|
|
|
|
There
are better sites to visit when you would like to know more about movies Below are some of the movies which I have seen so far these years. and for a direct link to the festival site 2000 .
And from old to new...... Dead Man Walking
There is much discussion going on the internet on this movie. Hardly worth it, because the theme is outdated and the movie too evangelistic. The death penalty is something of the past and we should not discuss it all the time. In other countries it will take a few years or decades more, but then they will also realise it. But ok, the actors play rather well. Anyhow, look what the distributor is telling about this movie: inspired by true events, DEAD MAN WALKING is the story of a spiritual woman who embarks on a dangerous journey with a convicted killer and the profound changes it makes in her life. Confronted with the anger of the community and the private pain of his victims' parents, Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) overcomes her own fears to fight for the life and soul of Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn). Honoring the request of a lonely and desperate man, Sister Helen writes to Matthew Poncelet, the condemned killer of two teenage lovers, and is wholly unprepared for the relationship which will follow. When the date is set for Matthew's execution, he asks Sister Helen to be his spiritual advisor and she complies. With the clock ticking away the final days before his scheduled execution, she struggles for the life, the dignity, and the soul of a confused and angry man. in the end, it is her faith and her fierce courage that sustains her when she stands with Matthew and with the victims' families. Amen. Dead man (Jim Jarmusch, UK, 1995, 112 min), 9 Dead man is the best movie I have seen so far this year. It's a kind of parody on a western, but certainly not the spagetti-type of parody. It all starts in a train heading for the west where a young bookkeeper is heading for a new job at Dickinson's metal works. This job appears to be less fixed than was written in the letter received and he finds himself completely alone without money in a rough little city. Outside the saloon he meets a girl and they go to her house. There he has to kill the son of mr Dickinson and he escapes on a horse, wounded. He is found by an indian, called Nobody, and from there on they start a travel through the wild west. El Patrullero (Alex Cox, Mexico/USA, 1994, 104 min), 7 Against the wishes of his father young and naive Pedro Rojas wants to become a traffic police officer in Mexico. After finishing his studies he is stationed at one of the remote high ways. As he doesn't succeed in writing the required number of bills, he is banned to the most terrible road: The pigs highway. Confronted with narcotic smugglers and a nasty wife, he has to survive. The movie is funny, but there is not really a happy end. I have seen this movie in the open air festival in Rotterdam. Kids (Larry Clark, US, 1995, 95 min), 8 Another movie which caused a lot of discussion. The movie deals with a group of teenagers (real non professional actors). Their lifes are focussed on sex, drugs and robbery only. It is shocking, because it seems so primitive. Straight and direct sex without condoms, using all types of drugs and stealing in shops are all there is in life for those youngsters. But what is so primitive about it? When they grow up, for many people their lifes are centered around more sophisticated sex, better quality drugs and legal robbery in business. We all remain the same. So much ado about nothing, but a good movie after all. Cyclo (Tran Anh Hung, Vietnam, 1995, 120 min), 8 This movie deals with the life of an 18 year old cyclist in Ho Tsji Min city. With his rented bike he tries to earn a living. But when it got stolen, he gets involved in criminal life. Great movie, but sometimes a bit difficult to follow. Maybe one should see it twice to understand everything. But recommended anyhow. Twister and Independence day, 2,2 These movies have the same special effects as could be seen in Jurrasic Parc. In fact from the sounds in the film you cannot predict whether it is a tornado, a dinosaur or a spaceship coming to threaten the heroes. The stories are just as weak as in Jurrasic parc, but it is maybe worth going, because the winds and spaceships are simulated in a spectacular way. It is really as if you are in a tornado or spaceship yourself. Question, how would a dinosaur or spaceship behave in a tornado?? Breaking the waves (Lars von Trier), 4 Breaking the waves is a sad movie. It deals with a young naive lady in Scotland who is falling in love with a man. This man has to work some time for a couple of weeks on a drilling platform. She cannot stand this and prays he will come home soon. Indeed he does, but as an invalide, due to an accident. Obsessed by the idea that he cannot make love anymore, he asks his wife to make love to other men in order to heal him. She goes to the other extreme and ends up as a prostitute, being killed under terrible circumstances. But the movie is not very realistic and didn't touch my emotions as much as for example his other movie 'The Kingdom' did in a humoristic way. The whole story is just too much and it is difficult to take it serious with the Kingdom still in mind. Still the movie was selected as nr 1 in 1996 in Holland. Strange, or rather sad.
