alyssa Milano. Unfortunately the follow-up "Time Travel & Infinity" DVD did not have any episodes containing nudity.

episode "Bits of Love"

• Natasha Henstridge: fully nude but not showing much.
• Crystal Cass: almost full frontal.
• Ingrid Kavelaars: in red see-through dress revealing her underwear.
• Brett Stone: full dorsal nudity.

episode "Valerie 23"

• Sofia Shinas: full frontal as "fully functional" robot.

episode "The Human Operators"

• Polly Shannon: boobs and butt.

episode "Flower Child"

• Judy Tylor: cleavage, braless pokies, nude in the shower (possible body double), and wearing nothing but a coat of leaves. She portrayed Suzanne Somers in a "Three's Company" docu-drama recently.

episode "Skin Deep"

• Gaetana Korbin: dark love scene, nothing shown.
• Christina Cox: upskirt.
• Deanna Milligan: bare shoulders only.