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I have never been to a movie where a large section of the audience actually groaned in frustration/disgust when the movie ended. A woman right behind me stood up immediately as the credits rolled and loudly declared “Next time, _I_ get to pick the movie!” Several people walked out throughout the film, and one group in the back spent most of the time giggling, most likely at some private joke.
Personally, though, I think that “A History of Violence”:http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0399146/ is one of the best movies I have seen this year, standing alongside Broken Flowers, The Constant Gardener, Serenity, and Wedding Crashers (yes, really… I laughed so damn hard during that one).
Of course, I suppose that it isn’t exactly surprising that this movie would bring out strong feelings. From everything I’ve read people either love it or hate it so much that they invent new types of hatred just speaking about it.
The movie itself is quiet and methodical, with the sort of spare, economical dialogue you might find in a Pinter play or something by Hemingway. The violence is brutal and gruesome every single time, and the sex scenes are startlingly graphic without ever showing an inch of skin. In fact, I’d say that this is one of the few movies I’ve seen where the sex scenes were crucial to the movie.
The scoring was pitch-perfect, as well. In fact, large parts of the movie were entirely free of music – something that I am sure made more than one audience member terribly uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, the crappy audience definitely brought down my overall moviegoing experience – I feel like aspects of the film that should have sunk in didn’t because of the people around me, people who probably should have seen Flightplan instead. It definitely made me realize that maybe it’s not so bad to wait for DVDs to come out, instead of having to put your moviegoing experience into the hands of random jerkoffs.