20-Oct.2001 - 12
Febr.2002
Italian for beginners/
Italiensk For Begyndere
Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain
Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer's Stone A
One and a Two (Yi Yi) - filmclub Suna
No Onna /
Woman
in the Dunes (1964- classic)
Film
reviews often tell you what would be
commercially attractive or to the common
expectations. Therefore these descriptions
of non-cliché latest movies you
might want to see but did not decide about
yet.
The
latest films.
Seen:
12 Feb. 2002 Dir.: John Moore. With Owen Wilson and
Gene Hackman. This is the true story about a
navy-navigator called Chris Burnett who with his F18
pilot on the eve of Christmas was shot down above
Bosnia. They were on a reconnaissance flight.
Discovering illegal actions he and his copilot were
shot out of the sky. His colleage was shot right away
by rebel serbian forces who after that chased Burnett
down to an enclave nearby where he would be picked up.
Because of political and tactical reasons that does
not happen directly. He is the real hero in this story
constantly outsmarting his enemy to an incredible
degree: he hides under corpses in the massgrave he
accidentally stumbles upon in his escape, he changes
clothes with a soldier within a minute so that to the
enemy he can pretend to have been killed to get away,
and he unfailingly finds the photo-equipment's
harddrive to take it back as evidence for the
warcrimes of the Serbs, he jumps through a mined area
unharmed while his suitors are killed in it and he
manages with the best of guerilla techniques to kill a
marksmen especially sent out for killing him. At last
when finally the helicopters come to get him he
doesn't get a single bullet capturing the disc away in
front of a whole army of firing serbian soldiers and
tanks. Undoubtedly the real story must have been much
more boring and credible. The presentation in an
all-american perfect Godmode at the one hand makes the
true story difficult to believe, which could be
considered a pity, seeing all others around in
complete failure and crime at the other hand. In the
beginning of the movie Burnett is pictured as being in
conflict with his Admiral for not having a real war
because of which he wants to resign. That admiral
though had to break the rules to get him out and was
transferred to an office-job in Washington. At least,
one may conclude after the hours of pure wartime
excitement, has one American fought a real war out
there the way any soldier might dream it. Because of
this hero we can now arrest and convict a heavy
warcriminal. That's a good thing of course to
remember. Its a good film for the american patriot and
for Hollywood, but for an European it is a bit of a
schocking Flash Gordon replay exploit of the
macho-hell we recently have had here. Also one-sided
picturing the role of the NATO as a heartless
political institute that wanted to sacrifice the
pilot, doesn't make one happy. Thus this movie might
be ranked more under the heading of a godmode patriot
propaganda movie against the 'bad guys' than under the
true-story movies of historical events; and that would
be a missed chance. (website)
Seen:
12 febr 2002 Dir.: Tony Scott. With: Robert Redford
and Brad Pitt. Nathan Muir and Tom Bishop are Vietnam
veterans . From the experience then was the younger
Tom recruited for the CIA by the already engaged
Nathan. The movie starts with the incarceration in a
prison in China of Tom after failing in rescuing a
woman captured there. Within 24 hours he will be
executed, but the service does not take the necessary
action because of all kinds of political hindrances.
They want to sacrifice Tom. Nathan as his old mentor
in the service cannot let him die there and decides to
falsify the CIA authority in sending out a rescue team
to get him and the girl out. Throughout the movie we
see Redford arranging his plan behind the back of the
other agents with which he is in discussion for the
late evening and the early morning following. Retiring
Nathan has his last day at the service and while
arguing with his colleagues on the problem we come to
know of their past experiences in Beirut and Berlin in
flashbacks. The mission succeeds and Tom is freed.
Nathan cheating the CIA as well as Nathan baffling the
Chinese is the final outcome and that makes him the
hero of the story stepping back for no one in the name
of loyalty and justice. All is filmed in the obscure
light of the CIA offices full of suspicious people
with all-intelligent looks, the damp of a hellish
Chinese prison and the dramatic decor of a destroyed
Beirut full of desperate people. Not directly a happy
experience of the post-cold war new light in a new
world, but still a realistic picture appreciable as a
good prelude to it.(website).
Dir.
Irwin Winkler with Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott
Thomas, Hayden Christensen, Jena Malone, Mary
Steenburgen. A middle-aged architect has cancer. He is
divorced already and also loses his not-to-good job
where he's gluing together models for the firm.
