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.
(Dutch movies are discussed in Dutch)

30-March.2001 - 24June.2002

 

Storytelling

Seen: June 24 2002. Director: Todd Solondz, with: Robert Wisdom, Selma Blair, Leo Fitzpatrick, Noah Fleiss, Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Julie Hagerty, Lupe Ontiveros, Jonathan Osser. The problem of storytelling is in this presentation split into two halves: that of fiction and nonfiction. In fiction we see a young girl having raw sex with her literature professor and thus producing a desperately real fiction story that is not very liked by the co-students. In nonfiction we see an american college boy dreaming of fame ending up as a ludicrous character in a documentary on graduating from college. The latter ends in a drama of bourgeois murder by the fired housemaid after daddy has been hypnotized to do so by the frustrated youngest son. Storytelling number one proves only the problem of the small-mindedness of our literary efforts to reproduce the problems of materialistic life and storytelling number two proves above that how destructive the ambitions for fame and control can be. All very nice and humorous, but as is usual with the intellectual type of film, do we end up with cynicism, criticism, even the insult of being an accomplice as an audience and no solution. After the 'end of philosophy' could we have 'the end of storytelling' here? Of course there is no end without a solution, and so this movie cannot take the credit for that. Thus the telling continues, critical or not for the time that ignorance persists. And doing so since time immemorial, one should, if we may say, not forget to include the classical solutions, without being corny. The conclusion so far is: criticism is not enough and the good time of laughing about it is not really the good time that we personally could identify with in the story. In one word, where's the hero in this intellectual shit-eating? Could it be the cash-register? Treason! (website)
 

The Count of Monte Christo

Seen: June 14 2002. Director: Kevin Reynolds. With: Jim Caviezel, Guy Pierce, Richard Harris. This classical story from Alexandre Dumas is the tenth remake. The first one is from 1908 and the best one from 1934 so one says. Anyhow, the story keeps on fascinating. In napoleontic times an innocent man is put in prison accused of high treason and murder. But in fact he is victimized knowing the name of a napoleontic traitor with a son in office who tries to cover up the betrayal of his father. The friend Mondego of Edmond Dantes, our victim, is jealous with him and is after his sweetheart, the all-attractive Mercedes. For the love of the woman one has to suffer and conquer the enemy. Half the movie we see Edmond struggling in prison for thirteen years receiving education and a treasure map from an imprisoned priest Abbe Faria. Together they dig a tunnel, but the old man dies half way. Edmund takes the position of the corpse and is thrown into the ocean and escapes to the main land away from the island of Chateau D'If where the prison was located. There he is captured and forced to cooperate by pirates. Saving one crook his life he wins a helper for life. Together they, after closing their partly involuntary criminal adventures, go for the treasure and with that money Edmund is out for revenge. He buys a big estate and invites all the nobles. He wins back Mercedes and puts his former friend and an ally called Villefort wrathfully behind bars cunningly convicting them for the crimes he was accused of. End good all good he is a rich man, educated, with a beautiful wife and a son. The question raised is why this story has become eternal. Answer is that It represents the most problems of life as running with the naive of ones youth into the trap society sets up for the ignorant. It offers the period of penance each sooner or later has to accept. It offers the theme of societal rebirth of the converted and sworn person. It offers the story of the hero fighting evil for the justice of God and it offers the final success of winning it all with justice. What more could one want from life but to find it to that extreme? Going from the lowest of hell to the highest of culture is quite an adventure and although rarely anyone will ever find such a contrast in life or even would desire that in reality, still this contrast presents us with the essence of each his necessary emancipation and calling. A classic must see thus for the ones not initiated yet, and a mandatory meditation for the ones more or less following this line of living. This latest version is up -to date with an extra bit of Napoleon in the beginning and a for the rest pretty loyal story line. Thus it is, though not surprising in its interpretation, an entertaining, consistent update till the last shot. (website)
 

