Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

bangiepangie Bored with blockbusters?Watch this to remind yourself why you love movies.A breathtaking, unpretentious, off the wall, artistic masterpiece shot with meticulous attention to detail reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Jeunet mixed with a little Guillermo del Toro with a sprinkle of Brothers Grimm.Imaginative visuals and superb acting throughout, especially Marc Bischoff's touching and nuanced performance as Balatony Lajoska.A feast for the eyes, ears and imagination.Take it at face value and enjoy like a fine wine. Then watch again.Not for everyone, but thats what makes it great.

ThurstonHunger Fascination and revulsion with bodies in this unique film. The fact that it's labeled as "Comedy|Drama|Horror" on the categorizations is not someone being cute, it's as fair assessment as one can come up. I was drawn to the director for his vision in an earlier film about a hiccough.Whereas "Hukkle" worked on a small story, in a small section of time, in a small village mostly with non-actors, here directory Palfi produces an epic film spanning three generations, and with plenty of CGI and other gadgetry. Evidently the work is drawn from a series of Hungarian short stories, and check out this board comment from "bodaa" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0410730/board/nest/155009133 The film feels like it has that sort of depth, I did latch on to the 3/7 of the deadly sins. And for me, the whole notion of the sickly significance of our bodies, especially in this era of telepresence and virtual reality teases, that alone is pretty, um, heavy. The grotesque characterizations are done with such precision and care, this could have easily been a sloppy art-house film, lampooning the exaggerated depictions of the three men.But Palfri's devotion to details midst the dementia, like the love affair in the middle of the eating champions. That scene in the paddle boat, it's just done with such care, and for a brief moment floats a postcard joy into story. I just was constantly drawn to this film despite any of the number of the repulsive scenes. In stories, an author can get away with much more, something may be mentioned and we, the readers, may comprehend, but a film maker is doomed or, in Palfi's case, challenged to show us what we may not want to see.In that, Palfi is unique, and again this is a unique film that I hope you seek out. Even if the Hungarian history remains hidden to one, the film stands out.

fedor8 The first part/story is about a soldier/peasant/whoever who gets erections looking at just about anything. He spies on peasant women bathing, and masturbates in his shed. Later on, he observes them clandestinely and lustily from his super-shed as they muck about in the snow. He notices a small hole in the wooden wall of the house and decides to stick his proud and filthy member inside it. The masturbation starts (or is it house-screwing? now there's a real intelligent philosophical dilemma that presents itself for all ye pompous/deluded film students). However, the poor schluck doesn't get very far with his sexual shenanigan because a rather bored but grim-looking rooster sees what looks like a worm-like animal to him, and pecks it very hard. (A rare funny moment.) The chronic masturbator emits a loud yowl.But there are more perversions! I've barely even started listing them. Our peasant is apparently also a pedophile, as we watch him lose himself in a fanciful fantasy world that involves a fairy-tale-like house and a girl barely 8 years old. Guess what happens next? Exactly: the peasant takes the girl's hand and tells her to "put it down there". Cut to Hare-Lippy inside his shed: he masturbates to this imagined girl, and the director is even kind enough to show us not only his erect penis but also the semen that shoots out of it - all the way towards the night-sky, towards one of Earth's nearest stars. (Proxima Centauri? Perhaps his semen will start off a whole new world/civilization of filthy-minded attention-seeking Hungarian directors there...) Was this Art? Symbolism? Alienation? A metaphor for something similarly stupid and irrelevant? Nah... Just a perverse Hungarian director who probably believes that porn is artistic and belongs in mainstream movies. No wonder, of course: Hungary is the Metropolis of Europe's porn industry, so I guess the least we can expect in any modern Hungarian movie is erections, vaginas, pedophilia, bestiality, etc. Oh, come on, we have to be open-minded about such things! The next scene shows the graphic depiction of the butchering of a pig. You might have guessed it already (as I had): our anti-hero is sexually drawn towards all of that freshly slaughtered bloody dripping flesh, so later that evening he decides to lie on what's left of the porker and - but what else? - fantasizes/masturbates to various peasant women who so constantly provoke him with their large breasts and happy smiling faces. At first it isn't entirely clear whether he is actually having (gasp!) normal sex with a consenting adult from the same species and of the opposite sex, because it appears as if the fat middle-aged woman is really there - making her moves on him. But then it becomes clear that it's yet another fantasy, i.e. that this movie's director would never stoop so low as to show us too much of sex between mere two humans (That'd be too square, right? After all, the director feels compelled to compete with Greenaway, Miike, and the like.) The next morning, the fat woman's husband enters the peasant's shed and blasts his head off with one clean shot to the head. The head dissolves into bits of flying debris, some of it perhaps hitting the camera-lens. Not sure about that one. Either way, the director had already managed to fulfill his Extreme Sex&Violence Quota - only 20 minutes into the movie. From here on, any further filth is merely a bonus for the movie's drooling fans.And more filth there is. What follows is that the fat woman gives birth to a baby-boy who has a ha-ha-funny anomaly attached to his derrière: a pig's tail. Daddy doesn't seem to be too keen on having a semi-porker for a child, so he rushes to get a pair of pliers and cuts off the piggy-tail with boredom almost, as if he'd been doing that sort of thing for years.Cut to around 20 years later; the second story begins. There is a food-stuffing competition going on, in what seems to be a satire of Communist lust for sports glory. One of the morbidly obese competitors we easily recognize as the baby boy from the previous scene, on account of the remnants of a small pig-tail still bulging out just beneath his lower back. We're somewhere in the early or mid-60s. The second part mostly ignores sexual deviation, but there's still plenty of vomiting and retarded behaviour as to please even the most jaded fans of so-called "shock-cinema". As our half-piggy hero lies in bed, his fiancée's very hairy armpit hangs over him, dripping sweat - right onto his face. He licks it off, having obviously been sexually stimulated by it. Later on, there is more competitive food-munching, some brief doggy-style sex, etc. It's all very stylishly shot, but quite unfunny and mostly infantile.The third story features Half-Piggy, much older and by now weighing around two tons, looking distinctly like a Euro-trash version of Jabba The Hutt. He is immobile, spending his time in a dark, depressing flat where he stuffs three large cats with food, and reminisces of his food-stuffing glory days. He is taken care of by his disappointingly skinny son, a taxidermist. In his spare time Junior flirts unsuccessfully with female cashiers and makes plans for turning himself into a stuffed statue. The film fittingly ends with its most disgusting, extreme, and absurd scene in which Junior taxidermizes himself into oblivion. His empty head gets lopped off, the right arm is severed, and some time later he is discovered by one of his customers who then proceeds to display this "work of art" in some trendy museum. He gives a philosophical speech about Junior, and this soliloquy is supposed to be very very "deep" and "meaningful". The End.

Vincent This film aims for shock value rather than plot.We see several generations of a family who are all strange in different ways.The ideas are certainly original and the film moves at a good pace. There are a few twists as we follow the characters and get a view of their quite brutal and unpleasant lifestyles.The reliance on disgust is boring though, if you aren't shocked by the imagery then you aren't left with much else.The dialogue is minimal and the characters aren't likable, we are supposed to see them as exhibits not develop empathy for them. This leaves the film feeling slightly dead with no emotion and no real impact.Watchable for the weirdness but would certainly offer nothing worth a second viewing.