Flexing with Monty (Video 2010) Poster

(2010 Video)

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5/10
What did I just watch?!
shine6726 April 2019
I like odd movies, unique movies, movies that try to tell stories in new ways. That part of me loved this movie. But the other part of me wants to know what I just did with the past 90 minutes of my life.

I'm not sure if the film was trying to say something deep or just be campy. The dialogue was silly, but the actors delivered their lines with full dedication. Trevor Goddard was perfect for his role. He's always been fun when I've seen him in different guest spots, and he brought all that personality to this part. He's a great physical actor, too, really using his space well. Rudi Davis, as his brother, held his own, and I thought they played off of each other really well. I've never seen him before, but he was a joy to watch.

But still, in the end, maybe the film was just trying a little too hard. Or maybe not hard enough. It's really a tough call because I was entertained for sure, but I'm not sure who I would ever recommend this movie to. Please watch it if you have time to waste, if you enjoy something different, if you are not easily offended and if you're stoned. I wasn't, but I think it might have been a lot more fun if I was. You just need to let yourself get lost in it.
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10/10
i cannot see that anyone with a trained eye has seen this film
albalovescholo20 April 2012
Warning: Spoilers
this film is surreal; nothing is what it appears to be, and i see no indication in IMDb that anyone here has studied film, as NO ONE has used the word surreal, or off-kilter, or used terms like symbolic, or metaphorical.

i do not mean to say that one must formally study film to appreciate it; but certainly even a casual review might mention the religious themes, rather that simply saying a nun drops by. and by what criteria is this a comedy?

i am sad that everyone here missed the film, especially because it was Trevor Goddard's swan song; sudden death at forty is tragic, no matter who you are. (my condolences to all who are directly affected.)
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More perverse than Tarantino
sman-153-1949996 September 2011
Warning: Spoilers
I always thought Quentin Tarantino was the best at pressing my squick button (I still cannot watch "Pulp Fiction" without feeling a bit queasy), but this movie takes the cake. It was interesting, but only in the sort of way an auto accident you are passing by on the road is. (I spent a fair amount of time on fast forward.) It is an intense movie; there are a couple of WTF moments: Bertin, the younger brother, purchases a man in a birdcage (sort of a man--he does not seem to mind or notice that he is caged), and we find out late in the movie that the alleged brothers are really father and son. One review I saw said that Warhol would have loved this, and, I don't know, I guess so. I was saddened to learn Trevor Goddard (Monty, the older brother) is no longer with us. He and the others do a nice job. Recommended, with reservations. There's a fair share of homophobia, homoeroticism, incest and S&M, and some wild sets. Does that make for a good movie?--well, perhaps.
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8/10
Bursting with energy, sometimes stupidly so
danielmartinx25 January 2015
Warning: Spoilers
This film, coming out of nowhere, really astonished me. For starters, the Samuel Beckett staging immediately makes you expect surreal and strange things. But the filmmaker takes the surrealism into really dark and unpleasant realms. Monty is a loud-talking narcissist, and Bertin is so self-absorbed that he's even less human or likable. Bertin's true feelings for Monty are clearly problematic, and the film plays a terrible game with the audience as it seemingly drags us to the edge of incestuous carryings-on, on screen no less. Goddard's body is used to great effect in the filming. After watching it, I found myself trying to think of a film that exploits the male body in the same relentless way. Monty's body carries the film, to whatever extent the film works (for some viewers, it won't work, clearly); Monty's endless flexing and preenign and posing draw the viewer's attention relentlessly, and there is a compulsive and uncontrolled nature to the camera work here. Many people are put off by the homoeroticism and intense homophobia of the film, but I think it's important to see Monty's strange rants about homosexuality as a pitiful and broken man battling against his own sexual hungers. Some viewers come away with a sense that Monty has taken advantage of a gay man who hires him as a hustler, but that interpretation is open to debate. The man pays for rough trade to verbally belittle him, and Monty does physically subdue and verbally degrade the man. What happens when the cameras leave, before Monty leaves the man's house? Note that he arrives early in the afternoon and leaves late at night -- Monty seems to have been playing his role for many hours, a fact that many Puritanical viewers seem to miss. The ending is horrific, of course, and I wish that some of the Lilith material had been excised from the script. There are many things that could have been done better, but when the main actor and the producer/writer/director pass away, you end up with not only an inability to refilm scenes but an inability to take the director's vision from his mind and to the screen. For these flaws, I take off a few points, but for its incandescent sensuality and stunning atmosphere, I give it an 8.
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8/10
"Would you like to touch my fleshy soul?"
Foreverisacastironmess12331 October 2023
Pretty sure this is a movie you'd either outright hate or love if ever there was one... Well I sure loved it a lot the first time I saw it, mostly because in a good way I'd never seen anything like it, still haven't since, and I really clicked strongly with this movie and it worked for me a lot. There's just something very magnetic and even engrossing about its wonderfully offbeat quirky tone to me and the uncanny way that the scenes are directed and even the dialogue, none of it fits into any set genre and it's a very bizarre viewing experience indeed, it doesn't even really feel like it takes place in the world as we know it! It's a bit of a movie anomaly for sure. I guess you could say it's sort of artsy, but I mainly found it to be very funny, and just a consistently compelling and very weird watch. It's such a unique blend of low key homoeroticism and aggressive male energy and the poetic, having a kind of focus and mixture of the pure physical brawn and the brain as the interesting juxtaposition between the two 'brothers', with Monty living entirely for the physical and his more quiet sensitive younger brother the mental, and the main focus of the film is the terminally messed up codependency between Monty and his no less twisted younger bro, and there's a definite weird 'tension' between the two that adds an extra bit of an ick factor to the movie! Trevor Goddard, may he rest in peace, wasn't much of an actor, but he had his strengths and he was really good in this and he made the movie work and it played up to what he was good at, his physicality and intimidation and he was also quite good at being funny as a fairly moronic lunkhead who is very over the top and strange, but he was the best character and a lot of fun to watch. I felt a bit sorry for how Monty ended up, he was an obscenely vain abusive jerk but in a movie full of less than reputable characters he didn't seem that bad, he didn't deserve to be betrayed and poisoned and have his head planted in a cabbage patch! When the insane nun showed up an already crazy movie really flies off the rails! Oh my goodness, Sally Kirkland was very fearless in this movie, shaving her head and getting completely nude for her role. When I figured out where I'd seen her before I couldn't believe it was the same actress who played the sweet wholesome mother in 1991's Haunted! She was awesome and more than a match for Goddard and Davis, she stole the movie! The rather anticlimactic ending isn't really befitting the rest of the film's trashy grungy craziness, but I put that to the flick's very complicated production history, plus the movie is so damn nuts anyway who really cares by that point if you're onboard and you're having fun with it? It's not about how it ends or even coherence of the story in this case, it's about the overall experience and to me, the whole thing is a real trip, don't try to make sense of it, just get lost in it! It's kind of the only way to really love a movie this freaking bizarre! I'd say to seek out this gleefully absurd, twisted and saucy gem if you have a keen interest in the truly out there and different kind of independent movie that you've never heard of, but go into it blind! Because that way you'll enjoy the balls-to-the-wall insane experience of this picture if it's a surprise. I love this sexy crazy goddamn movie. X.
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