Film
reviews often tell you what would be
commercially attractive or to the common
expectations. Therefore these descriptions
of movies you might want to see but did
not decide about yet.
The
latest films.
6
May-22 August 2001:
Seen:
6 aug 2001. Dir:
David Mirkin. With: Sigourney Weaver, Gene Hackman,
Jennifer Love-Hewitt, Ray Liotta. Ray is a handsome
man with dark hair and blue eyes, but somehow he
always has to be the bad guy. To help him out this
time Sigourney Weaver is summoned, an elderly woman,
still attractive enough to seduce a couple of men. She
does that with fervor and even made her profession out
of it. Together with her also nicely built daughter
she sets up marriage traps for the rich and ignorant.
Liotta plays a crooked cardealer who fixes up stolen
cars. When she pulled her trick of with him, falling
asleep during the weddingnight and having her new
husband seduced by her daughter, he does not accept it
to pay for the following divorce. He goes after her
just to discover how she is making it as a russian
Ulga so-and-so trying to seduce a repulsive old and
repulsive rich man (Gene Hackman) who dies with a
statue in his mouth (!). Together with their ex, the
two cons have to get rid of the body. Meanwhile is the
daughter having a scheme of her own with a sympathetic
heir of a beachclub worth three million. But she is
the weaker one and falls in love. Her mother fights
it, and tries to seduce the lover boy tricking him
with a drug. The daughter almost buys that but end
good all good. Both really get married but if its all
for the better, joining them forces... It is surely is
a good laugh this comedy and Sigourney having a lot of
experience with freakshows surely does a good job as
the hellish temptress of doom. Go and see her singing
the authentic russian song 'Back in the USSR'. .. Just
as unbelievable is it to see all the opulence of the
rich and famous: America is full of the most beautiful
castles, mansions and estates, but for God's sake,
where is the nobility? Someday the States must have
their own French Revolution and Sigourney just might
be the leader. Watch it... here she comes!!
(website)
seen:
20 July
Dir.:
Guiseppe Tornatore. With : Monica Bellucci, Guiseppe
Sulfaro with music of Ennio Morricone. Renato is a
young adolescent boy in a small town in Sicily during
the years of the second world war. The boy is head
over heels in love with a mature woman called Malena,
whom he watches over and jerks of about during all his
younger years. He even prays for her to a saint in
church in order to protect her. She is really a
smashing breathtaking beauty driving all men of the
village insane. The boy his saint fails. With her
husband fighting at the front she lives unprotected
and is forced into promiscuity by first the lawyer
that successfully defended her in a courtcase wherein
she was falsely accused of the same thing. For the
rest of the war she is the sweetheart of the fascists
and accused of collaboration at the liberation. All
woman of the village finally get the chance to take it
out on her and beat her up badly cutting her hair.
Completely devastated she leaves the village assuming
that her husband would have died in the war. But,
although handicapped, he returns and with the help of
Renato who assures him that she wasn't really the
whore she seemed to be, he retrieves her. End good all
good, she returns with her husband to the village,
picking up her honor where she left it and is accepted
again by the community as before. The movie shows what
war does to people, how everybody falls down and how
the innocence (or sin) of a maturing boy has to rescue
the honor of everybody lost. It is filmed in the grand
style, popular wit and humor of the Italian cinema and
leaves nothing to wish to the themes presented.
Especially the peeping tom masturbation-adventures of
the boy and the typically Italian response of his
parents to them is highly amusing to see, No doubt one
of the best european movies of this year.
(website)
seen:
20 July Dir: Steve Carr. with: Eddie Murphy. Eddie
Murphy plays a veterinarian able to talk to animals.