Blade II

Seen: June 14 2002. Director: Guillermo del Toro. With: Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, This second edition of the vampire killer Blade that is himself a mutant vampire is again a high pitched action struggle with the dark forces that seem to have taken possession of mankind. The town is infested with vampires we already knew. Our black hero does not quite consent with their raving in the middle of the night and goes out to put an end to them. But this time there is another mutation immune against the silver and garlic with which the normal vampires are easily turned to ashes. Blade needs to be backed up by a team of co-vampires that also cannot bear the light of day. They were specially trained to fight Blade himself who is the only fully light-resistant one. But the common enemy unites as we know and thus we have a real mean team fighting all through the movie against a monstrous type of vampire that turns out to be easily defeated with ultraviolet light. To the content of this comic-book movie one may say that next to the styled graphic violence there is only real enjoyment in the fine special effects. The tempo although is so high strung that so now and then hardly anything can be seen in the excitement. But that is not really what bothers one. The problem is that as good as everyone is a vampire in this movie. Such a picture of humanity is a chilling experience and offers little positive to identify with. As such we have a power-tripping horror drama in vampire-style telling us that our raving youth breaking through the night is an evil to be fought, if all of us ourselves wouldn't be the evil... The fact that our hero is a black man raises the suggestion that the original shaman of Africa does not agree with all the drug induced trances of our (post)modern music scene. To party must not have the blood around the mouth of those drugsuckers; they are nothing but vampires nonexistent to the light of day we are thus told. Not a happy message really; Blade is the hero of intolerance and horror. Part three I will skip as long as we see no other solution but the will to destroy. (website)

 

Monster's Ball

Seen: June 6 2002. Director: Marc Forster. With: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry. This is the movie for which Hale Berry as the first black woman got an Oscar for being the best actress. The story is a typical american dark drama of people in a desperate situation that are driven into each others arms, however different their lives and views were before. The story is about a warden called Hank in a prison where people await their electrocution in deathrow. He has to prepare the inmates for their electrocution, offering their last luxury supper in a ritual called the Monsters Ball. Hank works there together with his son, but the son is too sensitive. He cannot cope with the disgusting death of a reasonably innocent and talented black man who could beautifully draw. Hank lives with his own father and his son together in one house. They are all racist, but Hank cannot accept the weakness of his son. The son in desperation about Hank hating him commits suicide right before his fathers and grandfathers eyes. Now Hank is alone with his father who is even harder than he is. Alone he is sexually served by prostitutes that also served his son and for his dinner he dines in an airport diner regularly where the woman of the black man he just executed the other day - and for which his son committed suicide - serves him. She, Leticia is in a desperate situation: her husband is dead, and she cannot pay the rent. The day before she is evicted is her far to fat son hit by a truck on the road. The son dies, but she is taken with him to the hospital by Hank of whom she doesn't know that he killed her husband. She gives herself to him in a desperate manner. He invites her to come and live with her expressing his love for her. But his father hates him for it because she would only be 'black pussy' and deserve no further respect. Without any emotion he directs his father to a home for the old and senile and takes the house for himself and Leticia. Just before she finally gives in to his propositions for long time cohabitation she discovers that some drawings of Hank in Hanks possession were made by her man made just before he died. Completely defeated by the cruel twist of fate she gives up and surrenders to life as it is. The american miser is bound by faith and love. He and she out of ignorance can't do much about their karma and its cruel system and they try to make the best of it. No hero's but the ones enduring in love. No haughty struggle against fate or penance about sins. Thanks to Hanks conversion - he manages to quit his job and start a tankstation to make his living - can the woman accept him. He suffered the system, she suffered the system. Both are comrades now bound by karma. Although not directly a plea against the deathpenalty, it would be difficult for an American not to be against the death sentence after seeing this movie. As such it indeed deserves an Oscar although the inhumane of the system and the willfully maintained karma still continue with the Oscars handed out. Will the cinema ever accomplish the ideal by this subtle way of preaching, or did we only cultivate our american self-pity? (website)

 

