Review of The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) by Andrew N — 05 Jan 2010

This isn't exactly Zizek at his finest, but he goes into some really stellar film analysis without getting too esoteric. The whole thing should be fairly easy to follow if you've been through psych and philo introductory courses and you don't have trouble picking up on people's accents.

As far as his cinematic analysis goes, I was particularly impressed by his thoughts on Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights" and the significant portion of time he devoted to Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's "Stalker", which has been all but forgotten except for in the annals of film school academia.

In all, Zizek's analysis in this film seems like a piecemeal effort to connect the world of cinema to his larger body of work, but there's no real overarching thesis so it doesn't really stand on its own.

Mind you, I watched this on netflix streaming and they only have part 3/3 available right now, so maybe the first 2/3's were more cohesive. Who knows! All I know is that this is a good casual view for anyone who is looking to explore film on another level.