Great comedy about three young man trying to rob a jewelry, and ending up in a bakery. Later on they try to do the same thing with a money transport, but also this type of armed robbery does not really succeed. Fargo (in Dutch, recentie deels ontleend aan NRC), 9 Zeven doden telt de hoogzwangere politiechef Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) aan het slot van Fargo, de geheel op ware gebeurtenissen gebaseerde zesde speelfilm van de gebroeders Joel (regie, scenario, montage) en Ethan (produktie, scenario, montage) Coen. De Amerikanen die doorgaans in films figureren lijken weinig op de vriendelijke, wat sullige en nauwelijks tot extreem gedrag geneigde burgers die je in werkelijkheid buiten de grote steden tegenkomt. Het is een film die qua laconiek geweld nauwelijks onderdoet voor Pulp Fiction. Met een zangerig Scandinavisch accent, eigen aan veel inwoners van Minnesota (waar ook de gebroeders Coen opgroeiden), engelengeduld en boerenslimheid doorziet de zwangere commissaris de onhandige intriges van twee beroepscriminelen (babbelkous Steve Buscemi en zwijgzame reus Peter Stormare) en een schlemielige autoverkoper in geldnood (William H. Macy). Het acteren in Fargo, vernoemd naar het stadje in Noord-Dakota waar de eerste sc�ne zich afspeelt, is over de hele linie buitengewoon sterk. Het verhaal vond werkelijk in 1987 in Minnesota plaats en het milieu van plattelandsbewoners uit de Midwest doet zeer authentiek aan. Hier wordt de Amerikaanse samenleving en de beperktheid van de bewoners wel erg voor gek gezet. Het is dan ook eerder een lach- dan een horrorfilm. We weten niet goed of we moeten grinniken of huiveren, wanneer het bloed weer eens alle kanten opspuit of een gezicht weggeschoten wordt. Een absolute aanrader Although I don't like baseballmovies, this one, with Robert de Niro is worth a visit. The theme, the relation between the fan and his hero, is well worked out and the movie keeps on track even at the end. For a change, there is no happy ending. Five left wing student invite a helpful driver for their weekly diner and discussion group. The nice driver soon appears to be a racist and Gulf War veteran, who detests his hosts for their moral weakness. It is not enought to be willing to die for your ideas, he says, you must also be prepared to kill for it. This soon happens, when he start threathening them with a knife. More or less by accident one of the students stabs him in the back with a knife. After the first shock, the five students are rather satisfied. They bury the body in the garden and decide to invite a "right winger" every sunday and to poison the person before desert. In this way, they kill among others an anti abortion activist, somebody hating homosexuals, someone who harms the environment etc. The Last Supper of American new director debutante Stacy Title is an original black comedy and it is certainly most entertaining. The end is surprising, after the students quarrel among each other, but I will not give any clue on this. See Rotterdam film festival ``Secrets and Lies,'' of writer/director Mike Leigh's is a funny, sad, emotionally articulate movie. Main character Hortense is a refined British woman whose adopted parents are dead and who decides to find her birth mother. She turns out to be Cynthia, a shrill, chatty woman who means well but who has a way of alienating her family members. One interesting thing about this situation is that Hortense is black, but Cynthia is white. Another interesting thing is that Cynthia never told her family she had a baby, and that this lie is only the tip of the iceberg in her family's skeleton-stuffed closet. There is a sense that every character in ``Secrets and Lies'' -- even the ones we glimpse for just a moment or two -- has a story to tell, and that Leigh could have made a movie about any of them. Standing out from an exceptional, largely unknown cast are Brenda Blethyn as Cynthia and Timothy Spall as her brother, whose jolly exterior hides a pain that eventually bursts out of him like a thunderclap. Blethyn won the best-actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for this performance (``Secrets and Lies'' also won the best-film prize) and it's easy to see why. Cynthia has tried to wall herself off from her emotions, and Blethyn plays her scenes -- especially the first phone call from Hortense, in which Cynthia struggles to maintain the pretense of politeness while her world falls apart -- as if she's holding on for dear life. And it is dear. ``Secrets and Lies'' shows that the lies families sometimes tell -- in an effort to make things easier -- always make things worse. For much of the movie, it's not clear what ``Secrets and Lies'' is about but, by the end, the movie's characters are learning to have faith in each other. And we are beginning to see that ``Secrets and Lies'' is a movie about the most powerful word in the English language: hope T I T E L : Naar de klote! (deels overgenomen van NRC