About A Boy

Seen: June 6 2002. Directors: Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz. With: Hugh Grant. Toni Collette, Nicholas Hoult. What to do in the postmodern era with all the freedom of selfrealization? Chase woman, watch t.v. , play snooker? Our anti-hero is called Will and he has never worked, his specialty is doing nothing at all in a cool and decided way. He keeps a schedule though of all the nothing he does. One half hour is a unit. Watching the quiz is a unit, shopping is two units, to the hairdresser two units, buying a newspaper one unit etc. etc. Thus he spends his days in a pleasant nothingness, living a shallow life, not really bothered by anything but a low self-esteem and loneliness. His father once wrote a famous christmas carol, and he lives on the royalties. To fight his loneliness he chases woman, and he is reasonably successful at it, although he does not succeed in building a durable bond. So, in order to feed his sex-appetite, he decides to visit therapy-groups for single parents. There as the only male he pretends to have a son just to make a pass on some attractive mother who doesn't believe in love anymore. That would be safe sex than without consequences. He does fall in love though, but at the same time he learns to know a boy called Marcus. His mother Fiona is a nervous, unhappy and unattractive vegetarian with a mid-life crisis who cries a lot and tries to commit suicide. She dresses her boy the wrong way and learns him to sing the wrong tunes like 'killing me softly'. So he is pestered at school for it. But nevertheless, she tries to make some meaningful life with him. Will has to father the typical boy with the bad haircut and the strange clothes, who found out that Will has no son at all. He blackmails him for it successfully. So he finds himself obliged to a new mate in life to watch t.v. with and to worry about when he is harassed by his schoolmates for being odd or when they steal his new sneakers. In the end everybody finds out about Will's lies, but it has no serious consequences. Will gets closer to his real love and all the people involved make a kind of family together and everything ends happily with a christmas diner at Wills. There is a vague suggestion of having solved a problem, but not really. Would the alternative life be this or that? The movie, presented as a comedy is successful in making good feelings and sympathy. Although the story is pretty flat, does it not bore at any moment, nor is one annoyed by the lethargic indifferent and shallow Will nicely presented by Mr. Grant who seems to have been successfully leading such a life for himself. Missing the real drive for results other than a reasonable love for life suggests a kind of enlightened state of which one understands the sideline with the vegetarian principal alternative culture, that doesn't really know how it all works with selfrealization. The materialist yup and the alternative disappointed one make an acceptable experimental combination in a lifestyle that is only after a good timephilosophy and those who know that time can be the God of worship requiring nothing else for an accomplishment but togetherness and humanity, understand where the feel-good comes from. The movie is a subtle directive for leading a less result-oriented life with more sympathy for the vegetarian alternative and a better general human solidarity, however unattractive that materialistically spoken at first might seem. (website)

 

 

 

The Majestic 

Seen: May 30 2002 Director: Frank Darabont. Met: Jim Carrey, Martin Landau, Laurie Holden, Allen Garfield, Matt Damon, Hal Holbrook. This is a story about the Hollywood ten: ten Hollywood people would be members of the communist party and had to testify before the McCarthy commission. Freedom of expression is thus the theme of this nice movie that is a tribute to the classical hollywood-movie. A certain scriptwriter called Peter Appleton is victimized by the haunt for communists and loses his job. Desperately he drives drunk of in his new car to crash of a bridge. When he wakes up he has no recollection of what happened before. Found washed ashore outside of the little town of Lawson he is welcomed there as one of the war-veterans returning home. The man who thinks him to be his son has a cinema called the Majestic. It is run down and closed, for the whole town is in ashes about all the boys lost in the second worldwar. Peter wonderfully adapts and even gets the former girlfriend of the guy whose stand-in he has become. With ten years past everybody believes that the vague resemblance is enough to make him a credible real one. But instead of playing classical piano, he turns out to be a boogie -expert on the piano. Nevertheless the make-belief continues and the Majestic is reopened. The whole town rejoices and everybody is happy. Then his memory returns as he discovers a movie he wrote himself. Meanwhile is he also spotted by the commie-haters and taken to the commission for a declaration. He refuses and makes an heroic effort baffling the commission by insisting on the freedom of expression. End good all good he even returns to Lawson and resumes his duties as the stand-in son although everybody by now knows he's not the real one. He gets the woman of his dreams living in the quiet homely community far away from the bad of Big Hollywood and McCarthyism. The film must be appreciated as an historic document relating to the persecution of the ten of Hollywood. Further is it a nostalgic ode to the days gone-by and a commemoration of the pains and sacrifices of the second worldwar. There is no analytical undercurrent though so that we may believe in the holiness of small time attachments and a middle-class civil freedom of enterprise. Noteworthy is the insistence on the cinema as the temple of the New Time where the community is reunited and the stories of belief, hope and love are told better than by the classical institutes of religion. For the sake of the cinema: go and see, but leave the critical mind about our own contributions to the hell of modern mechanics at home. American dreamtime! (filmsite)
 

