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Press  Given the large role they play in shaping the culture, it is remarkable how little is known about movie ratings. Who decides whether a movie is rated PG or NC-17? What criteria do they use? How does the appeals process work? Those are some of the questions posed by an illuminating new documentary, “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” directed by Kirby Dick. -- MORE “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” a feisty, intellectually engaging documentary by Kirby Dick (“Sick,” “Derrida,” “Twist of Faith”), reveals that the Motion Picture Association of America, the organization that devised the current rating system and administers it, can be a remarkably secretive organization. -- MORE  Since 1968, when the MPAA ratings system was created as a successor to the more censorious Hays Code, the Motion Picture Assn. of America has wielded enormous power over movies. Foreign, art and independent films, which can be stopped in their tracks by the dread NC-17 rating, have been particularly vulnerable -- MORE  TITLE notwithstanding, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," Kirby Dick's prankish exposé of Hollywood's ludicrous film-rating system, actually boasts an NC-17 rating. -- MORE  Near the end of his 36-year reign as president of the Motion Picture Association of America, Jack Valenti suggested an epitaph for his eventual tombstone: "He freed the screen from all artificial barriers." -- MORE  Kirby Dick’s scathing, hilarious documentary reveals the MPAA reviews board for the hotbed of hypocrisy, double standards, and political dealmaking that it is. Partly a history of movie censorship, partly an investigation -- MORE  by Owen
GleibermanThis Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's cunningly outraged documentary about the Motion Picture Association of America and its infamous, dogged ratings board, is a movie that might just shake up the world of movies. People have been complaining about the MPAA for so long, and the gripes are by now so familiar — the system is arbitrary! -- MORE  Kirby Dick’s scathing, hilarious documentary reveals the MPAA reviews board for the hotbed of hypocrisy, double standards, and political dealmaking that it is. Partly a history of movie censorship, partly an investigation -- MORE  by
Scott Tobias To cut the MPAA a little slack, it's likely that any kind of ratings system would draw fire from the artistic community, since the very process of labeling a film for offensive content is bound to reveal hidden biases and a disputable set of criteria. That said, the current system is so egregiously corrupt that it can't be reasonably defended -- MORE  by
J. Hoberman Why we choose to watch the movies we watch is strictly personal, a matter of taste mediated by finance and geography. The nature of what we can watch is something else. As explicated by Kirby Dick's snappy exposé This Film Is Not Yet Rated, it's a matter of public concern. -- MORE  by Lewis
Beale Wayne Kramer says he still can't understand why a two-second shot of actress Maria Bello's unclothed privates earned his 2003 film "The Cooler" an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. The brief glimpse appeared during a tender lovemaking sequence with co-star William H. Macy and, said director Kramer -- MORE  by Anthony
Breznican
by Todd McCarthy "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" constitutes a ballsy expose of the notoriously secretive methods of the Motion Picture Assn. of America's ratings board; the guerrilla enterprise takes, and provokes, gleeful fun at outing the heretofore anonymous panel that decides who can see what and how far filmmakers can go with sex and violence. -- MORE  by
Peter Travers Kirby Dick's indispensable guerrilla attack on the film-ratings system gives Hollywood a swift, smart and hilarious kick in its institutional, hypocritical ass. -- MORE  by
Philip Kennicott "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is a provocation, a playful polemic with some sharp edges that is not likely to make the bureaucrats at the Motion Picture Association of America very happy.. -- MORE  by
Wesley Morris In 1984, the Motion Picture Association of America ruined filmgoing for a lot of aspiring preteen movie junkies. It invented the PG-13 rating, which at the time was a shocking development.. -- MORE  by
James Verniere Is the Motion Picture Association of America, the pseudo-governmental agency controlling the rating of films in the United States, a racket? Wake up and smell the NC-17s, baby. -- MORE  by
Moira Macdonald "They are reflecting the truth of America: Violence is fine, sex is not," says filmmaker John Waters. Filmmaker Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry") describes them as "a very powerful cultural censorship group." And longtime indie-film executive Bingham Ray says, "I believe it's a fascist system.". -- MORE  by
Carrie Rickey Critics of American movie ratings long have puzzled over the system that gives an R (under age 17 not admitted without parent or guardian) to a movie in which a woman is carved up by a chain saw and an NC-17 to one that shows a woman being sexually pleasured. -- MORE  by
Marjorie Baumgarten The MPAA – the Motion Picture Association of America: Everyone complains about the perceived shortcomings of Hollywood's movie-ratings board, but nobody does anything. Nobody, that is, until activist documentarian Kirby Dick, who here makes a movie that seeks to expose the standards and practices of this notoriously insular agency. -- MORE  by
Maitland
McDonaghProfessional gadfly Kirby Dick doesn't understand movie ratings, and he's not alone: Few filmmakers and fewer moviegoers could tell you exactly why one film gets an R rating and another that seems no sexier or more violent gets NC-17. -- MORE  by
Nick Shager Dissecting the current film ratings system with amusing impertinence, Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated proves to be a Molotov cocktail leveled against the Jack Valenti-led Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and their protocol of secretive, hypocritical, arbitrary, and moralizing censorship of "mature" material.-- MORE  by
Richard Dorment To get down to the nitty-gritty of how movies are rated and why, this highly-amusing documentary explores the past and present practices of the Motion Picture Association of America and comes to an irrefutable conclusion:-- MORE
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John Patterson I didn't know it until recently, but I've been waiting a long time to see a documentary like This Film Is Not Yet Rated, director Kirby Dick's riveting account of the inner workings of the secretive and corrupt Motion Picture Association of America and its incomprehensible - and often reprehensible - movie ratings system. -- MORE  by
James Mottram Last year, Kirby Dick was nominated for an Oscar for his documentary Twist of Faith. This year, he'll be lucky if he's not run out of town. -- MORE
Michael Moore stalking George
Bush. Morgan Spurlock stalking a Big Mac. This year the gonzo documentary
they’ll all be talking about is Kirby Dick hunting down and
dragging, blinking, into the spotlight of publicity, America’s
notoriously anonymous movie censors. This Film is not Yet Rated,
to be shown at the Sundance festival of independent films which starts
today, is something of a private crusade for Dick -- MORE
Kirby Dick created a stir at Sundance with
his new documentary, "This Film is Not Yet Rated." He attacks the
values and function of the MPAA's movie ratings, and penetrates
the secrecey of the Code and RAtings Board to identify its members
and reveal that most of them have adult children, not the grade-schoolers
always described by board founder Jack Valenti.-- MORE
Do you hate the MPAA? Do you loathe this system
by which filmmakers are forced to edit their films to a specific
rating in order to hit a certain demographic? Do you hate that you’ve
no idea who the people that rate these films are like, though they’re
described as being safe normal family folks that have kids in the
young impressionable range? Want to really know who the people in
this STAR CHAMBER of Hollywood are? .--MORE
FILM THREAT by Eric Campos Documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick (Sick:
The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, "Twist
of Faith") is our fucking hero! And with his latest film that gives
the Motion Picture Association of America a good kick in the ass
that it's been deserving for way too long, Dick is about to become
a hero to a legion of filmmakers who've been unfairly reamed by these
bastards. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the time has come for the MPAA
to get its ass reamed by our favorite Dick. Let the cheering begin!
-- MORE
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