Now he has also a daughter with the same talent. In
this second version the Doctor saves a forest from
destruction by claiming it as a territory for a rare
species of bear that is mating there. For that purpose
he has to train a circus-bear to act natural, and be a
hero to attract a she-bear. Thus one can see the
doctor preaching in the forest to the animals to have
courage and keep together to make the loveaffair a
success. One is slightly remembered of St, Francis
mission of also preaching to animals for the glory of
nature and God. Seeing this comedy as such one can
enjoy an uncomplicated kind of fun of seeing a
overcultured bear singing songs on a stage becoming a
rough guy and natural lover. Of course there is the
clumsy rogues that try to hinder the mission, but that
black and white logic is just a style-figure of
storytelling easily excused by the nice animations of
the animals and the talent and good laughs of the ever
youthful Murphy. Certainly a movie befitting the
holidays and the recreating family
(website).
seen:
14 July Dir: Harald Zwart; Michael Douglas, John
Goodman, Matt Dillon, Liv Tyler. Jewel is a very
beautiful girl fond of sex and dvd's. A house fully
equipped is her ideal and she goes for it whatever it
might take. She drives all men crazy with her
sex-appeal: a bartender, a policeman and a lawyer or
two. They all freak out of their own order proving
that the order of life runs on something else than
sexual infatuation and that the madness of love leads
to the 'great fun' of our messy society. The bartender
loses his job and his house, becoming a criminal
stealing for her. Meanwhile several corpses can be
counted and the detective also falls in love with her,
manipulated by her in order to get the house of her
boyfriend. The boyfriend hires a hitman, meeting him
at a bingo-game, to finish the competition. But then
appears the brother of the other victim, that was the
first friend of Jewel. The story is of an interesting
set up, filmed from the eyes of the different
characters, so that we can see the same happenings
take place with different interpretations. It is no
boring comedy thus with an original plot and some very
good jokes. Why the village people e.g. are involved
in the drama one must go and see for oneself. But no
doubt this is one of the more intelligent comedies
with a great cast of actors making the very best of
it. As a debut-movie from this maker I would say:
promising. (website)
sen:
14 july Dir: Danny Leiner; with: Ashton Kutcher, Seann
William Scott. Ever seen the Cheech and Chong movies?
This one looks a bit alike. It is definitely not a
sober story and the gentlemen Jesse and Chester seem
to be stoned all the way in search of their car. It is
only the dog though that really smokes. In our modern
time it is this truth: 'where is my car?' 'what have I
been doing' 'what are we going to do?'. The two dudes
have such a good time that it is impossible for them
to get serious with whom ever. Not the ladies, nor the
cops, nor with criminals or even aliens looking for
the galactic transducer or something. It is a sincere
effort to create a sixties atmosphere-like film with
Beavis and Butthead type of jokes that takes one on a
magical mystery tour trough town. The guys try to find
out what they did the night before starting with their
car. Along the way they find out that they have been
spending a lot of money from a suitcase full of it
belonging to a transvestite. The dudes never get
angry, lest it is for fun and are quickly satisfied
with a kiss or something sweet. They have two tattoos
on their back saying sweet and dude, As an onlooker
one, becoming just like them, thinks to suffer amnesia
as well. The story is that crazy that to remember
what's going on is like trying to wake up from being
stoned. As a drug-movie or moviedrug, what is it?, it
is a success. And I am sure that a good joint with it
would make it a very funny movie to look at. But as
with all drug-induced states: if one is not in it, one
either falls asleep or gets annoyed by the sometimes
terribly corny type of jokes. It can be appreciated
for the fun it was to live it and make it, not so much
for the fun of being an outsider watching from the
dark of a cinema-hall. Motto: go and look for your own
car dude! Maybe next day it will be there when you
have rebooted from your crazy time.
(website)
seen;
14 july Dir: Simon West. Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight.
The theme of this high tech special effect movie
couldn't be better to this webmaster: Time. The story
is about a clock that runs on the alignment of the
planets and will open up a new gate of chances to
master the time and the universe, on the condition
that the triangle of divine power is reassembled. It
was broken at the previous alignment 5000 years ago
and can only be reassembled at the exact time of
alignment, otherwise one will have to wait for another
5000 years. Lara is a rich and noble young lady, very
beautiful with very kissable lips, that amuses herself
with fighting robots. She has a butler and a
technician at her service. She herself is an
archeologist who follows her father in his trade. She
discovers a secret clock and a bunch of evil guys who
try to steal that from her, as they are after the
power that the alignment would bring. So the adventure
is about getting the two halves of the divine triangle
and therefore they go to Iceland and Cambodia where on
beautiful locations the action scenes are shot. Of
course is Lara in all respects the untouchable heroin
she is in the computer game. The theme chosen gives a
good lead and the action leaves one nothing to wish.
