Dog Days
Dog Days
| 03 September 2001 (USA)
Dog Days Trailers

Vignettes of the lives of several residents of a Vienna suburb during a heat wave.

Reviews
Diagonaldi

Very well executed

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ReaderKenka

Let's be realistic.

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CommentsXp

Best movie ever!

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Maidexpl

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

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jcappy

Dog Days 7 Alpha Dogs "Dog Days" may employ hot humid summer days to express a grim and atomized social reality, but it more effectively, intentionally or not, turns to the microwave heat of male sexuality to express an even grimmer reality of violations and violence. In "Dog Days," DE Sade is not dead.The question is: what is its director's stance? Is "Dog Days" a rebuke of men's abuse and use of women? Is it an expression of content which may raise a few questions? Or, does it accept, given the hot weather and the heat generated by male sexuality, the normalcy of such raw force? My take is that Seidl settles for ambiguity. For one, the resistance position is not an option for him, because he can and does use his camera as an accomplice in male sexual abuse. This is most evident in the prolonged sadistic scene involving the teacher and her porn-head boyfriend. Here Seidl chooses pornography over implication, thus aligning himself with the victimizer over the victim. In a sense Seidl is like his character, the salesman, Hrubl, who is disturbed by his role in the rape of the hitch-hiker, but perhaps because his escape hatch is a room filled with porn, cannot muster the will not stop it. But, ironically, this is a scene in which Seidl himself chooses only to indicate rape, proving that he understands how his camera can compound crime.Seidl also extends too much sympathy to his men, all of whom are guilty of various levels of misogyny. While his female characters are mainly pacified, silent, and one dimensional, the men who sell them out are given more latitude, action, and centrality, which in turn makes them more worthy of consideration. In other words, the victims are bound by duty and love, and locked up in involuntary lives; whereas the men who ooze contempt for them get to display freedom and "human" markings.This makes for a convenient circularity because it refuses to point to the agent of an exploitative, power-linked sexuality. Seidl cannot judge them, monsters as some of them are, because he himself is drenched in masculine assumptions. One might say that his unflinching view reveals men, but his hard look softens before their acts.When Lucky, the porn-head's buddy, returns to apologize to the teacher he says "I'm sorry that you had to take sh-t yesterday because of the sins of all women," adding that his participation in her unrelenting degradation was both a pleasure and a valuable experience--and no doubt a pumping up of his male identity. Whether Seidl hears all this as a galling reversal or a wrong-headed apology isn't that clear, but lines such as these make it obvious that Seidl is immersed in the arena of sexual politics.There are other indications of Seidl's stand throughout the film. As the opening credits roll, the camera espies several sun bathers--all have unnoticeable or shapeless bodies except for two model-like topless young women. He extends this same type of bodily exception to the bar dancer, whose waif-like, sexually-charged figure serves as a kind of exclamation point in a slowly evolving film. Then there is the swing scene that subtly eroticizes the plain hitch-hiker as a kind of foreshadowing of her rape.In sum, when it comes to sex objectification Seidl seems to follow the lead of his male-ordered culture.. He cannot critique women as male property because of an equivocation which seems to start with his invasive camera (remember the porn-head walks right into the teacher's apt) and ends up affecting his judgment. Give him credit for revealing male sexual aggression, fail him for refusing to connect criminal acts to their male agents. A blurb on the DVD describes "Dog Days" as "strangely entertaining." Which begs the question: FOR WHOM?

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Michael Margetis

It's nothing brilliant, groundbreaking or innovative, but 'Dog Days' is for some reason an extremely fascinating character study. It's like CRASH tripping on a bad dose of heroin, but not really. It's an Austrian film following the lives of several depressed, deranged and annoying people and their abusive relationships with each other. It's disturbing, yet very well-acted and it's interesting to watch the crazy little things these characters do. Certainly not for the weak-hearted, this highly pessimistic film offers no conclusion or revelation at the end, we just see the lives of these sordid individuals over the course of two days. Grade: B

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fred3f

If you are looking for a film the portrays the pointless and boring existence of middle class lives caught in a web of non-communication and false ideals, then this is the film for you. If you also what the film to be engaging and keep your interest, then you should probably look elsewhere. There are many films that do this far better. For example, try some of the darker films by Bergman. The Filmmaker felt that in order to show the spiritual poverty of the middle class he should subject the viewer to one agonizingly dull and vacuous incident after another until the film finally comes to its tortuous and pathetic end. If you value your time there are far better ways to spend two hours, like cleaning your house, for example.

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Superdracula

This movie sucks ass. Something about a heatwave in some European country, complete trash. There's nothing going for this movie whatsoever. maybe 30 seconds of sex but that's it. There is a very annoying chick who hitches rides with people and really pisses me off. This movie is complete rash and you shouldn't subject yourself to watching it. I regret it it's very boring. I would rate it zero but i can't. No body in their right mind should see this. i'm sure you'll regret it completely i did. How could they think up something this bad. Even Mystery men was better. MYSTERY MEN. That sucks. That movie wasn't worth being made. complete waste of time. The characters in this are very hard to understand and i good very very very bored.

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