Popular reviews

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  Review by Disgustipated ★★★★★ 52

  Thanatos, Eros and the Art of Zen - Japanese Erotic Cinema Project - #1

  I went to see this film at the cinema on my own. Nobody else could go but I wanted to anyway because I am precipitously dementing into a Sion Sono fan. And it has the word porno in the title, so there is that.

  The movie finished. There was a couple sitting next to me wearing jumpsuits. The woman in a red jumpsuit turned to her partner in a yellow jumpsuit and asked him what he thought the film was about. The man in the yellow jumpsuit looked flummoxed, he could not respond. An increasing look of constipation wrinkled his face as he was obviously trying…

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  Review by Holli ★★

  can men stop trying to make movies about female sexuality because they will never understand it? and can other men stop praising these men for making said movies when they also know absolutely nothing about female sexuality? thanks ❤

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  Review by Liz ★★★★

  The pink film:
  1. One sex scene every ten minutes
  2. At least one hour long
  3. Anything else goes

  Sono takes the roman porno and turns it inside out, directly confronting and taking its audience, its creators, and the entirety of Japanese society to task for its hypocritical male-dictated standards of freedom and sexuality. La Chinoise is the easiest comparison -- a skin film in the making; the long takes, bold primary colors, and the anarchic use of music torn straight out of Godard's cinematic little red book.

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  Review by saribelle ½ 15

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  Review by The Clyde ★★★★★ 7

  "I'm a virgin. A virgin but a whore."

  I guess that the day they gave the greenlight to this film went like this:

  Place: Nikkatsu's Production Studio

  Nikkatsu Executive #1
  Good morning Mr. Sono! How are you today?

  *Sono enters the meeting and sits. Then he lights up a cigarette*

  Sion Sono
  Not bad.

  Nikkatsu Executive #2
  The reason why we have summoned you here today is because we want to produce your next feature film.

  *Sono takes a long drag, listening with interest*

  Nikkatsu Executive #3
  Are you ready to begin filming as soon as possible? We are aware that last year you made five films, so we understand if you are tired and want to take a little…

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  Review by SupremeLemon (지존레몬) ★ 20

  I feel most of the (white) dudes/weebs who keep saying this is a feminist critique of the porn industry are gonna keep watching Japanese (Asian) porn cuz they're weirdos with an Asian fetish

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  Review by Madeleine ★★★★★ 2

  The most incredible movie about female sexual dysfunction resulting from the pressures and expectations of a culture controlled by men made by a shockingly self aware pervert that I’ve ever seen

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  Review by Andre de Nervaux ★★★★ 2

  What the actual colourful fuck

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★

  Hahaha. WTF. Antiporno is oppressively weird but totally fascinating. It's an examination of sex and porn in Japanese culture, but it certainly doesn't hold back in exploring it. It is a very liberal experience, looking at many aspects of sex through its female lead and with absolutely no restraint. Throughout its surreal wanderings, Antiporno approaches sex from a lot of different angles, examining virginity, humiliation, pornography, nudity, pleasure, pain, nakedness, freedom, gender, whoredom, and desire. It reminded me of David Lynch's Inland Empire in the way it looks at women in media, as well as in how both films make it hard to discern what is real and what isn't. Having said that, Antiporno is a lot more focused and despite being…

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  Review by braden ★★★★ 1

  “This isn’t my life! This isn’t my existence!”

  Apparently tasked with making a soft porn film for a studio’s reboot of their ‘romantic porn’ sub-genre - limited only by the two rules of an 80 minute runtime and a sex scene every ten minutes - Sion Sono made the very bold move of subverting and criticising everything Japan’s exploitative adult film industry is about in his aptly titled Antiporno. It’s highly surreal in imagery and plot, but appropriately unsubtle in its messages about male gaze and the treatment of women in media; angrily and unrelentingly getting the point across with intense performances and rapidly increasing insanity. It’s difficult to watch at times, but always captivating despite the overwhelming weirdness and aggression, and incredibly powerful in its subversion of the genre and values.

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  Review by PopcornIdeology ★★★★ 1

  It doesn’t surprise me that one of Japan’s oldest and most prolific film studios, Nikkatsu, decided to attempt a revival of their Roman Porno films. What does surprise me however is they released, and to a degree even championed, Sono’s contribution to their attempts, Antiporno, which seems to serve its titular purpose quite well. 

  In the 60s, Pink films became a cornerstone of Japanese cinema thanks to Kōji Wakamatsu. Pink films are, in the broadest of terms, Japanese theatrical releases that include heavy nudity or sexual content. They rose to popularity in Japan at a time where television was beginning to usurp film’s place as the primary source of entertainment in Japan. Film studios began to produce more and more pink…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 9

  "Why do I like reading about cocks and cunts so much?"
  "Because it's obscene."
  "So why are books and movies about cocks and cunts bad?"
  "Because they're obscene."

  Antiporno is an often absurd and occasionally surreal film, which naturally raises questions in its audience like "what does this all mean?" and "what's this really about?" and "what's even going on here?" It's the kind of film that feels like it's desperately trying to tell you something but can't speak your language and is forced instead to do a kind of cinematic interpretive dance that isn't quite directly translatable into any simple linguistic form. But the thing is, regardless of whether you "get" "it", or even if you do "get" "it,"…