Too much of everything

Just perfect...

Good start, but then it gets ruined

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

So, here's the story: A woman, high school or college English teacher, who apparently wants sex but is timid, daydreaming through her life, gets involved with a dirtbag detective investigating a serial killer. She gets attacked. Her sister gets killed. Lots of red herrings. She eventually kills the killer. Daydream back to her life.What we have is a bunch of disgusting characters. We have porno. We have profanity. We have characters acting out a script that is unrealistic. We have garbage hand held cinematography. We have a couple of classic tunes redone in the worst possible way. We have a story that just does not add up. What the hell was this? A serial killer story? A sexually repressed woman? Here's some of the garbage I noticed. I'm sure there more:Kevin Bacon is a red herring, in a red hat. Nice try. Meg Ryan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Mark Ruffalo are all decent actors. But the material/dialogue and script is garbage. If you watch this as a comedy, maybe intoxicated, you may find some entertainment here. Otherwise forget it. Meg walks around this movie in a daze. Especially at the end, after she kills Mark's partner. Barefoot, and bloody all over. Nobody stops her. She just walks back to her apartment, and lays beside Mark. Garbage. At first it seemed like Jennifer's character was Meg's lesbian lover, then we find out she is her sister. What's up with that full mouth kiss in front of the black guy? The cops, Mark and his partner, unnecessary cursing. Mark's partner has a plastic gun. He would not be on the street. Sex scenes are cliché and stupid. City scenes are all hand held garbage cinematography. Tattoo on hand. The guy is getting a blowjob, in the dark, and Meg notices the tattoo from 20 feet away. Right! Meg mentioned the tattoo to Mark. But Mark didn't add it up that it could have been his partner. What's up with that? Not a very good detective. What's with all the art crap sex talk? Wow, they know the F word. Great. Black student. Another red herring. That goes nowehere. Gay Black bouncer. More filler crap.After the first time Meg did Mark she meets Jennifer in a coffee shop with a black eye. Meg didn't have a black eye when she was with Mark. So, you freaking screw that up too. This is like some kind of an art film. Porno. Profanity. All unlikable characters. No chemistry between the characters or the actors. The Flashback scenes of Meg's parents skiing. Another art failure.Started crap. Nothing happens. Meg dozing throughout taking notes of words that she sees like it's a prophetic insight. Middle crap. Things happen, except they're just garbage. Ending crap. At least the film is consistent. There was a scene where Kevin Beacon asks Meg to watch his dog because he works 18 hours as an intern. Meg refuses. Kevin says well I'll have to put him down then. What the freaking hell was that all about. Who the hell wants to see a movie about some dirtbag characters like this? Who?The ending was just plain garbage. First Meg runs away from Mark after handcuffing him to some pipes in her house. And Mark's partner drives her to a Lighthouse near the George Washington Bridge, where he's got some kind of room with music and wine hooked up. He proposes to her with a knife on a ring. Kisses her. She shoots him with Mark's gun, twice. Ohh, well that shooting practice we had to sit through all adds up now. Then she walks home bare foot, and all bloody. Nobody stops her. She just walks home, finds Mark still hand cuffed to the pipe, and lays beside him. Wow!Last week I watched a low budget film from Poland about some kids going camping and all getting killed. Pretty mindless garbage film. Close to Zero brain power exerted there. Now, I would rather watch that movie than "In The Cut". In the Cut looks like they used some brain power, but just wrong. In the negative.Forget Plan 9 from Outer Space. In the Cut is the worst movie ever made. A complete waste of time, talent and money. All involved in this movie should be ashamed of themselves. Including people who watch it. I know I am.

Oh if this isn't the hot garbage we've been waiting for. Thank God we got to see gratuitous sex scenes with (bless her heart) saggy titty Meg Ryan. Ruffalo's village people mustache screams try hard confusion. As long as she stays drunk and has sex we've got a film eh guys? Who's with me? *Crickets* Seriously the plot line was dumpster juice, Meg's just gotta have sex scenes about every 5 minutes where she's masturbating then eventually boning the angry confused detective because that's what you do when you're investigating a murder, sleep with a potential suspect. Ruffalo's character, not believable. What a hot piece trash the whole dialogue was. Terrible directing choices with such great actors. Kevin Bacon was hilariously terrible, he was going for a manic depressed schizo with tourettes syndrome, forced and not believable. More like a failed SNL skit. Seriously he tried... and failed miserably. They really gave the serial killer to the dopey Italian cro magnon guy. I mean even though it was meant to lead you astray the whole context was a disappointment. They could have cut so many scenes to make this tolerable. They did not. A pointless scene about firing a gun in the park with Meg and Mark. Why? Why are we doing this? Dog sh*t. So her best friend gets killed and she's hugging a plastic bag of her friends head while she's balling. I'm sorry but What the f*ck is going on here? Nobody even bothers to question her at all? All of this was implausible and definitely makes you wanna read all the complaining that this film deserves. If you pirated this movie you would still be mad. I'd say don't waste your time but if you enjoy watching terrible movies, this one's for you.

"In the Cut" is a film that I think few people would like. First of all, it is populated with unlikable people. Meg Ryan plays Frannie Avery--a woman who has emotional problems. As the film progresses, she seems to become more deeply involved in her own psychological issues. She lives in a New York City that is filmed with a seedy grittiness and she only knows and meets characters who are morally ambiguous or who possess questionable motivations."In the Cut" is well filmed. It possesses style and a director's vision. But it frames a world where few would want to go. Frannie becomes involved with Detective Malloy, played by Mark Ruffalo. His job makes him witness to the worst that society has to offer. He is currently working on a series of grisly homicides. Frannie's morbid curiosity exposes her to Malloy's world and taints their relationship, whatever it is.As the film continues, it becomes more about mood than mystery. An ambiguous tone creates a storyline where motives are suspect and suspicions multiply. If the viewer can be content with only mood and style, then this film may satisfy. But I expect most viewers prefer films with a clearer purpose or a "deeper" meaning.