Computers replace him. He lives in a garden shed
behind his former living, where still his wife resides
with another man. He has no ambition left and freaks
out the last day at his office. He also has a troubled
past where there was a traffic-accident which caused a
girl to end up in a wheel chair. His neighbors do not
respect him for being such a vagrant unshaven looser
in their neighborhood. Altogether he suffers a heavy
depression and decides to make finally his amends in
life. His neglected son he draws close. The guy is a
punky freak tripping on drugs all day occasionally
prostituting himself for the money. He decides to
build himself a house together with the ill-motivated
son right on the place where the decrepit place is
where he lives. The man next-door calls the officials
to block the project as he himself and everything he
does is unwanted. But things turn out good and even
comical. The perverted son knows of the services the
nasty neighbor wanted from him, so that problem is no
more. Next is there the daughter of another
neighboring housewife who is just as interested in
sexual adventures as her daughter is. So father and
son are spiced up. While the friend of his son sleeps
with that housewife he manages to unfreeze his son out
of his narcoleptic stupor and win his heart. But as he
hears of his fathers fate, he is angry: first won and
then immediately abandoned again. Anyhow after a lot
of all too human scenes and laughs, our man goes to
the hospital just to see all the people united in
building his life as a house. The house is given to
the victim of the accident he once caused and his son
enjoys his new found freedom. Even his former wife
fell in love with him again abandoning her friend. If
we have to die, lets do it good is the morality
upheld. Never leave this world guilty as you are, but
always try to make the best of it. That is the
purpose, the solution and medicine against all
darkness. Straight moral, constructive, positive,
optimistic, comical and nicely acted a meaningful
experience. (website)
Seen:
22 dec. 2001; a danish Dogma-95 Film Dir: Lone
Scherfig, Met: Anders W. Berthelsen, Peter Gantzler,
Sara Indrio Jensen, Ann Eleonora Jørgensen,
Lars Kaalund, Karen-Lise Mynster, Elsebeth Steentoft,
Anette Støvelbæk. The Dogma recipe for
making movies is that of sobriety: one produces a
non-frills bare celluloid or video-product with no
camera tricks or advanced editing. The story is
straight filmed out of hand suggesting an as close to
nature look as possible. (We already saw the hilarious
dogma
film
Festen
about the family exploits of a failing wedding
anniversary). This movie is hailed for its proving the
reality of happy endings for desperate people. It
received the 2000 Berlin Film Festival Best
Picture (nom) and 2001 European Film
Academy - award. It is a comedy of people living
close to one another in and around a football stadium/
service center where there is also a church, a
restaurant and hair dresser salon. The story centers
on six people in a desperate situation, one is in fact
a wild hairdresser woman with a father-complex in need
of the other that is a wild immigrant from Italy
working in the restaurant. The next couple to be is
the new vicar replacing the former one gone mad, who
finds love with a girl working in the bakery. The next
is the impotent manager of the restaurant who finds
love with the italian female colleague that also works
in the restaurant. The Italians living in the
restaurant do not know to behave and are fired by the
manager. The danish of the six follow a course in
Italian and with the other Italians falling in love
they all join in the course. The hairdressers mother
is a lost vagrant woman that dies painfully out of
sheer misery, helped a bit with it by her daughter
shamefully giving her an overdose. The father of the
bakery girl also a fallen grumpy cankerer with never a
good word also dies at the same time. The
inexperienced vicar mixes the two funerals and so it
turns out that the two girls are each others sisters.
The fired italian takes over the italian course from
the former leader who died at the spot of a
heartattack. All together they make a trip to Venice
where they definitely declare their love to share
their lives. Three happy ending in a dark modern
mudwrestling struggle for light in desperate civil
lives of loneliness and meaninglessness. Love brings
it all to a good end. No minute the end good all good
theme is irritating, it is even unexpected as the
realism of the dogma recipe paints no beautiful
picture. Of course is attachment not the real solution
but still the marriage is a sacrament of God isn't it?
It are ordinary people with ordinary problems and
lives, and that, impotent, freaky or too devout, we
must understand, is never hopeless. Aren't we all
entitled to love and an happy end. so...?
(website)
Seen:
22 dec. 2001 Dir.: Cameron Crowe: with Tom Cruise ,
Penélope Cruz, Kurt Russell. Ever wondered what
it is to live in the vanilla skies of a cryogenic
dream? The movie is about the reality of being caught
in the deluxe dream of being frozen in the body for
later rebirth in the same but then repaired body. We
are offered a discussion-subject: should we keep the
attachment to the body and reincarnate to its
specifics or should we detach from that ego, die and
try another rebirth with diapers and all that trouble
of going to school again? In this story, a remake of a
recent less attractive version called Abre los ojos by
Alejandro Amenábar, 1997, we see Tom Cruise
play David Ames, a son of successful deceased
publisher running a popular magazine. The guy is a
playboy, a partyanimal and promiscuous devil carrying
the nickname Citizen Dildo. He betrays his sexual
mate, a blond hot girl, for a new flame of the spanish
type. Out of jealousy the former friend commits
suicide driving of a bridge with him sitting in the
car. She dies , but he survives with a badly damaged
face and arm. He limps through town like the looser of
the century and his former girl and friends can't cope
with the problem. He even wears a mask to cover his
lamed and scarred face and thus is his former ego now
a farce of really hiding behind his ego. Desperately
he commits suicide after having signed a contract for
a freeze-the-lux, for the advance of surgery might
give him his original face back. In the movie we see
him ending up in a nightmare: filmed in scenes cut
through one another he cannot distinguish anymore
between dream and reality. It reminds one of the movie
Memento.
When his face is suddenly repaired by an advance in
science, he thinks to have his life back, but making
love to his rewon spanish sweetheart, she suddenly
turns into the blond that drove him into hell. He
freaks out, kills her and ends up in a psychiatric
ward talking to the shrink from behind his mask. He
can't get out of it: then he has a complex of denying
his recovery, then the problem is not fixed at all,
then he has murdered and then he hasn't. In the end
technical support of the cryo-company helps him out
proving to him that he lives his fantasy, his
selfcreated world of guilt, fear and shame and that in
order to get out he only has to overcome his last
greatest fear, the fear of hights. As he jumps from
the skyscraper to get out of the vanilla skies of his
nightmare the movie ends. 'Open your eyes' she
whispers, welcome the real of life we have to return
to. The help of the technical support is of course a
sciencefiction band-aid on the real wound of possibly
ending up in such a situation. The real problem is the
resentment against being born again in the material
world with another unknown father that has no
publishing company and an easy life of luxury to
offer. The cryogenic nightmare reminds one of what
The
Others
proved us about being in limbo. What would you do if
you had the choice: Game over by nature or revert by
technology? In either case, reincarnation is beyond
doubt for the ones attached! (website)
Seen:
13 jan. 2002 Dir.: Alejandro
Amenabar, with Nicole Kidman. This movie is no
ordinary horror-story. It is a serious consideration
of our afterlife. Since the Sixth Sense we are alert
of the theme of reincarnation in the cinema. In this
case the matter of being in limbo is discussed. Before
being liberated we first have to work out our karmic
consequences. Our bad deeds give us a psychological
conflict: we cannot see ourselves as bad, but see the
bad instead in the world around us. Thus we can die
without realizing that we died ending up in a
nightmarish position called limbo that continues until
the repressed material is back into the consciousness.