archief), 3 Door PIETER STEINZ Met een klok, een pilletje en een tongzoen begint Naar de klote!, al maanden voor de premi�re aangekondigd als de eerste Nederlandse speelfilm over de housecultuur, en nu zelfs geafficheerd als 'de ervaring van de jaren '90'. Dat Naar de klote! kon tegenvallen, was zoals bij alle ambitieuze films een ingecalculeerd risico. Maar dat de film nauwelijks het aanzien waard blijkt, is een schok. Wat ik had verwacht, en waar ik naar had uitgekeken, was een film die een wervelend en overtuigend beeld zou geven van de wereld van houseparty's en fin-de-si�cle hedonisme - of anders een film die een sterk verhaal vertelt tegen de achtergrond van de moderne danscultuur. Wat Kerkhof en zijn co-scenarist Ton van der Lee gefabriceerd hebben, is geen van beide. Naar de klote! rammelt aan alle kanten, en alleen een cynicus zal daar een aanstekelijk ritme in ontdekken. Het verhaal van Naar de klote! is van een tergende kinderachtigheid, en de onwerkelijke dialogen, versneden met veel quasi-modern Amerikaans ('Fuck off, gewoon') zijn een belediging van de filmkijker. De weinige teksten die je bijblijven doen dat dan ook alleen door hun campy onbenulligheid: 'Wat doe je?' 'Voorspel.' 'Voorspel is voor bejaarden; pleur 'm erin.' Naar de klote! - de titel verwijst onder meer naar jargon voor het slikken van xtc en andere designer drugs - draait om een 19-jarige Tilburgse die samen met haar vriendje naar Amsterdam verhuist en daar in de housescene belandt. Jacqueline (gespeeld door de debutante Fem van den Elzen) maakt verkeerde vrienden, laat zich verleiden tot kinky sex en pillendealerij, wordt verlaten door haar jeugdliefde, krijgt te maken met verraad en geweld, en vlucht uiteindelijk met hangende pootjes terug naar de veilige provincie. In een subplot slaagt een van Jacquelines vriendinnen erin om via het bed van een beroemde dj (Thom Hoffman met een mid-randstedelijk accent) op te klimmen tot het walhalla van de housescene, de draaitafel. Het acteren van de merendeels onervaren cast is onbeholpen, en soms (bij ruzies en andere veeleisende spelsituaties) zelfs g�nant slecht. Jammer dat dat zo vaak bij Nederlandse films het geval is. De muziek, een mix van gabber-, mellow- en technohouse, lijkt lukraak onder de sc�nes gezet. En de zogenaamd revolutionaire beelden waarin Kerkhof en zijn vaste cameraman Joost van Gelder het verhaal goten - schuine kaders, veel gewiebel, neopsychedelische kleuren - zijn alleen maar vermoeiend. Zelfs househaters zullen de bioscoop nog eerder verlaten met pijn aan de netvliezen dan aan de trommelvliezen. Ikzelf kwam totaal misselijk uit de bioscoop en kon daarna alleen nog maar witte wijn verdragen.
This movie I have seen in New York. and concerns the lives of ten people in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. It is worth seeing. The story is set with a contract kill; the work of a ruthless professional and a has-been hitman who quickly discovers that his own death is part of the plan. Barely escaping his partner's fiery death trap, the hitman crawls to safety in a luxurious hillside home. He becomes a reluctant kidnapper; holding hostage in the house an insufferable modern art dealer and his loyal secretary. Complicating matters, the art dealer's half-sister arrives with a down-and-out screenwriter in tow. Unaware that his plans have gone awry, the contract killer is concerned with more pressing problems. His money is at the crime scene and the crime scene is crawling with cops, particularly an overzealous vice cop trying to make it into homicide without much help from his burnt out partner. The plot comes full circle as this unique assortment of characters is inexorably drawn together. Written and directed by John Herzfeld ("The Ryan White Story," "The Preppie Murder"), 2 days in the Valley features an outstanding ensemble cast, including (in alphabetical order) Danny Aiello, Greg Cruttwell, Jeff Daniels, Teri Hatcher, Glenne Headly, Peter Horton, Marsha Mason, Paul Mazursky, James Spader, Eric Stoltz and Charlize Theron. The long kiss goodnight (Renny Harlin, 1996, USA, 120 minutes), 8 Geena Davis .... Samantha Caine/Charly Baltimore Samuel L. Jackson .... Mitch Henessey Patrick Malahide .... Perkins Craig Bierko .... Timothy. (Harlin is director of Die hard, Cliffhanger etc.) Samantha Caine, suburban homemaker, is the ideal mom to her 8 year old daughter Caitlin. She lives in an ideal New England small town, has a job teaching school and makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town. But when she receives a bump on her head, she begins to remember small parts of her pervious life as a lethal, top-secret agent. Her old chums in the Chapter are now out to kill her so she enlists the help of a cheap detective name Mitch. As Samantha remembers more and more of her pervious life, she become deadlier and more resourceful. Both Mitch and Charly proceed to do the killing thing, the bleeding thing and the shooting thing. This movie has more action and more humour than the best of James Bond. Strongly recommended. Especially the real life interview with Larry King on CNN at the end makes that the storie is very realistic, or not? Joke in the interview: I'm very frank and earnest with women. In Chicago I'm Frank, and in New York I'm Earnest!