The locations are breathtaking. The buddhist temple
Aknhor Vat is seen with Lara in robes and another
temple of Doom is found where a complete eight armed
God attacks our lovely Lara with all his swords and
giant body. Still Lara has only her intelligence and
her two guns. So go and see how she defeats them all
and how time waits for no one. And don't forget:
mind
the alignment of the clock with the celestial
bodies,
it means more than just this story could tell! (I saw
the movie the day Earth was closest to the
galaxy-center this year). The cinema has a new heroin
and we could use one after the demise of all the great
male action hero's who only fought for a vague Idea of
righteousness. Now I 'm only waiting for Duke Nukem to
be filmed to restore the balance. The spirit of
alienation of our modern time with its misaligned
clock still needs to be fought, if not real, then in
the cinema. Never give up Lara! (nor you my Duke).
(website)
seen:
6 july Dir: Ivan Reitman (e.g.. Ghostbusters, Twins)
With: David Duchovny (X-Files), Julianne Moore,
Orlando Jones, Seann William Scott. Some might say
this S.F.-comedy is a bag of nonsense. But I managed
to consider it serious business for quite a long time.
One witnesses a meteorite crashing. This time the
extraterrestrial life it brings with it turns out to
have a DNA built of 10 base pairs, where we only have
four. Thus they have to win of course. Their evolution
and adaptation is that quick that within a couple of
days complete dinosaurs are flying around the place.
What to do. The special effects are a lust to see and
must have been great fun making, The picture presented
of the scientists and the government responding is
that of ignorant chaos. Nobody is really in control
and all actions seem futile against the new evolution
on earth that will wipe out the present 4-base one. We
witness the story through the eyes of three persons,
two scientists and a flunked firefighter. They are
comedians of course but start out pretty serious, be
it a bit clumsy. One of them e.g. organizes an
excursion to the site in neglect of any danger of
contamination. Thus the evil spreads like fire and the
our fire fighter has to discover that the creatures
even thrive on fire itself. The army of course wants
to burn it out with napalm. This results in an
enormous disaster of a speeded growth. So everything
seems hopeless until one of them discovers how the
creatures are built: they are selenium-sensitive and
can thus be killed with anti dandruff shampoo
containing selenium. Thus the monster of evolution is
attacked with a tank full of shampoo. It all ends as
the big joke it wanted to be, but still I think the
idea of a strange evolution is not so improbable. I
think it is better than the movies presenting alien
creatures that have a finished evolution and have to
die because of misadaptation. This time they were
adapting. This time the aliens were thus smarter, be
it that they should have learned the difference
between them and dandruff. (website)
seen:
6 of July 2001 Dir: Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson
with
the voices of Eddy Murphy, Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz,
John Lithgow. Shrek is a fairy tale and those stories
teach us a lesson. One sees an ogre who is on a
mission to free his swamp from all kinds of fairy-tale
creatures who fled from a certain Lord Farquaard. The
Lord wants to marry and engaged everyone and
everything in the search for his beloved. That girl is
not Snowhite, not Cinderella, nay, tadahhh, he has
chosen lady Fiona for his bride. She is kept in a
castle guarded by a dragon (a she-dragon). Fleeing
from the world the ogre ends up in the middle of the
attention of a tournament in order to get his swamp
back. That is promised him, as the winner of the
tournament, under the condition that he frees the
princes for the Lordship who appears to be a bit to
small to do the job himself. So he and his new friend,
a funky talking and singing donkey that doesn't want
to leave his side, go out on the adventure. The movie
is filled with all kinds of (modern time) jokes and is
great fun and beautiful to see. The donkey falls in
love with the dragon and the Ogre falls in love with
the princess who carries a secret with her, that can
only be discovered by night. That secret turns out to
be the victory for our hero of course and all ends
well and happily ever after. What we learned was that
beauty is relative and the nighttime is maybe ugly but
is still the most honest of her. Love does not bring
so much as the beauty, as suggested by other fairy
tales, but brings itself only whatever the odds of
capital and prestige against. The movie took five
years to make and that one can see: it is a
masterpiece of animation. (website)
seen:
28 of June 2001 Dir: Jerry Bruckheimer. With : Ben
Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin,
Cuba Gooding Jr. The
drama of Pearl Harbor has been filmed before (Tora
Tora). Now in 2001 with the extra technical abilities
the drama pictured again plays at the background of a
loveaffair between a young military nurse and two
young pilots, friends since their youth. The movie
takes all time to tell the story in detail (three
hours) without becoming tedious. The actors make a
fine cast of young and beautiful people and their life
and love is very real. When one of the two friends is
reported dead from a war campaign, the other one
starts a relationship with the girlfriend making her
pregnant. When the lost friend comes back there is the
problem of finding the old friendship back. But then
everything is overshadowed by the air-attack of the
Japanese on Pearl Harbor. They attack America to
defend their oil-supply and America is surprised.