In this story this is illustrated by the story of a
young woman called Grace who during the second world
war awaits the homecoming of her husband. She lives
isolated at an estate in the countryside. The story
begins with her having trouble giving a life to her
two young children who suffer from a mysterious
light-allergy. All curtains must be drawn and in de
dark rooms she moves them around very compulsory
neurotic keeping doors locked for safety for their
studies and meals. The bell rings and she finds at the
frontdoor three servants awaiting to help her out. She
is suspicious, they arrived before the add could be
posted that said that she needed them . They explain
that they formerly worked in the mansion and know the
place perfectly. She though is new and is having
trouble with ghosts spooking around in the house. She
hears sounds, she hears the piano playing with no one
in the room to play it, she is completely baffled,
goes frantic with her kids and tries to solve the
problem. She doesn't understand. The house is always
in the mist and outside running for help from her
freaky servants that she tries to send away not
trusting them, she suddenly finds her husband coming
back home to her. They return to the house again, but
the next morning after having made love he is gone to
the war again. Also have all curtains disappeared and
she panics. Her children are unprotected. The servants
return to her to demonstrate that she can't continue
alone. They have a mission of gradually explaining her
what's wrong with her life. She discovers a
photo-album of the former inhabitants and also finds a
picture of her servants: they are dead. In the garden
there are also graves with notably her own name on it.
She can't deny any longer. The ghosts in the house
turn out to be real people who in a seance try to
contact her as the evil spirit herself in the house.
The roles are reversed: they tell her that she
murdered her children in her desperate loneliness and
that she is in limbo denying her sins. End of the
story she learns to accept the facts and finds
liberation. The afterlife does not directly lead to
reincarnation, but certainly things must be worked out
if one does not find oneself directly in heaven, A
very realistic story confirmed by many paranormal
evidences that warns us to take a possible afterlife
seriously. Always die the right way with a clear
conscience! Death is no solution for what you did to
others. (website)
Seen:
13 jan. 2001 Dir.: Peter Chelsom with
John
Cusack, Kate
Beckinsale.
Serendipity means: the faculty of making fortunate
discoveries of things you were not looking for.
Jonathan and Sara are two attractive young adults who
are to explore the nature of serendipity in this
story: can they find one another back after ten years
with only two clues left behind? They test destiny
with the thesis that soulmates made for one another
cannot miss one another by serendipity. The thesis was
first formulated by Plato and is now popularized in
this movie: for everyone there is an ideal soulmate, a
true one. The only problem is finding that soulmate.
Thus do the two, he american and she english, test
this by first writing their addresses in a book and on
a dollar bill, sending them out into the world to
return by fate, and then going into a lift to see if
they end up on the same floor. The last doesn't happen
and they lose one another. Having forgotten his shawl
he finds her back though in the store where they both
wanted to buy the same gloves . That is how they met.
They spend a gorgeous romantic evening together
skating in winter and then break up to test their
fate. Ten years later they both are about to marry to
nice partners, but both are still thinking of their
first encounter hoping that it still works out in
serendipity. So they find clues and even retrieve the
book and the dollar bill. But their marriages seem to
be inevitable. Of course we have a happy end defeating
all disbelieve in love and thus the story ends like a
modern fairytale. No drama, only charm. Serendipity is
a fact of life: life is full of clues leading to the
true One. But who is that? Would that ideal partner
really be another person or just someone else sharing
in the same quest? Are we bound by our external
appearances or the drive for the soul of love and
mystical union? The love is in the finding, not in the
getting is shown. The marriage partner easily won is
not as attractive as another person of the same ideals
and serendipity proving fate right and habitual love
wrong. Whether for the body or the soul the mystery is
the essence. Love is more than an accidental meeting
or as one says in this movie: 'Chaos personified'.
(website)
Seen:
20 dec. 2001 Dir.: Peter Jackson. Met Elijah Wood,
Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Lyv Tyler, Sean Bean,
Christopher Lee. 'There is a ring to rule them all and
in darkness bind
them'
this
is the theme of this fantasy-production to the famous
book of the father of all fantasy-literature: Tolkien.
In the first part of this trilogy we learn to know the
Hobbits, the small people of Middle Earth who live
happily together. The old hobbit Bilbo Baggins keeps a
secret: a mysterious ring once forged in the fires of
Mount Doom by the evil Lord Sauron. That evil Lord was
in the past defeated in battle with the humans and the
Elfs and the ring with which he ruled the people was
taken by the humans who lost it. A creature called
Gollem captured it and kept it for a long time calling
it its precious,but the ring was to escape to its
destiny and found by Bilbo. It could make him
invisible and that gave him the special status among
his people. Getting older though he has to step back
into the heaven of the Elves for his old age and with
great difficulty and on the advice of Gandalf, the big
human wizzard who protects them, he manages to leave
the ring behind. Gandalf gives it to the virginal
Frodo, a bright young man with a loyal heart of
goodness. But realizing its power does he, admonished
by Gandalf, take the decision to destroy the ring by
returning it into the fire where it was forged. That
is the only way of preventing the resurrected Lord
Sauron to recapture the ring and tyrannize Middle
Earth again. Together with a fellowship of dwarfs,
humans, elves and hobbits he undertakes the dangerous
journeys. He is haunted by fallen human kings that
like spirit ghosts without a face are chasing him
seated on black horses. And there are more obstacles
reaching Mordor, the evil empire. The association of
the leading wizzards broke up corrupted by the power
of Sauron so that the leading wizzard Sauruman now
fights against Gandalf and the fellowship of the ring.
