Man Bites Dog
by R?my Belvaux, Beno?t Poelvoorde
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Product details
Actor: Jean-Marc Chenut, Jenny Drye, Olivier Cotica, R?my Belvaux, Rachel DemanDirector: Beno?t Poelvoorde, R?my Belvaux
Primary Contributor: Beno?t Poelvoorde
Primary Contributor: Jacqueline Poelvoorde-Pappaert
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Running Time: 92 minutes
Release Date: 1997-10-14
Audience Rating: Unrated
Publisher: Fox Lorber
Studio: Fox Lorber
VHS Movie Reviews of Man Bites Dog
Movie Review: A comedy not to be taken lightly...
Summary: 5 Stars
Mockumentary's are often hilarious exaggerations of human obsessions presented in a way that makes us laugh at ourselves and our own pathetic indulgences. Wonderful films like `Best in Show' or `Drop Dead Gorgeous' are magnificent examples of exploitation of harmless activities that we as a culture take too seriously.
`C'est Arrive Pres de Chez Vous' (translated `It Happened in Your Neighborhood' yet strangely named `Man Bites Dog') does not fit into that mold.
On the outset this film is laced with a black comedy both intriguing and inviting, yet the end result is one of repulsion and guilt. `C'est Arrive Pres de Chez Vous' strikes a nerve because it's not merely exposing harmless guilty pleasures; it is calling out our society's sick attraction to violence and suffering. It's like a comedic version of Kubrick's masterpiece `A Clockwork Orange'; a film that makes light of violence in order to add weight to the subject; a film that gives an air of triviality in order to shock the audience into realizing that they don't take this as seriously as they should. I remember watching `A Clockwork Orange' with open mouth and straining eyes and by the time `C'est Arrive Pres de Chez Vous' was through I was in the very same predicament.
The film follows a camera crew as they follow a serial killer by the name of Ben. Ben murders and robs with reckless abandon and is actually flattered that this group of young men wants to document his lifestyle. His reactions and methods are criminal yet presented in a manner that elicits laughs and smiles from the audience. This succeeds in creating an air within the audience, one of lighthearted glee as they think they are watching just another comedy. But they are not, and as the film tapers to a close and the violence gets more extreme, the audience suddenly realizes that their enjoyment in this film is further proving the point of the filmmakers; that our society is so calloused to the sadism surrounding us that it rarely shocks us.
We realize that we shouldn't be finding any of this `funny' and the fact that we do sickens us.
The performances by the entire cast are flawless, but no one deserves more credit than Benoit Poelvoorde who plays the serial killer Ben. His performance is flamboyant and charismatic and convincing; completely dedicated to the material and essential to the desired effect of the film on the audience; us.
In the end I feel that `C'est Arrive Pres de Chez Vous' is an extremely important film. This film reminds me of the feelings derived from reading Bret Easton Ellis' phenomenal novel `American Psycho', a novel that exposed our cultures calloused condition flawlessly. `C'est Arrive Pres de Chez Vous' is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach but it is monumentally important for it calls to attention a growing problem, a problem that will only continue to get bigger.
Movie Review: Violent Satire
Summary: 3 Stars
Man Bites Dog is an odd movie about a camera crew who follows around a serial killer and his friends. It's filmed in black and white and it's one of those films that breaks the fourth wall.. It's like they took a video camera and started filming a mental case and the audience gets to watch as he goes from nice guy to killer. Around his family hes nice and when alone and around his friends hes psycho.
As far as it being disturbing its about a 7-8 out of 10. Some parts were deeply disturbing, others funny. It's hard to imagine how anything could be funny in a movie like this but they managed to mix disturbing with humor. One scene will have you laughing, another will have you shaking your head.
I really couldn't say what I liked or didnt like about this film. It didn't strike me as anything great yet it wasn't terrible. If it was anything it was definitely out of the norm.
The whole thing is in French. Do not get this if you have a weak stomach. Its very graphic.
