American Swing

It was about, surprise surprise, swinging. Particularly an old swingers club in New York, Platos Retreat. I don't know what I was expecting but boy that was a bunch of sex in that one. I really wasn't expecting that much, I guess and I was surprised. From the beginning, I couldn't at all see how this movie was going to last an hour, let alone an hour and a half. But whatever. It was what it was.

At times, it wasn't so much about Platos, but more of a profile on its creator, Larry Levenson, except not a very good one. I was going to stop it half way through, but Marggy said I should just finish. They'd get into these long strings of discussing him as if he was the focus of the doc.

There was lots of old archival footage and a lot of it was quite hard to see. I know from my internship that it's quite difficult to get this old footage, so that part is commendable, but I feel like the filmmakers were just satisfied getting some of the old footage and didn't mind if you could make out what was going on.

I didn't like the flipping the video back and forth. That was weird and distracting. we were always taught not to do that. There are rules that you're not supposed to do in movies that people break for creative effect, but this should not be one of those things.

Overall, I feel like this should have been an hour long tv documentary or something. There was just something about it that dragged out too long. There was a sequence that was just terribly cut and I started to get bored. It was going back and forth between a Plato's tv ad people's first hand accounts of Platos. That was horribly cut.

The music was fun.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

I thought this one was going to be the type of documentary that contains mostly interview footage, archive footage, stuff from movies, and talking heads, but it actually had a plot that had some movement in it. I appreciated that.

One thing that was a bit jarring is that at about 10 minutes in, they start this after effects animation with a voice over explaining with the MPAA rating system is. It was completely unexpected and I know it had to be one of the aspects of the film that the film maker noticed wasn't really in the same tone as the rest of the film. It was a similar feeling to movies that start off with a voiceover, but then don't continue only to bring it back later on in the movie. Totally changed the tone. It was really weird. It was a cute animation, but it was just super out of nowhere.

But after that, it really got moving and was pretty interesting to watch. Pretty informative. There was nothing too mind blowing, just standard expose kind of stuff.

It didn't even occur to me to think about the fact that people have to rate these movies and NO ONE knows who these people are. Wow. And the way they went after the members of the ratings board with a private investigator was really kind of fun. The analogy they drew comparing the members of the MPAA ratings board with the secretive members CIA was interesting when you thought about the fact that this movie was basically them trying to out these members. An act that's completely reprehensible for the other corporation.

But after that, it really got moving and was pretty interesting to watch. It really helped to have the perspective of former raters to give us that inside look at the MPAA rating system. That really strengthened the story, I think. It's interesting when they show clips from the other side (Usually Jack Valenti spouting crap) and they use it in a way that's sort of facetious, where we know that they know what this person is saying is crap. But really....the MPAA is full of conservative Republicans, as if people didn't already know. The world/country is ruled by conservatives and that's kind of a bummer for movies involving same sex relationships, as this movie shows.

This movie gave me the opportunity to see a bunch of sex in a bunch of movies that I'd probably not otherwise ever watch. I have no interest in seeing The Cooler. Ever. But I've seen the sex from it. So that's weird.