Chloe, a young woman, is going on holidays. She entrusts her beloved cat to an Madame Renee's care. But one day Madame Renee (an old lady of the neighborhood) can not find the cat. She starts searching the neighborhood... This is the pretext for the exploration of a quarter of Paris and his inhabitants. A nice uncomplicated movie worth to be seen. Since their initial, countercultural collaboration--writing The Monkees' movie "Head"--Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson have certainly gone down different paths. But their occasional associations have composed a mini-ouevre all its own: "Five Easy Pieces" with its complex characterizations; "The King of Marvin Gardens" with its contrarian casting; "The Postman Always Rings Twice," with its deglamorized take on murder and adultery. Now, with "Blood & Wine"--which Rafelson has declared the last in a trilogy that includes "Five Easy Pieces" and "Marvin Gardens"--they've made another film that works out of stylistic assumptions and defied expectations. A caper-romance-domestic drama-film noir with casual political overtones, "Blood & Wine" is set up the way it ought to be (not that there are any precedents), but how it unfolds, and how its characters unravel, is an always-different story. Consider, just for starters, Alex Gates (Nicholson), a financially and, of course, morally bankrupt wine dealer who first appears semi-smirking from behind a morning paper (Rafelson's "star intros" are close to hilarious). He has little to smirk about. Out of money, out of time, his marriage to wife Suzanne (Judy Davis) is on the rocks, his relationship with stepson Jason (Stephen Dorff) is a prickly mess and he's about to rob a client of a million-dollar diamond necklace. Worse, he's having a conspicuously foolhardy affair with the conspicuously overripe and clearly dangerous Gabrielle (Jennifer Lopez). Nicholson, perhaps for the first time in his career, is playing a character for whom we feel pity. Rafelson has said that he met newcomer Lopez ("Money Train," "Jack" and the upcoming "Selena") six times before casting her. "The third time, I noticed she had a good body." Right. And Nicholson was cast for his hairline. Let's just say that Lopez, high-heeled and high-maintenance, simmers volcanically while providing the catalyst for the Alex-Jason meltdown and proving that movie bad girls, sometimes, are simply bad. * She's not, however, the most fascinating thing about "Blood & Wine." That prize goes to the venomous relationship between Alex and his larcenous confederate Victor Spansky (Michael Caine), a safecracker with advanced emphysema and a lethally short fuse. Rafelson makes the mistake at several points of cutting back and forth between Jason and Gabrielle, waxing dreamy, and Alex and Victor, malevolently scheming and avoiding each other's horns. In terms of sheer acting, it's simply no contest. Amid the introspective evil, plans gone awry and the tug-of-war over the necklace--which takes on the symbolic importance of Steinbeck's "Pearl"--is the marvelous Davis. She is directed to better effect by Rafelson than by Clint Eastwood in "Absolute Power" but is still underutilized. At the same time, she makes a strong impression as the wronged wife--she cold-cocks Alex at one point, in a statement of feminist ferocity and cinematic mischief--while exuding a certain unmotherly attraction for/to Jason. But "Blood & Wine" is a deeply eroticized movie, almost to the point of distraction: Alex and Gabrielle, Gabrielle and Jason, Gabrielle and her wardrobe; Alex and Suzanne; Jason and his mother--even Alex and Victor. There's a scene in which the two thieves struggle, with Nicholson straddling Caine like a confused bull in a pasture for the fragile and unelastic. None of this is serious, of course, just Rafelson making merry among the corrupt and unredeemable, whom he endows with a complexity that's probably undeserved, but occasionally very compelling indeed. Blood & Wine, 1997. R for violence and language. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release of A Recorded Picture Company film. Director Bob Rafelson. Producer Jeremy Thomas. Executive producers Chris Autry, Bernie Williams. Co-producers Hercules Bellville, Noah Golden. Screenplay Nick Villiers, Alison Cross. Photography Newton Thomas Sigel. Production designer Richard Sylbert. Editor Steven Cohen. Music Michal Lorenc. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes. Jack Nicholson as Alex Gates. Stephen Dorff as Jason. Jennifer Lopez as Gabrielle. Judy Davis as Suzanne Gates. Michael Caine as Victor Spansky. Fierce Creatures, a new comedy from the creators of A Fish Called Wanda, takes place in a zoo. England's Marwood Zoo, to be exact, which has just been acquired by a ruthless media mogul who will accept nothing less than a 20% return on any investment, or he will close it down. Not to worry. The zoo's new director, Rollo Lee, has come up with a sure-fire marketing scheme to boost attendance: From now on, Marwood will stock only "fierce creatures" --animals billed as violent, man-eating predators because violent entertainment is what people want. Horrified at the prospect of destroying all the soft cuddly animals at the zoo, the keepers revolt --and the fun begins. John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin --the stars of the international hit A Fish Called Wanda --are back as entirely new characters in Fierce Creatures, a broad comedy about money, sex and a lemur called Rollo. When high-powered executive Willa Weston (Jamie Lee Curtis) shows up for her first day at work at the Atlanta headquarters of the giant multinational conglomerate Octopus Inc., she is surprised to discover that the radio network she was hired to run was just sold off that morning. Oh well, easy come, easy go, because also this morning Octopus owner Rod McCain (Kevin Kline), just acquired a leisure organization which includes a publishing house, a distribution company and a British zoo, so he's sure they can find a job for Willa somewhere in the organization. Knowing that a media mogul like Rod is only interested in one thing --making money --Willa investigates the idea of running the zoo. Convinced she can turn quaint, sleepy Marwood Zoo into a valuable chain of theme parks, she finds a helper in Rod's unloved son Vince (also Kevin Kline), who recognizes this as an