input: Well, it is hard to add comment after reading what is already here but I feel I must say something. I wasn't exactly looking for 'a splatterfest' as someone puts it or even 'blood and guts/gore'. I have some respect for the victims relatives although I really felt the filmaker DIDN'T. -They were nameless, faceless and meaningless. Just a vessel for Dahmers sexual antics.

I watched this film with the kind of morbid curiosity that makes me think 'What makes a guy be a serial killer?' as well as wondering the specifics about the Dahmer story, of which I know very little. People here seem to think that the movie didn't have to cover the events of the Dahmer story.. I.E. his history, what happened when he got caught, the aftermath, etc but IT IS IMPORTANT! You see, I assume if you are American you WILL KNOW all of this. We do not all live in America. To tell this story about such a man as he obviously was, REQUIRES that at least SOME of the history and actual events are told/shown. This doesn't mean blood and guts, there are ways of showing horrific things in a movie by implication or clever filming without resorting to gore. Without even touching upon some of what he did (I found out more about him reading the user comments on this site!), the movie felt like a void. A moment in time with very little substance. I would like to know if there is a film about the REAL Dahmer because with its lack of direction, VERY slow pace that NEVER changes, Strange portrayal of homosexuality and the VERY unfortunate lack of ANY attempt at an ending, this movie is POOR. I would not recommend to anyone that they waste the time it takes to watch it. A definite 1 out of 10 (for the acting!)

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input: Unfortunately, Jean Eustache (1938-1981) belongs like so many once leading French film makers nowadays to the great unknown ones whose movies are hard to find and are not released on international DVDs. Since we have a good old-fashioned video-store in Tucson, I had the chance to watch this 3 1/2-hour marathon masterwork that is not boring for ten seconds.

Since we speak here about one of the most discussed (and most controversially discussed) movies of all times, let me tell you my impression that the endless dialogs, originally typical for the early "Nouvelle Vague" of a Jacques Rivette or Alain Resnais appear almost ridiculous in this movie. The dialogs are basically monologues, mainly the longest ones spoken by Jean-Pierre Leaud. The most characteristic feature is that the intersections of the speeches of two people is almost zero. Leaud, or his character, Alexandre, pleases to tell more about himself than about the topics he is seemingly to speak. Therefore, one can hardly speak about communication in this movie. It is well possible that the director had a gargantuan satire in mind against the idle running of the once so hotly discussed political and sociological ideas, but the type of man Alexandre exists to all times, we find him already in Petron's "Satiricon", which work has actually great resemblance with "The Mother and the Whore".

Alexandre does not only nothing, but he has developed an own kind of metaphysics about the absence of acting, at least acting in the sense of responsibility toward the society whose part he is. He mocks at the people who run to work at 7 c'clock in the morning, when he is just busy having his last drink before he goes to bed in the apartment of one of his girlfriends from whose money he lives. He is unable to speak one sentence without quoting one of the leading thinkers between Nietzsche and Bernanos. Especially Sartre who is shown quickly in the French intellectual cafe "Aux Deux Magots", where Alexandre, too, is sitting all day, must serve as excuse for the life-style of Alexandre and his colleagues, because they suffer existential crisis from bourgeois nausea. However, the intellectual speeches of Alexandre seem to be rather pseudo-intellectual, and the sentences and quips he cites seem to come rather from a dictionary of quotations than from his actual reading of the respective books.

It is true: This movie demands an extremely broad European knowledge, especially the connoisseurship of French existentialist philosophy and there consequences to the 68 student revolution movement, but if you have this knowledge, than you will enjoy 215 minutes of your life by staring amazed into the TV and crying out with laughing like you have probably not done it since a long time.

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input: Wow! I have seen so many bad low budget films lately, but this one is great. The very realistic portrayal of police life in a city on the East German coast is a strong contrast to other crime movies or series. I loved the main actress and the absolute rejection of any prevalent cliche about the police. This film is realistic like a documentation and entertaining like a drama at the same time. A perfect tradeoff!

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input: Believe it or not, at 12 minutes, this film (for 1912) is a full-length film. Very, very few films were longer than that back then, but that is definitely NOT what sets this odd little film apart from the rest! No, what's different is that all the actors (with the exception of one frog) are bugs...yes, bugs! This simple little domestic comedy could have looked much like productions starring the likes of Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy or Max Linder but instead this Russian production uses bugs (or, I think, models that looked just like bugs). Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy were yet to be discovered and I assume Linder was busy, so perhaps that's why they used bugs! Using stop-motion, the bugs moved and danced and fought amazingly well--and a heck of a lot more realistically than King Kong 21 years later!

The film starts with Mr. Beetle sneaking off for a good time. He goes to a bawdy club while his wife supposedly waits at home. But, unfortunately for Mr. Beetle, he is caught on camera by a local film buff. Plus, he doesn't know it but Mrs. Beetle is also carrying on with a bohemian grasshopper painter. Of course, there's a lot more to this domestic comedy than this, but the plot is age-old and very entertaining for adults and kids alike.

Weird but also very amazing and watchable.

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positive