Zus en Zo

Gezien: 30 mei 2002. Regie: Paula van der Oest en Anneke Blok, Theu Boermans, Jacob Derwig, Pieter Embrechts, Monic Hendricks, Annet Nieuwenhuyzen. Nederlandse komedie over drie zussen en een homofiele broer. De vader is overleden en heeft een hotel genaamd Paraiso nagelaten aan de kust van Portugal, De zussen zijn: een gefrustreerde huisarts met een huwelijkscrisis, een met een losbandig leven als kunstenares en een brave huisvrouw. De kunstzus verzamelt voor een expositie het sperma van haar avontuurtjes en hangt dat in gekleurde buisjes op. Ondertussen bedriegt ze haar andere zus die een gelukkige moeder is met een wat al te makkelijk denkende echtgenoot die ze voor haar karretje heeft weten te spannen. Gezamenlijk gaan ze in de aanval om te voorkomen dat de broer Nino gaat trouwen met Bo, een handige meid die ook uit is op de zeggenschap over het hotel. Als hij normaal trouwt mag hij het hotel bestieren zo was beschikt. De zussen doen alles om het huwelijk te voorkomen. Eigenlijk is Nino verliefd op een t.v.-ster met een kookprogramma. Vlak voor het huwelijk, zo hebben de zussen gearrangeerd komt die vrijer opdagen en gooit de plechtigheid in de war, Nino's jawoord wordt een neewoord. En dan? de moeder die aan haar derde jeugd toe is fladdert er als de grootste losbol nog doorheen en de mannen weten ook niet meer goed hoe ze het hebben. Maar, eind goed al goed. trouwt Nino met zijn t.v.-ster, en krijgt Bo een kind van hem op het moment dat hij zich tot vrouw laat verbouwen in het ziekenhuis. Dat kind was een ongelukje. Allemaal erg vermakelijke degelijke hollandse komedie die internationaal zeker niet misstaat. De postmoderne chaos wordt er mooi in beschreven en de emoties lopen nooit zo hoog op dat er definitieve breuken ontstaan. Te mooi eigenlijk om waar te zijn; zo veel vrijheid en toch nog samen blijven. Het is dan ook het kapitale hotel dat iedereen op de been houdt en bij elkaar brengt. Het thema bezit maakt één, ookal raak je er gestoord van, is wel grappig, maar uiteindelijk is het toch wel spiritueel mislukt gezelschap een beetje in een tragikomische damesnachtmerrie beland. Een moord plegen doen ze natuurlijk niet. De begeerte van alle dames wordt netjes teleurgesteld en de homojongens krijgen het hotel. Niet meer verder denken. Het is wel goed zo met de lol.

  (website)

  