Everything is as realistic as it could have been.
Complete warships with over 1000 man go to the bottom
of the harbor. When the attack is over the Americans
plan a retaliation bomber-flight against Tokyo risking
the lives of their pilots as they cannot return by
their planes, but have to trust the chinese whom they
could hardly reach after the symbolic attack. The
lovedrama culminates into the death of one of the
friends and the movie is over. The war did not only
bind the friends opposing a common enemy, but made
everyone in the world aware of the loyalties in the
political field. The picture given is balanced. One
can sympathize with the Japanese also and one would
almost forget how humanity and especially America that
cannot find fault with itself, ever end up in this
drama of wordwar. It takes a historian, a psychologist
a yoga-master and a psychiatrist to tell how the
historic necessity came into existence, how the common
uncertainties of the warring parties at the time
where, what the karmic load was all about of America
as a colony of Europe and what the repression, denial
and collective psychosis was all about in the light of
all modern advances of technology and social
evolution. The movie does not analyze this or tell
anything about it, but shows it as an acute experience
one has to live with. As a Christian one may know of
the primal sin everything is based on, but not even
the Christian theme is worked out. No priest, or
church is seen. It is simply a human drama of love in
confusion. That's it and to many that might be o.k.
and sufficient. So be it, each may think his own and
the diversity of that may prevent the recurrence of
another downfall. Go see this magnificently filmed and
politically correct story for your own meditation on
the human capacity of opposition and drama and draw
your own conclusions (website).
De
Vriendschap of: "One Way Ticket to Heaven"Regie:
Nouchka van Brakel. MetWillem Nijholt, Gerard Cox,
Pleuni Touw, Karina Smulders, Sylvia Kristel, e.v.a..
De vriendschap is een aardig verhaal over twee oude
jeugdvrienden die elkaar na veertig jaar weer
ontmoeten. De thema's die het verhaal aansnijdt zijn
bij de tijd: betaalde sex voor oudere dames,
euthanasie, leven na de dood en interraciale
huwelijken. Het wordt allemaal zonder veel drama of
gewicht en met de bekende hollandse gewone jongens
humor opgedist zonder te gaan vervelen. Cox en Nijholt
zijn leuk op dreef en creëren een sfeertje van
'de ouwetjes doen het nog best'. Er wordt niet
bijzonder overgeakteerd zoals we dat wel eens doen in
de nederlandse cinema en het verhaal schittert ook
niet bijzonder in intellectueel opzicht. Verwacht niet
veel filosofie hier. Het is van het weekbladennivo met
wat kritische noten en wat liberalistische stellingen.
Vaag doet het een beetje denken aan 'Wat zien ik'
waarin de hoererij en de sexuele libertijn ook ruim
aan bod komt. Ach laat ze, dat soort Nederlanders, wie
kan het wat schelen. De film zal Cannes niet
veroveren, maar is wel gewoon gezellig om naar te
kijken. Het verhaal zit wel redelijk in elkaar en de
karakters zijn vertrouwd. Ook la Kristel, onze Sylvia,
is weer terug en nog niets veranderd! Komt dat zien.