Movie Review: The most lighthearted portrayal of sadism I've ever seen
Summary: 5 Stars
This was stunning in two directions. There's the activities taking place - mucho dark stuff - and the fact that a film crew is documenting it and even assisting in the action. Normally, I don't watch foreign films because the subtitles frustrate me. Glad I changed my mind this one time. I highly enjoyed this flick. But if you're a delicate soul, you won't like it. It's brutally immoral.Movie Review: Dog Wags Tail, Tale Wags Dog, Dog Barfs
Summary: 1 Stars
Should you be seized by the desire to watch this film, have your friends lock you in a steamer trunk until the impulse passes. Many movies are merely bad, some are dreadful, but Man Bites Dog establishes a new nadir of film, it is truly the cellar beneath the basement.
Low budget, grainy B&W, staccato French with indecipherable sub-titles, a tiny cast of unknown actors who have earned their obscurity and, one hopes, will retain it, a lead character who is at once revolting and uninteresting, and a complete lack of plot and character development.
The story concerns a man who kills randomly. He does not kill for profit and he seems to take no pleasure from it. We are offered absolutely no insight into his character - which is odd, because wherever he goes he is followed by a film crew that is documenting his exploits. This bizarre idea (which in itself is not half-bad) is the film's sole gadget. The only development that occurs, if one may honor it with such a lofty term, is that gradually the film crew gets drawn into the action, helping to murder victims, bury bodies, and generally be useful. This might be slightly amusing if they weren't already complicit merely by virtue of documenting the events.
This film attempts to walk the fine line between grotesque and surreal, hard-nosed cinema verite and broad, tongue-in-cheek farce. Unfortunately, this fine line was in another part of Belgium when these self-congratulatory buffoons were putting this codswallop together. Some have even hinted at the presence of a sly layer of social criticism here, an examination of society's fixation on violence. What lovely nonsense. The makers of this film would like you to think they're that clever, but there's nothing even remotely resembling intelligence driving this project; being precious and smug is not the same as having something to say.
You can make a great a film on a tiny budget, but you need to compensate by going heavy on wit, imagination, script, innovative use of locations, terrific acting, snappy dialogue, and ideas strong enough to carry your film. Man Bites Dog has none of these qualities. The movie would have been vastly improved by killing the crew first.
Movie Review: A day in the life of a serial killer...
Summary: 3 Stars
A sort of serial killing This Is Spinal Tap without the jokes, as a satire Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel and Benoit Poelvoorde's Man Bites Dog just isn't very funny. The film is more a stylistic exercise and intellectual essay on cinema's relationship with violence, and as such is open to endless debate and reinterpretation.
The film follows the exploits of the smug, self-satisfied Benoit Poelvoorde as he goes about his daily work - murder for pleasure and profit - with a low-budget black and white documentary film crew in tow. The crew become seduced by the violence they 'document', carrying on with an interview while holding down a child for him to kill and participating in and instigating a gang rape. They are untouched by the horror of his actions until it directly affects them, most particularly in a sort of running joke in which their soundmen keep getting killed.
This complicity between filmmakers and life-takers is compounded by the fact that the film's killer and camera crew all use their real names on screen. There is certainly an inherent element of criticism of the artist's acceptance of violence as a form of self-expression - not only the film crew but a female musician Poelvoorde knows accept his actions as just being 'his work.'
The violence is shocking, as it should be, more for this casual acceptance (although the most genuinely disturbing moment is the fraction of a second when Poelvoorde's laughter dies and is immediately replaced by a grim face after the music lesson), but is never openly condemned. Since none of the characters on screen exercise any morality, it is up to the viewer to bring his or her morality to bear on the picture. Not always easy viewing, the film is ultimately more interesting for the issues it raises about filmmakers and filmgoers complicity in screen violence than for what is actually on screen.
Summary of Man Bites Dog
This Belgian satire (in French with English subtitles) is dark, dark, dark--but also right on the money in its sly sendup of the media's fascination with violence and its complicity therein. This mock documentary has a trio of filmmakers shooting a cin?ma v?rit? feature about a garrulous serial killer who lets the film crew follow him around as he selects victims and then dispatches them. But at what point does filmmaking become participation? These hapless documentarians soon find out as their subject eventually pulls them into his world, including a gun battle with a rival film crew and their own criminal star. Gruesomely hilarious, with a deadpan wit that's hard to resist. --Marshall FineGeneral Video
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