In the dark crevices of the subterranean works off the
dwarfs they meet with a monstrous Troll and a host of
other terrible creatures who almost kill Frodo and
take away Gandalf from them. They reach the elf queen
Galadriel who helps them on their way to the evil
empire. The fellowship gradually breaks up with all
the trials of the journey, with the ring ever tempting
all who have a weakness for power. End of part one is
only Frodo left with one Hobbit : Samwise Gamgee, to
enter Mordor. The story meets all demands of what one
imagined reading the book. The story is after an
introduction told in a straight line of chronological
order and reminds one of the computergames in which
one has to kill all the monsters one meets. But the
worlds created of the Elves and Hobbits, the
atmosphere of evil and the conflict of the wizzards,
counterbalance this straightness appropriately and
magnificently so that one finds oneself amidst all the
diversity of a completely different world with
beautiful and also horrible creatures and breathtaking
landscapes. The New Sealand lands work wonder well as
an alternative earth we do not recognize from our
american or european framework. It is in all respects
a true adventure for people of all ages to meditate on
the significance of being bound and tempted by a
golden inscribed ring in fellowships that break down
struggling with all the demons of evil. The fantasy
world projects all evil to the demoniac opponent that
is after power only. Only the humans of the fellowship
have difficulty resisting the temptation, they are
kept as a minority of gods being mixed to both the
qualities. First a classic in literature and now one
to become in the cinema. (website)
Gezien:
13 dec. 2001 Dir.: Vincent Bal met: Carice van
Houten en Theo Maassen. Heerlijke kinderfilm naar een
verhaal van Annie M.G. Schmit. Minoes is een vreemd
meisje: ze klimt hoog in de boom als een hond tegen
haar blaft en ze kan zich niet beheersen als ze vis
ruikt. Ze kan ook met katten praten in de buurt en ze
weet zelf niet waarom ze er ook niet als een kat
uitziet. Op een dag likte ze aan een vat dat van een
vrachtwagen was gevallen en toen was ze opeens een
mens geworden, met mensengeur en al, bah. Haar andere
poezen-collega's vinden het maar raar dat ze er als
een mens uitziet en op het dak rondhangt. Ze ontmoet
per toeval de verlegen journalist Tibbe die dreigt te
worden ontslagen als hij nog een keer met een
onbenullig stukje zonder nieuwswaarde durft aan te
komen. Hij is wanhopig en treft Minoes aan in een
boom. Hij helpt haar eruit en zo raken ze bevriend.
Minoes trekt bij hem in als zijn assistente van de
katten-nieuwsdienst, want ze hoort van alle katten in
de buurt alle nieuwtjes. Eerst botert het nog niet zo
met Tibbe, maar dat wordt allengs beter als hij succes
krijgt met de poezenpraatjes. Hij moet wel even wennen
aan haar poezenmanieren als hij b.v. een krab over
zijn neus krijgt De z.g. weldoener van het dorp, de
schatrijke direkteur van de deodorant-fabriek Deo,
blijkt volgens Minoes helemaal niet zo'n aardige man
te zijn. Hij rijdt de haringkar omver en zo. Bovendien
schopt hij katten in de afvalbak , als voorzitter van
de dierenbescherming nog wel, en ook gooit hij een
nest jonge katjes van de Jakkepoes weg. Jakkepoes is
een knorrig dametje die al weinig vertrouwen in de
mens heeft en apart leeft in een oude caravan. Als de
deo-man dan die caravan ook nog op wil ruimen en de
burgemeester probeert om te kopen met een zwembad, is
de maat vol en gaat Tibbe met Minoes en de poezen in
de aanval om hem aan de kaak te stellen. Ze lokken hem
in de val en filmen hem met zijn wandaden. Als het
hele dorp op Tibbes hand is, eerst hadden ze hem
namelijk ontslagen en bijna z'n huis uitgezet omdat
hij maar wat zou roddelen, gaan ze op onderzoek uit en
ontdekken ze de beschadigde auto waarmee meneer Deo de
haringkar omver had gereden. Nou mooi dat meneer Deo
zelf in zijn eigen kuil mag donderen dus! Minoes kan
weer terug poes worden als ze een goudvinkje
oppeuzelt, maar dat lukt niet. Minoes wil ook best
mens blijven en trouwt, eind goed al goed, met Tibbe.
Het is allemaal erg komisch en vermakelijk de dorpse
toestanden en de pratende poezen met de stemmen van
Wim T. Schippers en Paul Haenen. Theo Maassen is
zonder meer een ideale Tibbe die de goedheid zelve is.
Carice van Houten's Minoes is een schatje van een
katje. Burny Bos die ook al Abeltje verfilmde en voor
het script tekende heeft er weer een mooie Anne
M.G.-film bij gemaakt. Filmisch is het ook allemaal
prima in orde. Gewoon een pracht van een nederlanse
film. (IMB-info)
(Amelie
From Montmarte)
Seen:
5 dec. 2001 Dir.: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, with:
Audrey Tautou en Mathieu Kassovitz.
