Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Revealing Look Into A Monopoly (rated 4 stars)


While I thought that This Film is Not Yet Rated was going to just be about censorship, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was a lot more. It cleverly tells the story of the MPAA rating board and manages to also give a glimpse into how the rating system actually operates and how the rationale behind it hasn’t really worked. By humanizing the process it paints a picture of current society and exposes the monopolistic nature of the motion picture business and those who fight to preserve the control of the screens where we watch films. With interviews with filmmakers and a brilliant sequence that does a split-screen comparison of virtually identical scenes with different ratings that seem to be based on the sexual orientation and not what is actually shown, it’s thought provoking and entertaining.

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