Om het wat spannend te houden zal ik er verder niks
over vertellen. Je kan je vader en moeder gerust
meenemen naar deze film en dan serieus na afloop over
euthanasie of over sex voor ouderen gaan praten. Doe
maar gewoon dan is het verhaal leuk genoeg: vrienden
blijven. (website)
With:
Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth.
Sharon Macguire to a bestseller of Helen Fielding. Who
is the right guy to marry with once the younger years
are over? It is a quiz playing with our preferences
and even has a sideline telling the story of also
Bridget's mother in the same dilemma. There a lot of
fuzz about how special the portraying of the thirties
woman called Bridget is: she is so human, so clumsy,
so funny and yet so strong. But not having read the
book and convinced that modern emancipation and
messing around with it is normal, I am not impressed
by that. She is just a nice young woman with no
special idealized character. She is quite normal.
Though I missed a fart at the wrong moment, she sulks
on the couch being betrayed by her lover and writes
the wrong things in her diary about her future
husband. She also accidentally cooks a blue soup,
wears big underwear and is bit too fat. So what. She's
all charming, has nice friends, stays employed despite
her adventures and is in the cinema as popular as she
would be in the real. There no trace of real despair
and it is all filmed in good English spirits and
humor. The intellectual challenge (well...) is in
spotting the right partner for her: would it be the
attractive young publisher, her boss who is
promiscuous, or would it be the somewhat stiff and shy
barrister that wears the wrong sweaters knit by his
mother at parties. She knows the latter one from her
youth having run naked in their garden being four
years old. The two rivals even engage in street
fighting as a kind of postmodern dueling making a
ridiculous scene that nullifies all american
stuntwork. One keeps smiling and even laughing out
loud, but that doesn't seem to be really proper at
this kind of social sporting. Bridget could make a
soap on television. At least for now I enjoyed her
introduction and more of it might spoil the innocent
end good all good fun. (website)
Seen:
14 june 2001 Dir:
Julie Taymor. With Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange.
Titus is a drama of Shakespeare about a roman general
that returning from a victorious battle against the
Goths together with his family falls down in an orgy
of violence and revenge. On purpose, having had enough
with the first one, I did not see Hannibal the second
horror movie of Hopkins about a serial killer. But now
I know what Hannibal the killer is all about. Again we
see Hopkins as a murderer. First he murders the son of
the queen of Goths in a formal sacrifice to his
victory. That queen marries the younger Emperor
Saturnicus upon which she avenges the death of her son
by letting her sons rape, cut out the tongue and cut
off the hands of Titus his daughter, after first
having killed her brother protecting her and her
virginity. Titus, who sees two of his own sons also
killed being falsely accused by the Emperor who also
tricks him in cutting of his own hand, seizes her two
sons and serves them as meat pies at a last supper for
the royal association. There as well as the emperor as
the daughter as the empress and Titus himself find
their death. The story is set against the background
of a science fiction kind of Roman culture that
appears to have survived through the centuries with a
fascist-type of high class art and corruption. It
shows a SPQR-radio microphone, brass walls and a
wolf-god of steel above a throne of steel. The scenes
and the costumes are a lust to see and all in all it
is a very authentic artful theater-production that
shows us what all the murder of our western culture is
really about: the power, revenge, eating the flesh of
ones own kind, proves the unenlightened side of the
roman pride that is simply out for lust and enjoying
the suffering of others in a delusional state of
divinity. Real order is lacking and that makes the
falldown probable in an never ending political
confrontation and struggle for domination. Shakespeare
was the first Hannibal writer thus with Hopkins
widening the perspective of this murder theme in the
cinema. It is the structural problem of the
overzealous westerner that is alienated from the true
definition of humanity. In stead of the virtue and
nature of divinity does the corrupt roman, would he be
also Christian(?), egotistically freak out like a
sungod of victory in trying to kill the moongod of
wisdom: a futile war of God against God that is more a
mark of insanity and therefore cannot be anything but
a degrading falldown into the deepest pits of hell,
