I would compare your argument to the difference between going to a Rockets game and reading the box score in the paper. All of the facts are present in the box, but the experience of immersing yourself in the game gives you a much more memorable and lasting understanding of what actually happened. I have forgotten many the details of the amazing 94' championship series which I had to watch on a B&W TV, but I vividly remember the sights, smells, and sounds of a Rockets-Kings crap-fest I went to a year of so previously.
The most offensive movie of all time? Celtic Pride....not because it was a terrible movie (which it was, of course), but because the UTAH JAZZ WIN THE NBA TITLE!! The writer and director of that monstrosity should have been blacklisted from Hollywood for life...
I haven't seen a lot of these exploitation movies or the disturbing horror movies mentioned in this thread, but I have seen this movie, and it bothered the hell out of me. I remember walking out of it thinking that if there really were people like the characters in that movie, it made me ashamed to share the same species as them.
One of the most amazing things about the movie is that it was actually widely held as factually accurate. I remembered reading about Wilson's support of the film and found this on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_of_a_nation As other posters have said, I think the movie is an incredible example of the power of cinema and the social conditions of the time. Without seeing the movie itself, you can't really appreciate what race relations were like back then. As far as my own most offensive movie. I think "Freddie Got Fingered" has to be high up there. I was flipping through the channels one day to find Tom Green sucking a horse's weiner. Definitely an image I wish I could get out of my head. The whole movie was so bad it was like Green was pulling a bad Andy Kauffman impersonation and trying to pull his own joke on the audience.
I think we had better define offensive. Does a movie being crappy make it offensive, or does something that offends you personally have to be in the movie to make it offensive? If it's the former, my choice is Waterworld. If it's the latter, my choice is Birth of a Nation.
Return of the Jedi. Being expected to believe that a bunch of Teddy bears could wipe out an entire legion of Imperial Stormtroopers offends my intelligence. What a travishamockery that was.
Well, if those blind ass Storm Troopers could hit more than 1 out of 15,000 blaster shots, they might have not gotten their ASSES kicked by a bunch of teddy bears...
I am actually not offended by any movie really. But one that I saw that would probably make the list is a Hong Kong film called "Dumplings". It is verty beautifully shot. There is another Hong Kong Film called Satyre Monks. It is about a group of monks that kidnap young women and their leader rapes them. Of course those are the bad guys. The thing that was offensive about it is that during the rape scenes they use a soft focus and play soft romantic music in the background as if it is something sweet and meaningful. The spoilers for dumplings is below. ****Spoilers**** Dumplings is about a woman who makes dumplings out of aborted fetuses, preferably boy fetuses at about 5 months. The dumplings stop people from aging. Of course it has bad side effects, but it was disturbing.