Star Wars Ep.2; The Attack of the Clones

Seen: 22 may 2002. Directed by George Lucas; with Ewan McGregor; Hayden Christensen; Natalie Portman and Christopher Lee. The chosen one, Anakin Skywalker is the most talented Yedi, the galactic knight to protect the culture and the virtue in the galaxy. But Anakin, so we learn in this episode of the saga, is growing into an angry young man. He is too passionate, vengeful about the premature death of his mother, falls in love with the attractive young female governor and disobeys orders. Still an attractive and straight hero though he has to defend the federation against the opposition growing against the republic. The story begins with an attack on the life of the governor and the Yedi have to find out who's scheming against. It turns out to be a conspiracy of the dark side of the force; they are the traders [with their despicable standardtime consciousness]. They, the evil ones, manage to capture master Obi Wan Kenobi and pupil Anakin together with the queen-governor called Padme Amidala. In a spectacular fight against monsters in an arena they find help from master Yoda and an army of clones, who as the galactic cavalry come to the rescue in a kind of galactic helicopters with more Yedi-knights. In a bitter fight against the evil genius Dooku (Christopher Lee), are almost all yedi defeated and looses Anakin his right arm as a punishment of fate for his passion. Master Yoda is the real hero of the light-saber, making a nice and unexpected show of agility against the evil and all too powerful Dark Lord. Of course there are the amusing robots C3PO and R2D2 and a happy end with Anakin marrying the governor, the queen of the galaxy in fact. Everything is a sheer lust to the eye: the effects are stunning and the real fan can fully dream away in the galactic fantasy of many worlds inhabited by all kinds of humanoids and other beings that are as easily visited as one does commuting with a train. The whole story is built on the idea of a federation of all humanoids and other beings in the galaxy ruled by nobles of a spiritual order in control with the force. It takes a kind of yoga to learn to control this force and giving in to weaknesses as illicit human love, hatred or a show of mastery, perverts everything into the passion and selfhood of the other side. The Yedi aren't perfect and the dark side is an inevitable consequence of their worldly involvement. Of course do real yogi's sit at the Ganges and not roam about in spaceships, but it is nice to see the science of selfcontrol take responsibility for the continence of soul and goodness with a galactic association of would be-enlightened beings. We may, 2002, fantasy about a galactic order missing a culture of respect for the galactic of time. But we at this site have all good hopes that one day we will be responsible people with the yoga and the galactic, lunar and solar order of time so that the force may be with us in all goodness and progress of culture. Blessings to all. (website)

 

Charlotte Gray

Seen: 15 may 2002. Directed by Gillian Armstrong with Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon. One may at first wonder why another story of love in war, but considering our modern political right and left wing political troubles of opposition in Europe, it is still an highly actual subject of concern to see how the territorial right wing racist, fascist and republican 'pragmatist' fights the socialist democratic left wing 'humanist'. Now as well as in the past one was confused about what was good and evil. As surely the truth of transcendence, intelligence and soul is always found in reason and its perfect scientific and spiritual middle, does this movie though leave little to speculate about who would be the bad guys and who not. In Europe this might be an overhauled point of view, knowing that nor fascist not socialist nor whatever materialist hypocrite dictatures are acceptable, Still this movie fascinates for working this theme. We see a young english, scottish, woman falling in love with a pilot in England, just before he gets missing in action over France. She promptly thereafter para-jumps over Vichy, south France and joins the local french communist resistance. Vichy, at that time, still had some sovereignty left in accord with the Germans. The Germans though can't resist the temptation and vehemently start chasing Jews there occupying the territory nevertheless. Charlotte, searching for her lover can't find him and thinks he died in a plane crash. Meanwhile she falls in love with the leading and surviving character of the local resistance. She and he cannot prevent two Jewish children, which they were hiding, to be deported by the Germans, nor their comrades to be killed in the resistance. She is completely drawn into the matter emotionally to such a degree that she even doesn't want to flee when the children and the father of her hero are put on the train to Poland. She, at the risk of her own life, quickly writes a letter, narrowly escapes with it from the Germans, and gives it to the departing children telling them that it's a letter from their mother. Just to give them hope. Later on in England she finds her former friend back she thought dead, but the romance is over. End of the movie with the peace of '45, she returns to France to pick up the loveaffair with her communist hero where she left it. The story is nicely told, apart from English speaking frenchmen in France, and Cate is the perfect emotional type still of fortitude and stamina enough to be a credible heroin. Knowing Europe, and the rest of the world, still to wrestle with the materialist duality of a socialist democratic corruption of a false unity of (standard-) time versus a racist republican territorial corruption for the sake of the falsehood of an international union of capital, is this movie, however unsurprising in its theme, a mandatory meditation for everyone of serious political and spiritual commitment. (website)

 

