My boyfriend Mark Morford is back after a hiatus and is thoroughly thrashing The Passion of the Christ for his triumphant return. My favorite part:
It lasted more than a full half hour, the central beating scene, wherein a squad of monosyllabic demon Romans chain Jesus to a stone and feverishly flay him to oozing pulp on one side, then casually flip him over like a veal cutlet and thrash the other side until he is nothing but a puddle of dripping stage blood and flappy flesh and cavernous moans.
You catch glimpses of this revolting cartoonishness through barely parted fingers and you think, goddammit, there goes half an hour of my vital life force that I will require much sex and vodka and Buddhism to recover. And you realize, with a sort of perfect and holy divine clarity, that Mel Gibson is utterly, thoroughly insane.
and
Remember “Jaws”? Remember how that flick traumatized the entire Boomer generation back in ‘75? Same thing. “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the church … WHIPWHIPTHRASHARRRGGGH.”