opportunity to impress his father and, just as important, to make time with the very attractive Willa. In the meantime, Rod has already begun implementing management changes at Marwood, transferring a bureaucrat from Octopus' Hong Kong TV station named Rollo Lee (John Cleese). Rollo's arrival is greeted with suspicion by the zoo keepers, especially by the all-knowing insect keeper, Adrian 'Bugsy' Malone (Michael Palin). Much to everyone's horror, bottom-line Rollo sets forth a new policy for the zoo, guaranteed to attract the thrill-seeking masses and improve business. Knowing from his experience in TV that violence draws large audiences, he decrees that from now Marwood will only display "fierce creatures." Marwood's keepers want nothing to do with Rollo's plan and wage a valiant campaign against expelling the zoo's non-fierce creatures. Unfortunately, their bluff appears to have been called and they are thoroughly convinced that Rollo is even more callous than they had imagined and has killed five cuddly creatures. Willa and Vince now fly to England to take over the running of the zoo, immediately demote Rollo to a menial position in the zoo and reassure the keepers that his "fierce creatures only" policy is defunct; they have their own plans for improving attendance. To the ever suspicious, loquacious Bugsy, their aim is obvious: They want to turn the zoo into a theme park. Lonely company man Rollo, humiliated by the company he has so faithfully served, is left with no one to commiserate with except for the zoo's most gentle and harmless animals the five cuddly creatures that he didn't kill but secretly adopted as pets. His softening in character soon causes the zookeepers to look upon him more favorably. Meanwhile Willa, after a surprising close encounter with a gorilla, finds herself becoming more enchanted with the zoo's animals and less enchanted with the inane and lecherous Vince. It's not long before Willa and Rollo are brought together through their new-found love of animals, while Vince sinks to new lows in creating a revenue-producing marketing scheme for the zoo, replete with Dayglo safari outfits for the keepers, giant rubber octopuses, invasive advertising and unauthorized celebrity endorsements --while lining his own pockets from the proceeds. But when Big Daddy Rod realizes his son is stealing, he shows up with a plan to turn Marwood into a golf course. So it's up to Rollo, Willa, Bugsy and the rest of the keepers to devise an ingenious solution in order to protect their beloved zoo from destruction. The Main Cast Rollo Lee............................... JOHN CLEESE Willa Weston............................ JAMIE LEE CURTIS Vince/Rod McCain........................ KEVIN KLINE Adrian "Bugsy" Malone................... MICHAEL PALIN Sydney Small Mammals.................... ROBERT LINDSAY Reggie Sea Lions........................ RONNIE CORBETT Cub..................................... CAREY LOWELL Gerry Ungulates......................... DEREK GRIFFITHS Directed by............................. ROBERT YOUNG It's a rainy night and a man is walking in the downpour, soaked through and talking much too fast. He's one of the legion of the mentally unstable--erratic, intriguing, even frightening--that city dwellers instinctively avoid, and when he stumbles into a piano bar in Perth, Australia, at the beginning of "Shine," everyone wishes he hadn't. Lurching around with his nervous inability to focus, the intruder seems to know he's balanced on the cusp of madness. "Got to stop talking, got to stop, got to stop, it's a problem, isn't it, is it a problem?" he babbles super-fast, but he can't slow himself down. For his voice is his only companion, and all that high-speed chattering is compensation for terrible loss. "Tragedy," he mutters to himself as the bar's owner drives him home, "ridiculous tragedy." The man's name is David Helfgott, and though no one suspects it, he least of all, that rainy night is a turning point in his life. Based on a true story and widely anticipated since its gangbusters premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, "Shine" goes backward to reveal the ferocious battles that made David a casualty and forward to show the unimagined experiences life still holds for him. David's path in either direction is not usual or foreseeable in its specifics. In broad outline, however, it's more familiar. Focusing on the crossover between genius and madness, "Shine" is one of those exhilarating depictions of the power of love and the resilience of the human spirit that sounds doomed to overflow the borders of cliched emotionalism. Miraculously, it doesn't. Perhaps the great disservice Hollywood has done modern moviegoers is refusing to trust them in matters of the heart. In the hands of the studios stories like this are so brazen in their manipulation they make us simultaneously angry and ashamed of our finer feelings. As told by Australian director Scott Hicks, screenwriter Jan Sardi, cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson, editor Pip Karmel and a gifted group of actors, "Shine" reverses the trend. It's a throwback to the best of old-fashioned Hollywood movies, able to move an audience without insulting it in the process. There is a piano in the room of the adult Helfgott (prominent Australian stage actor Geoffrey Rush), and its presence triggers an extended series of flashbacks, starting in the early 1950s. It's then that a tiny pianist (7-year-old Alex Rafalowicz) so astonishes well-to-do Ben Rosen (Nicholas Bell), one of the judges at a local talent show, that he tracks the prodigy down and offers to help with future lessons. What he gets is not gratitude but fear of all outsiders from the boy's mother and sisters and stony hostility from Peter Helfgott, whose almost first words about David, a somber "He is my son," turn out to have the most awful and pervasive significance. For Peter Helfgott, magnificently played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, is a man turned by personal and world history into a rigid and willful tyrant with his son. Taught to be unbending by a father he despised for keeping him from music, he has focused the terrible weight of his frustrated ambitions on the frail boy. And as a refugee from the Holocaust who believes "in this world the weak get crushed like insects," he is unbending in his determination