K-Pax

Direction: Ian Softley. Met: Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Mary McCormack, Alfred Woodard, David Patrick Kelly, Saul Williams. Imagine there is another planet called K-pax. The beings there live very long and have a mission to be guardian angels to other human beings on this earth. One such an angel called Prot is someday called down to Earth, to where he travels spiritually with faster than light speed to be there in the body of his protegé. There he sees how this Robert, a son of a butcher and butcher himself, discovers his own wife and daughter raped and butchered. Traumatized he jumps into the nearby wild river to commit suicide and is never heard of again. Years later in the middle of New York Manhattan Grand Central his body pops up as if out of nowhere, saying that he is Prot from another planet. He, having taken over the command of Robert's body, has the mission to finish business for Robert. He is put in a mental institution where the psychiatrist is puzzled with the strange phenomenon that an alien in a normal human body speaks accurately of astronomical realities no normal human being can know of and has special abilities to heal people and see ultraviolet light. In the course of the therapy the psychiatrist finds out in regression that indeed the man is from another planet, but that there is also a Robert within the same body that has a serious earthly trauma set to a date, when Prot will return to K-pax. The psychiatrist does his research to that Robert and finds the facts confirmed. At the date set by Prot on which he would be gone and at which one other patient would be gone with him, it then happens as Prot predicted. Indeed after a rumorous stay in the ward where he proves to be 'the most convincing delusion' engaging the other patients in a therapeutic approach, does at the time set Prot disappear from Robert's body. The Real Robert is a complete vegetative goner afterwards. Also one woman on the ward mysteriously disappears that same moment and is never heard of again. The problem with this movie is that it is based on true fact. It really happened more or less this way. Go and see how intelligently the director leaves one room for ones own interpretation to the happenings he carefully unfolds in this fine film. At least it gives a nice view on the reality of psychiatry if one does not believe in spirits possessing or physical appearances from other planets. (website)

 

We Were Soldiers

Seen: 21 April. 2002; Director: Randall Wallace. With: Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear, Chris Klein, Sam Elliott. In 1965 the first great battle in the Vietnam-war was fought in a valley called Ia Drang 'the valley of death' between 400 enclosed american soldiers and almost 2000 Vietnamese soldiers. It was the consequence of the Vietnamese fighting the French who thought to maintain there as a colony. The struggle for freedom of the Vietnamese though was at first not such a success as it later turned out to be. The Americans used new technology, armed helicopters, because of which they managed to defeat the camping army of the North Vietnamese with rockets, napalm bombs, airplanes and modern automatic guns. The 400 soldiers almost all died there, caught as they were in the valley, and it was only the karmic rebound of the vietnamese killing their colonial masters that could bring the final victory. This was the last time America had the divine right to win in Vietnam as we learn from history. The Vietnamese commander sighs in the movie, that because of that so many more had to die before the rights of the vietnamese over their own country were secured. The Vietnam-war is clearly pictured as the aftermath of colonialism and the idea of western superiority over the so-called ignorant people of nature. But the laws of karma are stronger than the technological firepower of the West to prove its superiority of civilization. This story is the only justification and confirmation we have of american heroism defending our civilization in Vietnam. The rest of the Vietnam-war was the struggle for detaching from that desire to colonially dominate as a better culture. The main character, the hero in this true story, is Ltnt Colonel Hal Moore, one of the few survivors, who declined to withdraw from the seemingly hopeless battle. Just to save his men stuck there, to his oath to be the first and the last on the battle field, and with the strength of his belief, he managed to gain the victory. Indeed a truly heroic victory, although the naive of the colonial and technological dominance also died there at the battlefield. The vietnamese learned quickly to counter with forest guerrilla. The Americans learnt there that the western illusion of superiority was purely self-destructive, but they deserve this movie. They have to remember themselves as heroes and not as losers. That is how they begun there. The fact that the karmic balance had evened with that battle and that from then on they could only lose was the thing they later had to find out. Detachment is always the problem, and as such does the movie not tell the complete story. On itself there is to the story no need to know their final defeat but historically this document would have been complete if at the end of the movie was explained why after all the West with the Americans did loose the war and proved to be the ignorants of karma. Still to have two successful colonies called America and Australia/New Zealand is a great problem. After all normally all aggressors have to return home. The Moguls learnt it, English learnt it, as well as the French, the Russians (almost), the Dutch, the Germans and the Portuguese. And these Europeans wonder what it takes before the Americans (and the Jews too) have really learnt that lesson. Vietnam wasn't enough, Mogadishu wasn't enough, the Gulf wasn't, the Kosovo war wasn't and would 9-11 /Afghanistan be enough now? Maybe only the illusion of power and superiority is over when the twisted of the modern of time and its world-dominance has finally defeated itself with the U.S. and the rest of the West, we maintain on this site. (see also Black Eagle Down, Rules of Engagement, Enemy at the Gates, Men of Honor, Harrisons Flowers and the demands of terrorism) (website)