A
magical romantic comedy of a young woman who living in
her own world of fantasies tries to make it with an
equally lone artist that works in a video-store
nearby. That man has a peculiar hobby: he collects
torn photo's from under a photo-boot, glues them
together and keeps them in an album. Amelie is a kind
of saint in the neighborhood where she pulls of all
kind of pranks and surprises other people with
unexpected plots of action. She prepares the house of
a shopkeeper who is an unfriendly racist so that the
man wakes up in the middle of the night, puts the
wrong cream on his toothbrush and goes out for his
work and more of that. She makes her father believe
that his garden goblin that he against the will of the
deceased mother has placed on her grave (in the
garden!) is traveling the world all over sending him
postcards from Moscow and New York. She also makes
video's for the glass man, an old artist with brittle
bones that has dedicated his life to copy one painting
of Renoir. Very charmingly she slowly gets into the
life of the young man playing all kinds of games with
him to meet him. It almost seemed to go wrong when he
is directed to a colleague of her working in the same
café where she also couples a customer to the
woman selling the cigarettes telling them both that
they would fancy one other. All this results in a
highly sophisticated artistically filmed comedy that
charms in its warm humanity and mystery and magic.
Amelie's world is alive: her things, like her
lampshade and her t.v., come to life speaking to her
and she recognizes death in person in a mechanic that
time and again tears his own photo's checking the
photo-boot for its maintenance. With an happy end this
movie leaves one nothing to wish. It is the best
French movie I've seen since Vatel.
(all-movie-info)
Seen:
5 dec. 2001 Dir.: Barry Levinson, with: Bruce
Willis en Billy Bob Thornton.
The
sleep-over bandits so it seems are doomed to end up
dead, so makes the movie one believe. They,
spontaneously escaping from prison in a cement-truck,
form a peculiar duo. He is the macho criminal and his
friend is the neurotic intellectual with imagined
diseases that meticulously plans the perfect crime.
They thus have a perfect plan to rob banks: they one
night before sleep over at the bank directors home
address forcing him into giving them the bank the next
day. It works all according plan perfectly, until a
disappointed housewife, a grand lady joined them, She
with them freaks out on her civil life. In fact is the
classical theme of sympathy with the antisocial motive
portrayed: society is bad with all those square
hypocrites and deserves, stealing by law and
government, nothing else but to be stolen itself. The
originality of the story lies in the plot of finally
escaping from the civil hell of stealing and fleeing,
to celebrate the riches in Mexico. They both fall in
love with the irresistible lady who almost defeats
them in their will to survive and keep together. The
neurotic and the macho make a nice couple of friends
and together with another crime-artist, a stuntman,
they finally complete their masterpiece of bank
robbery escaping from an impossible situation of being
trapped by the police. Don't read the next if you want
to be surprised, but they shoot one other so it seems
and the ambulance that takes them away is driven by
the stuntman who crashes with it so that everybody
thinks they're dead. Well only in the very end one
finds out about this scheme and as such is the movie a
successful cheating story, even cheating the onlooker
in thinking that they are doomed to die. For its genre
a seven on a scale of ten 'I'd say. Good
entertainment, although... the escapist motive is of a
lesser appeal to me than the success story of a real
victory over the civil square. But those stories that
really would give a better world are very rare.
(website)
Seen:
28 nov. 2001 Dir.: Michael Apted to a book
by Robert Harris, with: Kate Winslet, Dougray
Scott. The story is about a real-life event that was
decisive to the outcome of the second worldwar: the
cracking of the german communications codes with a
machine called the enigma. There is a whole
intelligence plot with a beautiful spy, and a romance
between Tom Jericho, the genius mathematician and
Hester Wallace who is also in the Enigma project.
Because of an attack of the Germans they manage to get
sufficient information to crack their code, but it
goes not without troubles. Papers are needed that
unveil a drama in Poland where the Russians executed
thousands of civilians. That could not be uncovered,
so that information got stolen by Claire the beautiful
spy who did it with all men of the project and has
become a subject of repression and shame. She has
fled, or was she murdered, and trying to find her our
genius, who just returned from mental hospital because
of a nervous breakdown, is followed by the secret
service who discovers that the papers were hidden
under the floor of the little cottage where Claire
shared rooms with Hester. Hester helps Philip fleeing
from the tentacles of the service and crack the code.
Victory of love and intelligence. Thus the movie is a
classic as well as a reminder of an important historic
event.
In
real-life is the victory to the intelligent,
compassionate and sensitive. That is how should we
should know it.
(all-movie-info)
Seen:
28 nov. 2001 Dir.: Chris Columbus with:
Daniel
Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson (II), John
Cleese, John Hurt. Harry is an orphan destined to
become a great magician. The movie begins with scenes
from his youth: a very nasty stepfather forbids him as
good as everything and keeps him in the broomcloset
under the staircase. His fat stepbrother thinks to be
the better of him, but mysteriously all works in favor
of Harry. When a letter is torn do owls deliver tons
of other similar letters just to make sure he gets the
message that he is elected for the Hogwarth school of
Wizardry. There he goes and gets his education. He is
famous from the beginning, marked by a scar on his
forehead because of being attacked and having survived
an attack by the evil magician Voldemort. His parents,
that were killed by the evil one, were also in the
business, so he is a natural talent and does pretty
well at the peculiar school situated in a parallel
universe where other laws of nature are ruling. One
flies there on broomsticks playing a special magical
ballgame called Quidditch. The scenes of that game are
of an other worldly beauty. It is science fiction all
right but with a classical touch. It is the great
charm of the Harry Potter-universe where one can walk
through walls, fly through the air and cast spells
with magic wands that really work. Harry with his
friends discovers that hidden in the school and
guarded by a monster of a three headed dog called
fluffy [falls asleep on music] there is the
philosophers stone of immortality. [what
philosophy would that be?]. To get that stone,
before the evil Voldemort seizes it is his mission. He
has to take it up with an enormous troll, big green
and very stupid and a life size game of chess where he
has to sacrifice one of his friends to finally snatch
the stone away before the evil Voldemort gets it.
