Popular reviews

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★½ 5

  Cinematic Time Capsule
  2001 Marathon - Film #11

  Everything you are about to see is real.
  Real people in real danger in a fight for their lives on: THE CONTENDERS

  In what has to be one of the weirdest films of 2001, this spot-on parody of early reality TV features a Running Man style contest in which 5 random strangers are forced into a Battle Royale for our entertainment.

  You have to admire Daniel Minahan’s commitment to making this bizarre movie feel as close to a cheesy tv show as possible, including several fantastic bumper breaks promoting what’s still to come and an hilarious twist ending.

  BONUS POINTS for the unmistakable voice of Will Arnett as the gung-ho announcer.

  ”Though not required, bullet-proof vests are highly recommended”

  
  Cinematic Time Capsule - 2001 Ranked

  Films of Sundance – 2001

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  Review by Roxxi ✞ ★★★ 9

  The best part of Series 7 is in the very first scene where a heavily pregnant woman walks into a gas station, shoots a man three times, and then asks the man at the counter if they sell any bean dip.

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  Review by anne_f_ ★★★★ 2

  A deeply disturbing film with echoes of The Hunger Games and Battle Royale. The Contenders is a TV reality show and we follow series 7 as it is made. The contestants are drawn from a new city for each series, with the winner going into the next series. And how does the winner win? He or she has to be the last surviving contestant.
  Unlike The Hunger Games or Battle Royale, the contestants here were all adults, but the film was still very disturbing in its portrayal of reality TV, and of the audience's acceptance of abnormal behaviour for entertainment. Much of the acting in this film was extremely convincing - Brooke Smith as the heavily pregnant previous series winner…

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  Review by Ken Coffelt ★★★

  I joined Netflix in 2002 or so and I think that Series 7: The Contenders has sat in my DVD queue for all these many years. It had been so long that anything specific about it was long washed from my memory, other than being a satire about reality TV and probably in particular either COPS or Survivor. I guess one of the interesting things about finally getting around to watching it 14 years later is how much the landscape has changed and yet how prescient and relevant it continues to be.

  Shot on video and crafted to look like a reality-style program about a group of six “contenders” who are given a handgun and have to survive the game…

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  Review by Gregory Ashman ★★★★½

  Originally a parody of the 'Survivor' reality TV series, this film from the early 2000s was a fun re-visit especially with all of the current media attention on the imminent release of the film adaptation of "The Hunger Games" and "Battle Royale" finally and officially arriving on DVD and Blu-Ray in North America. Series 7 focusses on a couple of competitors who have been chosen from a national lottery system to mandatorily participate in series 7 of the nation's most popular sensation, "The Contenders" , a television series where the competitors must fight to the death to claim fame and fortune. The current champion is an eight months pregnant woman (played with white trashy gruffness and goofiness by Brooke Smith)…

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  Review by Michael Berger ★★★★½ 6

  One of my true all time favorites. This is tonally perfect filmmaking to me. Released at least a decade ahead of its time in 2001, it's a marathon of an entire season (series 7) of a faux reality show called The Contenders. A simple concept where a city is chosen at random, 7 strangers are united by a social security lottery ball drawing, given handguns and are then entered involuntarily into a 24 hour a day deathmatch against each other where the only prize they win is the right to do it again. Did I mention the reigning champion is 8 months pregnant? Well she is.

  Despite having all the traits of a rotgut, exploitative horror movie with this beautiful,…

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  Review by Rachel 🧡💚💙 3

  How many years, no, months are we away from this being a reality

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  Review by Gabriel Jewett ★★★

  Pretty good little obscure hidden gem, I love how the kills aren't played for laughs, the laughs are more in the absurd situations but the kills are played straight and shocking. Which I appreciated, I also dug how authentic it felt to the crappy reality shows it is parodying. Although at times that was also a detriment because it gets SO melodramatic to the point where the not stellar acting starts to really show, and kind of takes you out of it. By the last 10 or so minutes I mostly tuned out but the rest was solid. More people should know about Series 7 and we should have more movies like this by now.

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  Review by clairebiddles ★★★★

  watched this on channel four at midnight when I was 14 and have been dying to see it again ever since — finally scored it for 50p in a charity shop last week! as I remembered it’s a near perfect dystopian satire of a millennial reality show; the 2001 version of peter watkins’ punishment park. disappointed to note that the director has since been tied up in mediocre ryan murphy projects!!! if only someone would license this to netflix, or at least whack it on all 4 as it’s a film four production, it would have the cult revival it deserves

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  Review by Allen Liao ★★★½

  How important are aesthetics in films? What if a director intends that their films look ugly (whatever that entails for them)? Does he deserve praise for successfully realizing his visions? 

  Series 7 is a film that tries its best to look like Reality TV, and it succeeds in every detail, accidental or not. The contestants are overdramatic, the narrator is stereotypically calm, the editing consists of overused lens flares, color distortions, and flashy transitions, and the camera movement switches between found-footage (hand-held, extreme zoom-ins, unstabilized tracking shots) and dramatic panning motions for trailer clips.

  Arguably, this is one of those satires that would be distasteful if it is done more than once. But Series 7 is nothing but refreshing; it is a prime counter-example to the idea of aesthetics as the end all be all, the ultimate arbiter of a film's quality. Series 7 is intentionally ugly, and that is exactly why it is worth watching.

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  Review by Jason Alley🏳️‍🌈🐻 ★★★★½

  A great, darkly comedic satire of reality television that actually slightly predates (in conception and filming) the big reality TV boom of 2000, SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS is about a reality competition show in which groups of randomly selected citizens must kill one another until only one is left standing.

  In addition to being an excellent satire, it's also a good example of one of my favorite subgenres: "deadly game show" movies. Other good examples include DEATH RACE 2000, BATTLE ROYALE, THE HUNGER GAMES, and of course, an old favorite I watched just last night (THE RUNNING MAN).

  The acting is very strong from the whole ensemble for the most part, but Brooke Smith is positively brilliant in the lead…

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  Review by Tessa Racked ★★★½ 2

  I like when films' drawbacks serve their overall meaning, and that's one of the best parts of Series 7, a shitty reality show where people murder each other. Most of the contenders are two-dimensional (angel of death nurse, spoiled teenager), but that is *exactly* the kind of characters that reality shows give us. The montages meant to drive home what a child could figure out the characters are thinking and feeling are awful, but absolutely perfect in context. The script is often eye-rollingly bad-- like a voiceover where Dawn says that she prefers being the hunter to the hunted (WOW! REALLY?)-- but it perfectly mimics the nature of one-on-one interviews and voiceovers on reality shows that provide repetitive, hollow commentary…