 

Panic Room

Seen: 14 April. 2002; David Fincher. Met: Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam, Kristen Stewart. A panic room is an isolated room within some great houses in America to protect against calamities like burglars and A-bombs. In this story a divorced woman buys her self a house with such a panic room, just for her and her daughter. There, directly the first night she's there, do burglars try to get into the safe that is in the panic room to steal papers of value that they think are worth millions of dollars. The woman just in time finds that out and manages to escape into the room. Then the siege begins. The daughter is in need of insulin and must get a shot. But the shots are left behind, just as the cellphone with which she maybe could warn for help. Meanwhile the burglars try everything to get them out of the room. She manages to outsmart the villains getting hold of her phone, but it is of no avail within the steel and concrete of the panicroom. Nevertheless does she find out how to wire the dead unconnected phone within the room to an outside line and just before the burglars cut the connection she succeeds to warn her father. He checks out and is held hostage to force her out of the room. The daughter, slipping into a coma lacking sugar, she tries to rescue with a run on the insulin. But then the crooks get in closing her out, but accidentally leave their only gun outside. Thus she gets control over the situation although this time the crooks have the daughter. With one of the crooks, he who had set it all up, being killed because of giving up, do the remaining two, a hard killer and a human thief , try to escape. But they fail, the cops alarmed by the father arrive at the scene despite of being turned down because of the hostage situation. Before though nearly the good one escapes having prevented the bad one after a bad struggle from killing their victims. But also he is arrested climbing over the wall outside. Drama finished, panic over. Justice has won. So what is learnt with this story? In America does irrational materialism in defiance of the false of the once european nobility lead to the philosophy of having castles oneself for a home although one is with only two and that cannot be. There one is, just like in former Europe besieged by the crooks of greed holding one the mirror and hindering the communications. One has in fact only right on one panicroom so is shown. And even there one is not safe trying to sit on the treasure. Although the bad guys kill one another after all, does one suffer severe trauma with everybody disconnected and confused being crazy after the money and /or the way to large property. God is the police, the cavalry rescuing and only by them peace and order is found. Naturally that is also an illusion, but then we have to watch another movie of course. And after we've seen all the movies, have the producers enough money for a castle of their own with of course again the necessary panic room. Next movie 'The American Guillotine' ? At least the realization is growing that turning away from the European fortifications and inequity of capital management ones own capitalism does not safeguard against the very same fate that half the nobility in Europe had to face. (website)

 

 

The Mothman Prophecies

Seen: 6 april. 2002; Director: Mark Pellington. With: Richard Gere, Laura Linney. This is a story about the Lord of Death who is seen by all sorts of people all around the world when death is at hand. He takes the form in this movie of a winged creature, called the Mothman. Telephones are ringing, strange voices are heard and incredible delusions take place, all to warn the people for the impending danger of an airplane crash, or an other great disaster. The story begins with John Klein, a Washington Post journalist who deeply in love with his wife buys a new house. But being too much in love he doesn't see what his wife saw just before their car fatally crashes: the Mothman. She dies, and he ends up in a strange sense of reality where he is drawn half into his wife's psychic nearness. From that strange things start happening in his life: suddenly he finds himself in Pleasant Point West Virginia, 600 miles from New York without knowing how he got there in just a half hours drive. There he discovers that more people have strange experiences of a supernatural kind. Looking at drawings he sees the same figure his wife drew of the Mothman just before she died in hospital. He starts a research project and gets himself more and more involved with the people there who have the idea with him that a great disaster is about to happen. Would it be the nuclear plant nearby or what? He cannot figure it out and researches further with an expert in the field. That man warns him that he might die staying there, but having found sympathy with an attractive policewoman who helped him in his mothman research he turns back intuitively, although his wife (?) from the beyond, tries to pull him away from the reality of his insights in the problem. He returns to Pleasant Point just in time to find out that the bridge there is collapsing with all cars in a traffic jam on it, dropping in the water, together with his police friend. He narrowly manages to rescue her from the drowning she had premonitions about. He has then a new friend, has learned to believe in the supernatural and has achieved to follow his intuition and not his attachments and fear. Thus we may identify us with the more sensitive hero with another heart but drive of his rational mind. There is more between heaven and earth than we may suspect. The bridge really collapsed in West-Virginia and the mothman apart from being seen also elsewhere in the world today we already knew for millennia as Yamaraj, the Lord of Death from the Hindus. The world grows wiser and the game stays the same. Open up and contemplate this in between reality of the possible presence of our Lord of Death. (website)