not to "let anyone destroy this family." At those moments when "Shine" threatens to get gooey, the integrity of Mueller-Stahl's chilling performance invariably stops it cold. A terrifying, terrorizing bully who forces his son to repeat "I am a very lucky boy" again and again, this monster father is also--and this is critical--a painfully human beast who clandestinely hugs his son in the dark of night. Perhaps most frightening of all, when Peter says, "No one will love you like me," he believes it. With a father like this, no scenario is beyond possibility. When we turn to David as a teenager (now played by "Flirting's" Noah Taylor), his advancement as a pianist is set off by a kind of regression on the emotional front. Awkward, vulnerable, feeling "I'm never really sure about anything," David is graceful and fully alive only in front of the keyboard. And always there looms the figure of Peter Helfgott, possessively insisting, "I know, David, what is best because I am your father." The more David threatens to break free, the more the leash is tightened, and the twitches in the boy that prefigure what we've seen of the man become more and more apparent. The combination of situations that finally converge to drive David over the edge and what happens to him after that rainy night benefit from the intuitive restraint of director Hicks, who has a background in documentaries, and his determination to keep the story's maudlin possibilities at arm's length. "Shine" is also enlivened by its anachronistic willingness to proclaim the power of classical music. Piano competition is treated as "a blood sport" and the ability of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, the film's centerpiece, to derange the unwary is insisted on. "The piano is a monster," says music professor Cecil Parkes (an effortlessly heroic John Gielgud). "Tame it or it will swallow you whole." Playing the adult David Helfgott, keeping the balance between ensuring the character's humanity and seeing that his madness does not unravel into mere winsome eccentricity, is a difficult task and Geoffrey Rush, selected by Hicks for his experience with the large emotions of Shakespeare, handles the challenge superbly. The confidence and grasp David exhibits when he sits down at the piano spills over to the rest of the film, and in the process "Shine" is transformed into popular filmmaking at its smartest and most persuasive. Shine, 1996. PG-13, for nudity/sensuality and intense thematic elements. Googie Withers; Katharine Susannah Prichard Geoffrey Rush as David as an adult. Noah Taylor as David as a young man. Alex Rafalowicz as David as a child. Armin Mueller-Stahl as Peter. Lynn Redgrave as Gillian. John Gielgud as Cecil Parkes. The Van is a typical Irish working class movie. It is not wel known, as I couldn't find it in the reviews. Still the Irish humor is worth spending the time. In 1993, a similar movie, the Snapper, had the same actor Ian...., same setting and slightly different story. The Van deals with two unemployed young men, buying a snack car, the van, and try to make a living out of it. That's all, but it is sufficient to get a six. Princess Leia is held hostage by the evil Imperial Forces, under orders from Darth Vader, in their efforts to quell the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. Luke Skywalker and Millennium Falcon Captain Han Solo team together with the lovable droid duo R2-D2 and C-3PO to rescue the beautiful princess and restore freedom and justice to the Galaxy. The force will be with you when the Special Edition of the original STAR WARS is released twenty years after its record-breaking debut. With a complete restoration, a new digital soundtrack, enhanced special effects and new footage added, George Lucas presents the films as he always envisioned it. But it will take another twenty years to produce it in the way as I always envisioned it. Starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Peter Cushing and Alec Guinness, the film was produced by Gary Kurtz, and written and directed by George Lucas. Absolutely the worst movie I have seen ever. Don't go there. Like Vacas and La Ardilla Roja, it is again a great movie by Julio Menem. Enlish review will be included soon. De verfilming van F. Bordewijks in 1938 gepubliceerde roman Karakter door de 38-jarige debutant Mike van Diem heeft meer gemeen met Antonia en Daens dan alleen de formidabele acteur Jan Decleir, dit keer in de rol van de hardvochtige gerechtsdeurwaarder Dreverhaven die de carri�re van zijn natuurlijke zoon Katadreuffe tegenwerkt om de jongen te harden. De gebeurtenissen op het advocatenkantoor van Katadreuffe zijn erg aardig. Er wordt goed geacteerd en de beelden zijn mooi. Een aanrader. With Whoopi Goldberg: Why shouldn't we watch Whoopi play a man in this stock market tale. The whole movie is rather disgusting, although it is sometimes difficult not to smile GABBEH Iran/Frankrijk, 1996, 74 min., kl., 35mm regie: Mohsen Makhmalbaf Te zien vanaf 7 mei (zie agenda Cinematheek) Makhmalbaf wilde aanvankelijk een documentaire maken over nomaden in zuidoost-Iran, en hun kunst van het tapijtweven. Een ‘gabbeh’ is een handgeweven tapijt, waarvan de patronen en kleuren bepaald worden door gebeurtenissen in het dagelijks leven, bijvoorbeeld de kleur van het landschap waar men doorheen trekt. Maar ook verlangens worden in de patronen verwerkt: in eenperiode van voedselschaarste kunnen vette schapen in de gabbehs verschijnen. Elke gabbeh vertelt een ander verhaal. Makhmalbaf veranderde de documentaire in fictie en liet het verhaal van een gabbeh tot leven komen. Hij weeft hierbij diverse verhaaldraden door elkaar heen. Een oud kibbelend echtpaar gaat naar de rivier om hun tapijt te wassen, waarop twee geliefden te paard staan afgebeeld. Plotseling komt uit dit patroon de jonge vrouw Gabbeh tot leven en zij vertelt verbitterd het verhaal van haar liefde die niet tot vervulling kan komen door toedoen van haar vader. Wanhopig vlucht ze tenslotte met haar minnaar. Parallel aan deze romance wordt het verhaal van een oudere oom verteld, een ex-onderwijzer en dichter, die na een langdurig verblijf in de stad terugkeert naar zijn familieclan. Hij is een vrijzinnig man die de kinderen leert over kleur en leven. Hij steunt zijn nichtje Gabbeh bij haar ontsnapping. Tussendoor zien we hoe het oude echtpaar blijft kibbelen.