Meanwhile he has to follow classes in magic where
there is the regular passing by of old spirits playing
games with them. Everything works in favor of Harry.
He gets a cloak that makes him invisible. Thus he can
get access unseen. He finds a mirror that shows one
one's personal future. Harry's world offers a paradise
of fantasy where all things of matter can be
controlled by training the spirit properly. Thus
classically evil has to be defeated. It is all
beautifully filmed answering all expectations on
locations in England with English actors as the author
J. K. Rowling managed to demand. Who has not had the
children's dream of magical control finally defeating
the dominance and evil of the material world? Although
we shouldn't ask the Lord for miracles, in this movie
we love to forget about that. That's Harry Potter.
(website)
Seen:
13 nov 2001. Dir:
Robert
Luketic with:
Reese
Witherspoon, Matthew Davis (II). Elle
Woods
is a pinky
cosmo-girl, a Superbarbie the Luxe that looses a
friend who goes to Harvard. She is not the senator
type of wife he is looking for, so he dumps her. She
though is determined to win him back taking up the
challenge. She and her little pet-dog apply for
Harvard law school to take it up with the so-called
intelligent and cultured. She keeps the dum blonde
image though seeking solace with her cuticles in the
beauty parlor. That is her fraternity. Of course she
makes it finally, handing out scented pink
résumé's and typing on an orange Apple
laptop. Intelligence is a matter of motivation she
proves. The movie is a jolly interpretation of the
emancipation theme: class is not what decides, all
that matters is devotion. Thus this is a o.k. movie, a
light comedy making no offenses or heavy intellectual
appeal. Emancipation itself though, not being about
woman, another class of society or being blonde
specifically is in need of more movies telling stories
different ways to make us fully aware of the
importance of the true of emancipation. The movie even
running into musical and dance entertains, but escapes
the real discussion that emancipation should serve not
as much being black or white, man or woman, but to be
a loyal to the true science of selfrealization. This
legally blonde makes it too much in the style of a
'pride in jealousy'- type of emancipation that is
after another outcome than a higher cause. For fun
o.k., but for a discussion not enough.
(website)
Seen:
13 nov 2001. Dir:
Edward Yang,
with: Wu Nien-Jen, Elaine Jin, Kelly Lee, Jonathan
Chang, Chen Xisheng, Ke Suyun, Issey Ogata. This
taiwanese movie tells the story of a family in crisis
in the middle of the nineties businesslife in Taiwan.
Mother has an affair with the english teacher, father
has a secret love from his youth he cannot return to,
grandma is on her deathbed and needs to be spoken to
until she dies, and an uncle does a suicide attempt.
The girl of the family has a friend. She is totally
upset when she discovers the affair of her mother with
her own teacher. Her boyfriend cannot cope with the
scandal, abandons his girlfriend and kills the
teacher. End scenes at the funeral of grandma. The
story begins at a family wedding of the uncle setting
the tone of the movie: there is no straight storyline
told. From each person his own perspective everything
is shown as if one is a spirit in the sky. One is not
allowed to identify with anyone. At first this
confuses one as an onlooker/peeping Tom, asking
oneself 'of what concern to me would be the lives of
these people?' One even floats outside the buildings
seeing what happens inside as if one would be a bird
or God in the sky, impartial and unconcerned. A clue
to the mystery of identification is offered by the
little boy of the family. He is always harassed in
school by the other kids and asks his father difficult
philosophical things he can't answer really. Father
complains that the boy doesn't use the little camera
he gave him. The boy gives in and starts his art.
First he shoots all mosquito's in the apartment
building 'otherwise no one would believe they are
there'. That 'abstract art' is not very well
understood. The second series is of the backside of
all kinds of people. The boy says he wants to show
people things they cannot see themselves as e.g. their
backside. That is his calling, his service. So too the
movie shows us the vision of the unidentified pure
witness, one never attains oneself identified as one
is with ones own body. This makes the movie a typical
product of the eastern philosophy and a revelation to
our understanding in the western style of identifying
with characters. Now we learn to understand without
identification, as identification could be the problem
itself. Thus gives this story a refreshing look at
storytelling in the cinema. Certainly an important
contribution to its culture. (all
movie info)
Seen:
13 nov 2001. Regie: Brian Helgeland. Met: Heath
Ledger, Laura Fraser, Paul Bettany, Mark Addyand
others. In a poor outskirts of Old London is a
thatcher's son born who wants to become a knight. His
father gives him away with an experienced lance
fighter to find a better fate. The young man becomes
the helper of a prizefighting knight touring around
for the rewards handed out at tournaments. It has
become his living. When someday his master dies, he
together with his two friends take it over from him.
But they miss the necessary papers proving they are
nobles, since the game of the lances is not for the
common man. After a first scam, they meet Saucer, the
famous writer, on the road, naked, robbed of all his
possessions in a game of gambling, which is his
addiction. They win him for them and thus he gets his,
be it false papers, proving him, William Thatcher to
be a fictitious Ulrich from Gelderland. With the
excellent talents of his herald Chaucer, he wins the
favor of the people and the ladies, although he still
falls short a little in the manners of nobility. But
quickly he picks up the trade learning to dance and
fight as it should. He becomes the celebrated hero
winning all tournaments as well as the Lady in favor.