 

 

Shallow Hal

Seen: 30 March. 2002. Directors: Bobby en Peter Farrelly With: Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black. 'Shallow Hal wants a gal' is what the father of our main character entrusted his son on his deathbed. Only nine years old he forgot thereafter everything about his father except for that admonition to chase woman for their looks. Thus we see Hal chasing woman for their looks. Not very good looking himself though he does so with little success. Then he is locked in an elevator with a t.v. guru who hypnotizes his dictum away telling him to look for the inner beauty and see that only. Thus he consequently falls in love with fat or otherwise unattractive woman with ears too big, teeth too crooked, who are transvestite or simply uncontrolled in their behavior. The story preaches against the dictum that the appearance would reflect the inner person and poses that it might just be the other way around: ugly people must have a nice character to get along and beautiful people must be bitches to keep order in their lives. Not completely untrue this though is a difficult exercise in philosophy in fact. Set up as a comedy good entertainment is offered, but the tricky points of the thesis are left open. The concept of karma is too difficult to deal with in a simple comedy and thus some might feel offended to see stereotypes confirmed in stead of being overcome. The opposite of something is still of the same polarity. So we do not really get a solution to the problem of being judged by ones looks. Not even when Hal in the end manages to overcome his shallowness and declares his beloved fat girl his eternal love. It is somewhat of a cheap solution for a difficult problem in fact unsolved in this indeed shallow comedy that leaves one with a lightly neurotic twist of feeling. One is reminded of the different movies dealing with people ending up in one anothers bodies. Now we may laugh about the misperception to the external, but still there is this little cramp that says that the form does matter to the person and that beauty belongs to the opulence of the divine. Hindu's even believe that one can end up in animal bodies ones next life. That might explain something of that cramp: even being in a beautiful human body there is no guarantee that next life we will have the same. (website)

 

E.T. The Extraterrestrial

(The 20th Anniversary)

Seen: 30 March. 2002. Director: Steven Spielberg. With: Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Drew Barrymore. From the 1982 movie we saw this remastered version. A few scenes have been added, like E.T. in the bathtub, but essentially it leaves the same impression; the scenes were not supposed to be cut out in the first version. In short: an alien ship lands and one of the aliens is left behind with his peers hurrying away from adult saucer-seekers. That little marooned one is taken in by a couple of kids, who keep it as a secret toy and pet. Once uncovered by the grown ups things go bad, but the kids manage to take it back to its retrieving mothership. A cool adventure all for the kids. Updated with the experience gained over the last two decades, one may wonder. Why do we have this alien presented so sweetly to comfort us, or better the kids. Father has left for Mexico and E.T. is there as a substitute. But it is no authoritative threatening father at all: it is a botanic, helpless childlover, a sweetheart friend there to play with the children only. The adults are the perverted ones estranged from that sweet and innocent substitute father. Maybe these years we have become more acutely aware of the inevitable of acknowledging other life forms from not just our own culture or planet. That this alien falls in no known category of aliens, of which some seem to be dangerous, is of no importance. What is important is that this alien wants only one thing: to return home. So now we have a substitute father that points his lighting finger homewards. E.T. is the dream of the humanoid of an alien time management -culture that points back to the original planet. Would that be to remind us of maybe our own duty to return to the original of our own planet with our new technologies and standard time twist? The estranged is the alien and the back home index-finger is there to point the way of ecology and real time with the natural of our planetary order and original belief in ourselves. E.T. , thank you for your example. We had a warm and red glowing heart with you! We also hope to find our planet back. (website)

 

 

 

 

 

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