Picture the opening night audience at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, all Anyone looking for intelligent science fiction will have to put their Jump to 2259, where we find retired soldier Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) What follows is sci-fi comedy on a megadose of steroids. Any tangent is
Nieuw in de rij Shakespeareverfilmingen is het engelse Twelfth Night. Deze komedie
begint met
Director Jim Wilson, Recently married George and Nathalie (Harvey Keitel, Cameron Diaz)
and their friend, Lance (Craig Sheffer), spend a holiday in a remote cabin.
Everything's idyllic until Nathalie's ex-lover shows up while George and Lance are
fishing.Drunk, he passes out and dies as the fishermen return. What's Nathalie to do? She
hides the fellow, but George finds out and this leads to some hilarious moments
where they break the neck of the poor dead fellow and find out they accidently poisened
him so that going to the police has become impossible without being accused of murder.
Together they have to hide the body, but Lance should not find out.
patron saint of latter-day surrealism, returns to "form" with Lost Highway. The project was triggered by Lynch's fascination with the two-word itle— Which is not to say there isn't one. Lynch provides two or, rather, one with two heads.
Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), and Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), have a problem. Her name
is Patricia Arquette. In the beginning of the film we know her as Renee—she lives in
the Hollywood Hills The second strand of the story attaches itself to the developing sprawl of Lost The film is infused with truly unsettling atmosphere. For instance, there's a Brilliant movie, which could use some more explanation though
Seen: Sneak Preview, september 11, 1997. Review not available. Smilla is an inuit and used to live in Greenland. Now she lives in Denmark and becomes suspicious when her little friend, the son of an alcoholic inuit woman, dies. His father also died when on a mission for Greenland Mining cooperation. The whole thing has to do with a comet solving the energy crisis. The movie is ok, especially because of the beatiful landscapes in Greenland.
Sling Blade (review taken from Microsoft Cinemania), 8 Sling Blade is the darkest and most disturbing drama yet from Billy Bob Thornton, an Arkansas-born writer. Like his earlier movies,One False Move and A Family Thing, cowritten with Tom Epperson, Sling Blade is rooted in the rural South. You'd barely recognize him as Sling Blade's slow-witted Karl Childers, who's lived most of his life inside his own head. The face exposed so nakedly looms like a tombstone slab, expressionless and impenetrable. His lower lip almost covers his upper one, and when he does talk, his voice is deep and rumbling and he ends his sentences with a long uh-huh of agreement with himself. To Karl's parents, religious fanatics, his retarded state was a punishment from God. Their own punishments were neglect, abuse, and abandonment, punctuated with scripture readings. Then, when he was 12, Karl found his mother together with some man and killed them both. Released, Karl heads back to his small hometown and works as an odd-job
repairman. There,
he meets young Frank Wheatley (Lucas Black), who from the start sees Karl as a
friend, not an oddity. Frank's mother, Linda (One False Move's Natalie Canerday), is
another matter. Widowed, working at the local Dollar Store, and best friends with the
town's only homosexual she's been keeping company with Doyle Hargraves, played with
convincing fury by singer Dwight Yoakam. The road to that encounter is dark and slow; this is a movie taking its own, rich, Arkansas time. It's full of meticulouslyobserved and portrayed characters—great, real Southerners—for whom Thornton has chosen the most persuasive faces. It all ends back in prison. Working for a highly-funded yet unofficial government agency, K (Tommy Lee Jones) and J
(Will
Rather funny and sweet movie about a 7 year old boy who wants to be a girl and marry the son of the boss of his father. Father is fired, the family stressed, but it all ends well.
Small jewel about a brass band in Wales. A lady joins the band and they are trying to win a contest when at the same time the mine is being closed.
The successor of trainspotting.Sometimes filmmakers should stick with what they know
best.
Lagrimas Negras (black tears), 9 This is a very beatiful and well build up movie about five musicians from Cuba. The group consists of five old men, ranging from 62, the benjamin to 84. Their play is still skillful and the film was made during and before a trip to Europa. The old men tell about their lives and about the Cuba and women they love. One of them has 12 children with 7 wives, but now his pencil doesn't work anymore, he sadly tells the interviewer in the movie. But the music still goes on and maybe next year they will be in Europa again.
Great movie about unemployed strippers (chippendales) in Wales
Great little movie about religion in the States. The resurrection of Jesus and his healing powers.