But of course there is an envious rival determined to
wreck him. That one follows him one day as he is
visiting his fathers house and thus is his fraud
uncovered. But the King, also under cover to
participate at the tournaments, recognizes the bravery
of the Knight-to-be and knights him with the excuse
that he would be a forgotten branch of royal blood.
The story end when he defeats his rival finally in the
deciding tournament that brings him the lady he is in
love with. A classical story with beautiful decors,
fights with splintering lances, good wit an humor and
romance. Not too deep in the philosophy it is also
attractive for the young to identify with as the film
is accompanied by modern rocksongs of e.g. Queen and
Bowie. At the onset of the film and halfway there is
even an anachronistic performance of Queens, 'we will
rock you' and a Bowie-song presented as a Gelderland
type of dance ending in a modern free style swing. The
anachronisms though are not disturbing the rest of the
story that is very loyal in its costumes and further
cultural reference. Good entertainment worth seeing.
(website)
Seen:
5 Nov 2001. Dir.: Frank Oz. With: Robert de Niro,
Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, Angela Bassett, The
score is about the confrontation between two
generations of bankrobbers. The elder are careful and
as conscientious as doing a straight job. The younger
one thinks in terms of hit and run and take what you
can get. He who wants the bottom of the can gets the
lid on his nose is for him the lesson to be learnt. We
see how the young bankrobber, a bit of a controlfreak
with all his talent manages to win the confidence of a
museum in Montreal that has a very precious royal
scepter smuggled from France in its cellar. A treasure
hidden is a trigger for crime that has the mission to
keep all wealth in circulation. So he acts as a retard
cleaning the floors meanwhile figuring out how to get
to the treasure. Together with an old crimelord who
does all the planning he conspires with an old
professional safecracker to get in. That old man wants
to have his last job before retiring with the woman of
his choice. At first the little retard, as they call
him, annoys the old guys intruding on their privacy
and planning on his own. They want to teach him a
lesson, but that doesn't really work as planned. The
young one is mean enough to be an equal he thinks and
he thinks as well to outsmart the older colleague and
boss by running of with the scepter at the end of the
line. The winner takes it all. But of course there is
the lesson to be learned, otherwise, why watch the
story? Thus we see a nice bankjob story with all the
classical ingredients unfolding. The characters are
perfectly suited and because of the fine casting of
this movie it is a satisfying experience.
(website)
Seen:
5 Nov 2001. Dir: Jeroen Krabbé with: Stephen
Fry (Onno), Greg Wise (Max) , Flora Montgomery (Ada) ,
Neil Newbon, (Quinten) and Jeroen Krabbé,
Filmed to an international bestseller of the dutch
language professor Harry Mulish. Now and then one sees
a movie that is a real masterpiece of narration. The
theme dominating is how to deal with the evil of
mankind. How can a writer express his belief in the
living word of God meanwhile transforming it and
fixing it into a book? Even a movie is merely a
picture book or an illustration to the essence of the
word, as the writer himself said to this movie, a
fixation too. The very fixation of the word [and
image of God by the way] is in fact the problem.
How do we discover heaven as cultured people aching
for meaning and freedom without the pains of bondage?
Thus the story begins in heaven where Gabriel decides
that to meet with the divine demands the very fixation
of the holy word in the form of the stone tablets of
the ten commandments needs to be taken back to heaven:
the word back to heaven to rediscover heaven. Thus
heaven sends an envoy, an angel in the form of the son
called Quinten, born out of the love of two men called
Onno, a linguist, and Max, an astronomer, who as
friends both are in love with an attractive young
cellist called Ada. Throughout the movie the story is
monitored by Gabriel and the angels there arguing
about the proceedings of the retrieval of the tablets.
The boy is born in a highly cultured association
ideally suited for reawakening the memory of the
divine mission. His three parents, Onno plays for the
real father, are all caught in time: Onno in a never
ending quest to decipher an etruscian disc that seems
to state that all our lives are in the claws of the
big Bird of prey that is God. Max is researching on
the center of the galaxy to look behind the time of
history in search for the one reality or the ones
beyond. Ada is caught in another capsule of time, her
body that is in coma after an accident not unlike the
tablets caught in their secret place. For Quinten it
is to find out in visions and intuition who his real
father is and what to do with his mysterious life. The
story beautifully enfolds on locations in Holland,
Cuba and Rome describing how in the sixties the
characters are caught in the sexual revolution and the
socialist politics, slowly wrestling themselves out of
it with damage. Not only does Ada fall away, also the
other girl friend of Onno, who did his laundry, is
killed in a tragic accident with a car thief. Quinten
grows up in a small Castle very protected and as an
eccentric from the beginning. He carries around with
him an engraving, gifted by Onno, of the Sancto
Sanctorium in Rome where, as Heaven whispers to him,
the tablets are kept. He even as a boy learns to pick
locks not knowing how much he would later need it to
retrieve the tablets that nobody knows are hidden
there. On the death of his girlfriend retires Onno
from the living world of decay back to Rome where he
is merely the shadow of his former self instead of
being the political leader and responsible father his
influential family wanted him to be. Max educating
Quinten lives and cohabitates in the little castle
with the mother of Ada, but finally discovering the
conspiration of heaven behind the celestial sky in
Westerbork in a fit of mad ecstasy, he is punished
with a meteorite that wipes away his type of
discovering the truth. No God the impersonal way tells
creator Mulish us [not taking too much time to
tell this story]. Quinten afterwards intuitively
manages to find his supposed real father hiding in
Rome and together with him he brings back the tablets
to Jerusalem where he smashes them on the rock from
where Mohammed arose to heaven and from where the
tablets themself so it seems descended to earth. He
then leaves for heaven in a cloud of words likewise,
but arriving there he swears to come back to save his
father and the world from the darkness they are in,
living without the commandments, although now being
delivered from the fixation of the holiest word. The
whole movie is ravishing to experience: its
intellectual depth, its humor, its speed, vitality,
the quality of acting, its historic value, its
photography and what not. Although it would only be a
picture book compared to the book itself, it is still
a masterpiece in all respects. He who is alienated
from the living word himself might not fully
understand what it is all about, but knowing how next
to impossible it is for a writer to organize the
liberation from his own science of fixation in a
mixture of science, culture, fiction, religion and
historical fact, deserves nevertheless this best of
the best of all dutch productions for the cinema,
nothing but praise. A new classic of the cinema is
born. (website)
Seen:
22 Oct. 2001. Dir: Hiroshi Teshigahara. with: Eiji
Okada and Kyoko Kishida Japan 1964 Prix de Cannes. The
story, a classic japanese existential fable, to a book
by Kobo Abe, Japan, is about a professor in biology
who tries to find a rare insect to make his name. He
wanders around in a beach area with enormous dunes.