"Men love death. In everything they make, they hollow out a central place for death, let its rancid smell contaminate every dimension of whatever still survives. Men especially love murder. In art they celebrate it, and in life they commit it. They embrace murder as if life without it would be devoid of passion, meaning, and action, as if murder were solace." - Andrea Dworkin Jane Campion's "In the Cut" stars Meg Ryan as Frannie, a frumpy English teacher who believes that "all slang masks sex" and "all language masks violence". Having grown calloused after a long line of failed relationships, Frannie spends the film's first act seemingly drawn to death and perhaps her own demise."Cut" then turns into a sordid fairy tale, Frannie stepping into a darkened basement in which she sees a serial killer receiving oral sex from a woman who will later be murdered. From here on the film uses a familiar thriller narrative as a springboard for themes which have interested Campion throughout her career. And so the film portrays a world of hyper-masculine aggression, confused female psyches - where eroticism and masochism seem to occupy the same befuddled head-space - and an overwhelming sense of all-pervasive violence directed toward women. The film's title refers both to police/crime slang (a secluded, hidden location), and a euphemism for the vagina.Because a spate of murders have been committed in her neighbourhood, Frannie quickly finds herself in the company of Detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo). They begin to develop a relationship. Though she suspects that Malloy might be a serial killer, Frannie remains attracted to him. Years of jaded isolation are overwhelmed by yearnings for danger, passion and empowerment, which Malloy seems to supply. Frannie doesn't necessarily love Malloy; she enjoys the violence he leaks into her life.The film's later portions (which include deliberately kitschy flashbacks) play like a meditation on the romantic myths underlying societies, and the unexamined misogyny of slasher/horror films. But the film goes beyond the shattering of idealised love, romantic illusions and the conditioned expectations of women (which nobody really believes today, whilst simultaneously acting as though they wholeheartedly do), and seems to instead portray the "woman's" desire to claim for herself a part of the world's "masculinist violence". This is best epitomised by a scene in which a murder-suspect takes Frannie into the woods, a place where she would traditionally be executed but is instead trained to use a gun.Familiar notions of femininity, beauty and romance are undercut throughout the film: the men are barbarous oafs (the film's serial killer is fuelled by castration anxieties), the woman are grimy and unglamourous, all the film's relationships are rooted in violence (even when at their most tender or heartfelt), death permeates everything, it seems impossible to discern between freedom and slavery, law and crime, and all Campion's women are potential corpses whilst all men may be killers at worse, racist/foul/sexist/promiscuous at best. The film itself seems to exist in a surreal dream-space of shadowy, sleazy sets (many phallic shapes, lighthouses etc) where poetry (corresponding to the feelings of characters) litter walls and strippers seem to forever live behind the woodwork. Objects familiar in courtship fantasies (flowers, hearts, wedding rings, ice rings, baby carriages, bracelets), traditionally romantic situations and/or locales, as well as objects typically linked to female domesticity (washing-machines, here stuffed with corpses) are likewise scuffed up.Nevertheless, the film isn't all pessimistic. Malloy may be the antithesis of chivalry and romance (the root of the word "romance" is itself "idealised" or "non existent"), but he is honest, caring and tender with Frannie (his sex acts with her stress his subordination to her needs), and there is warmth in the unglamourous but tender way in which he bathes her. It also becomes increasingly clear that Frannie is incredibly messed up, and that the "aesthetic" of the film is perhaps an articulation of her own warped, damaged world view. It isn't that there isn't incredible violence always bearing down on Frannie – there is, and she's justifiably wounded/petrified – but that she won't allow herself to see anything but the grime.Much of the film is preoccupied with a schematic confrontation between "what is male" (violence, Thanatos, sadism, dispassionate, penetrate, in, hate) and "what is female" (sex, Eros, masochism, warmth, penetrated, the cut, love). Campion blurs the line between these contrasts, though (What is violent? What is sexual? What is masculine? What is feminine?), such that they all eventually overlap and fill the same space. Consider a pair of scenes which mirror a public attack on Frannie with a private sex act between Malloy and Frannie. In the latter, Malloy assumes the role of the attacker, but though Frannie senses danger, she is unable to turn away from him; a kind of willing riff on the first scene's violation. Similarly, all violence in the film is followed by masturbation, coupling, flirting, phone sex etc. The overlapping of sex, romance and violence permeates the film's dialogue as well, which is heavy with both overt linkages and subtler double-entendres. The film's title likewise signifies both something violent, "a cut", and of course a safe, embalming sex organ. Elsewhere, Frannie's first kiss follows an act of gun-play.This schema infects the aesthetic tone of the film, which is either "soft", "gentle" and "feminine", with muted lighting, blurred frames, soft edges and dreamy camera work, or "harsh", "jagged", "masculine" and "violent", with nauseating colours, abrupt cuts, expressionistic angles and blunt images. Cinematographer Dion Beebe, who did great work on "Collateral" and "Miami Vice", lends the film a gorgeous mood. The film's final act is weak, but palatable atmosphere and an odd but affecting romance make up for this.8.5/10 – See Director's Cut only. Good, similar films by women: Breillat's "Romance", Claire Denis' "Trouble Every Day", Marleen Gorris' "Broken Mirrors". Worth two viewings.