Always good for an overview of newest technology and foreign policy issues. But too much violence and too little humor (except for dr Kaufman, ja).
Or maybe it is called differently. It is anyhow about queen victoria in the late 19th century who is so upset about the death of her husband Albert that only one person, A certain mr Brown, can win het confidence, not too bad and well acted.
How do you play a game with no rules? That's the problem faced by Michael Douglas in The Game, Control freak Nicholas Van Orton (Douglas) is a wealthy investment banker in San Francisco. It's his 48th birthday His rebellious kid brother, Conrad (Sean Penn), knows just what he needs for a birthday pickup: an all-expenses-paid pass to Consumer Recreation Services,where customers can find "whatever's lacking" in their miserable lives. "or Van Orton, it's hardly therapeutic — his panic boils over during a series of inexplicable terrors. He's the reluctant hero in a paranoid thriller, and The Game relies heavily on the deprivation of knowledge to sustain its drawn-out plot. With Alien 3 and Seven to his considerable credit, Fincher continues his mastery of mood and brooding style, and The Game draws us in immediately. But at the end it is a bit disappointing. (c) MSN
Surprisingly, this movie by Eric Rohmer is not as philosophic and boring as some people told me before. In fact, it is a rather emotional and funny quest of a young woman for the real love. She doesn't love the two men in her life as much as her first love, Charles, who she has lost because she gave him a wrong address. She has a small daughter, who acts very well. At the end they meet again.
Jack Nicholson almost as good as in One flew ...
In a small Irish town in the 1960s, Francis Brady (EAMONN OWENS) and his best friend
Joe As Francie's family falls apart, the boy retreats into the fragmented comic-book world
of his solitary
Alex van Warmerdam has produced another fine movie after Abel, de Noorderlingen and the Jurk. This one I liked most of all, because of the absurd setting of a farm and the brilliant story. A man, Brand, cannot read or write and his fat wife doesn't want to read him the subtitles on television any longer. The teacher who is going to visit him falls in love with him and as his wife wants to have a baby, she agrees and pretend they are brother and sister.
Low budget, but very nice movie playing partly in Uzbekistan and Rotterdam. Man doesn'yt like the village life and hides on a ship. Rotterdam is not America, but he is adopted by the wife of a sailor and can stay on the balcony of their fancy house on the kop van zuid.
Russian mafia movie. Nice music and rather realistic
Not very impressive movie about Sally Potter, an English director meeting an Argentine Tango dancer in Paris. They are going to make a movie about tango. Nice music though
a lot of bears in this movie by the producers of once were warriors
Box of Moonlight" can be described as a passage into manhood for a middle-aged middle-management yes-man. John Turturro plays Al Fountain, the seemingly uptight supervisor of a small construction team. When his job order is canceled he starts to head home until he stops to help a stranded driver on the side of the road. He discovers what life is like without all the strict rules that he branded on himself and tries to live a little. He has to go out on his own and finally discover for himself what he might have known all along, but was never really ready to find. Al plays a guy whom you don’t know if you want to root for or not.
The big Labowski, 10 (the Coen brothers) It has been years since I've laughed so hard in a theatre, let alone after the film was over. Jeff Bridges aka Jeff Labowski aka "The Dude" starts the film right by getting his dingy apartment broken into by two guys who demand cash to pay for his non-existant wife Bunny's debts. They case the place out and soon realize they have the wrong guy, and leave, not before taking a leak on his rug. Now as you can imagine he's rather piss.... er peaved at this so he heads over to the other Jeff Labowski's house, who just so happens to be a millionare and who's wife Bunny just so happens to have been recently kidnapped. John Goodman, plays an awsome wacked out ex-vietnam vet who's sole life revolves around bowling. Come to think of it, most of the characters's live's revolve around the sport as do all of the "trippy" (there's that word again) dreams, drugs, and getting knocked out scenes. Steve Buscemi (aka Mr. Pink) is at his best, while a a major character, kinda, he plays yet another role that could have been played by another actor. I'm feeling real bad for the survivors of Resovoir Dogs. Are they doomed to play bit parts forever? Anyway.... This film is a must see, and ya know, I'de be suprised if you didn't know someone quite alot like if not exactly like, "The Dude".
Disappointing movie about normal people pretending to be idiots.
Good film about working class woman who tries to get her lousy husband back into the
family by involving him in a robbery. This movie is truly brilliant. Truman is a all-american guy who finds himself the star
in a soap-opera. Lesbian triangle relationship. Interesting and fantastic play by the third woman: Greta
TODD Haynes' impressionistic homage to the glam-rock scene of the '70s pilfers liberally from the lives of David Bowie, Angela Bowie, Iggy Pop and others in the sexually ambiguous mascara-and-glitter pantheon. Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) is an unassuming garbageman who supports his depressed
mother (Maria Porter) and his oversexed sister (ParkerPosey). Their uneventful lives are
disrupted one day when a mysterious stranger named Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) appears
out of nowhere and takes up residence in the Grim family basement. Loud, chain-smoking,
Good war movie, well known.
|
|
|
Send your remarks to [email protected]
|