There lives a community of people constantly fighting
the onslaught of the sand. Young men and people with
talent move to the big city, so the community has
found another way to keep, gather and motivate its
people. The professor, like they also did with others,
is caught by them in a deep pit in the sand at the
bottom of which lives a woman, an attractive widow, in
a little wooden cottage. She keeps herself alive by
clearing the sand and stringing beads. The man cannot
escape and goes crazy in the pit. The woman manages to
appease him a bit. First he ties her with rags, but
later on they develop a sexual relation as he finally
concedes. Nevertheless he manages to escape once with
a piece of rope made by himself in secret. But running
away for the men chasing him, he runs into quicksand.
He returns to the woman and lives there for many years
with his woman in the dunes. One day she develops an
extra-uterine pregnancy and has to be taken away to
the hospital. The men forget to take away the rope
ladder. The professor though is no longer willing to
escape from there. He has found a meaning in his life
which might be more important than becoming famous
with a rare insect: he found a way to win water
through a capillary effect in the sand. Thus he can
solve the waterproblem of the sandpeople and be a
real-time hero there. End of the story. The movie is
in black and white and very soberly, surrealistically
set with deep character picturing. One identifies with
the man and his despair of being caught in the pit of
material life and discovers thus the difference
between the essence of soul and the illusion of the
ego, between the imagination of a dreamed success and
the reality of solving a problem with and for the
people one has to live with. A deserved Cannes-winner.
Indeed a classic. (All
Movie Guide)
Seen:
20 Oct. 2001 Dir: The Coen Brothers, With Steve
Buscemi and William H. Macy. A car dealer Called Jerry
Lundegaard makes a terrible mistake in setting up the
kidnapping of his own wife to solve his financial
problems. His father-in-law does not want to finance
his plans to solve it righteously. Thus he hires two
terrible and dumb crooks who promise to do the job for
him without much trouble, but they run into a terrible
mess. First they kill a policeman who finds fault with
them as their car still has the dealer plates on from
Mr Lundegaard. Then a passing car with two witnesses
is chased. The car crashes and the two people inside
are also killed. Then next the father-in-law is killed
when he tries to get the crooks the money that is
demanded against what was agreed upon. Next the
kidnapped wife is murdered because she kept on wining
and after that the one crook kills the other because
he didn't make a deal to his liking with him. When
that dumbo is busy shredding the two corpses in a
woodshredder, the police finds him and shoots him in
the leg as he tries to run. Some time later Mr
Lundegaard is caught hiding in a motel on the run for
the disaster he created. The story is an unbelievable
demonstration of the fact that a little of evil intent
can create a complete hell with numerous victims. Of
interest is the policewoman investigating the case.
She is a sober countryside woman with a very cool
attitude. She's never of balance and simply does her
job nicely, whatever the drama. Meanwhile she is
pregnant and that also worries her just as an old
acquaintance who seems to be really crazy about her.
Buscemi plays the weird little other crook who's leg
sticks out of the shredder at the end of the movie.
The greatest merit of the story is that it all really
happened;who would think up such a ridicule of crime.
As a fantasy it certainly would have passed as a
comedy, but being real one doesn't really laugh at the
Lord His divine Jokes with the modern civil society of
the ignorant. (website).
Seen:
20 Oct. 2001 Dir: Steve Roth, Produced, written and
played by Billy Crystal. With: Julia Roberts and
Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Cusak and Christopher
Walken. Billy Crystal plays the publicist Lee Phillips
of a movie company who, to save his job, has to bring
two separated famous actors named Gwen and Eddy
together. They are about to separate but for the
promotion of their latest movie the show of a good
marriage has to be kept going. Julia Roberts plays the
sister Kiki of Gwen with whom Eddy falls in love
instead of returning to his former wife as is
pretended. The role of the director of the their
newest movie is played by Christopher Walken. Billy
Crystal managed to combine a romance and comedy in a
for him typical successful way. The jokes not too
corny and the romance not too pink are well in balance
and there are a lot of good laughs. No deep philosophy
here be it that the eccentric director makes a
ridicule of having filmed the life of the actors
instead of the script itself. So a bit of Hollywood
self-criticism there is. Also the whole press-show is
ridiculed of course, which is always interesting to
see, But none of that too serious either. Of these
three elements, the romance, the comedy and the
critical view on the life of making movies and the
star-image one sees a mature comedy, a nice
feather-weight romance and a little bit of light in
self-criticism (website).
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