colonial exploiting or not. Dear old William knew how
to tell us that and there is hardly a modern drama
that does it any better. Down with Hannibal, Titus is
enough! (website)
Seen:
6 june 2001 Dir:
Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire). With: Frances
McDormand, Kate Hudson, Billy Crudop. In the sixties
we had something going on, but what was it? We haven't
seen enough movies yet answering this question. The
stories slowly roll in and this is one of them. Crowe
tells the story of William a 15-old reporter for
Rolling Stone following a 70-ies band called
Stillwater that is about to become famous. The boy
travels along with them being constantly called by his
mother who has only one real message: don't take
drugs! Although a college professor, she has great
difficultly of coping with the son on the loose. She
is divorced and worries herself to death almost. Well
William himself doesn't, but he falls in love with
Penny Lane, one of the groupies, band-aids ('we only
give head')! He is supposed to write a story and give
an objective account, but as his friend told him not
to get involved in their sympathies, he still does. So
he ends up after weeks and many hotel-bills with a lot
of loose ends and no complete story. When he still
manages to complete the story reconstructing it as it
was, he was denied the truth by the bandleader Russell
who thought the honesty damaging to their image. It
was about their meager philosophy, their drugs and
abuse of the girls. They are no saints and it is a
nice Rolling Stone story, but after being denied the
truth our hero returns unpublished home to his mom
disappointed. Russell freaked out and feeling guilty
he calls after Penny who was just rescued by William
from a suicide attempt. He regrets having denied her
when she had to disappear in New York because he has
his legal wife there. She makes an appointment with
him giving her address, but in reality she sends him
to the address of William. There they pick up their
sympathy again and finish the story as it should have
been told. The film won an Oscar for its script and
that it deserved. It shows the seventies (1973) with
all its experimental love and freedom, drugs and music
scenes of obscure hope and love for life. It makes
thus a worthwhile document of the generation and all
the insecurity it brought. Modernity's news is over,
we know the life by now, but still we must remember
all the love we found then. It is still there with all
its dangers and ecstasies. If only we would remember
all the lessons learnt. Therefore look and listen,
hear and tune in ... the times they keep on changin'
and the songs we have to keep singing; from Dylan to
Hare Krishna. (website)
Seen:
6 june 2001 Directed
by Elie Chouraqui with: Andie MacDowell, David
Strathairn. Bosnia was a drama and the photography and
the press about it made it an acute experience for the
rest of the world. The story is about the role of the
press in this case in war-photography. A well-to-do
reporter of Newsweek belongs to the establishment: he
is a prize-winning accomplished photographer with the
name Harrison Lloyd. He has a wife and a son and
daughter and a glass house where he grows flowers.
Called away for a mission in Bosnia things go wrong:
he does not return and is reported dead. In fact he is
missing somewhere in Vukovar where the Tsjetniks fight
the Muslims and other parties. It is a brutal war
where everybody shoots at everybody. Really crazy. So
also the wife goes crazy more or less not accepting
that her husband would be dead. She goes to Bosnia by
herself and ends up in the hell of war, being almost
raped within the first hour of entering the war zone.
She is rescued by her colleagues who declare her crazy
looking for her husband. She feels he must be alive
and doesn't give up. She even knows to motivate two
other colleagues to assist her in looking for him and
so they go right in between the warring parties
shooting pictures of the cruelties going on asking
themselves why they are doing it. A doctor in a
hospital shouts to them ' Go on, the world must know
what is happening here'. They find Harrison severely
burnt and in a shock in that hospital in the middle of
the war zone. Victory, love wins; they nurse him back
to life and take him home. At home he slowly recovers
from all the trauma regaining his speech to find out
that his son has taken care of his flowers meanwhile.
For the rest of his life he only photographs flowers
and doesn't look at tv-newsshows anymore. It is good
to have an honest movie that shows how it really was
in Bosnia. It shows the ethnic cleansing, the mad
murder of anyone moving around, the rapes, the snipers
shooting children (and one of the
colleague-photographers). It is not really nice to see
all this madness, but the story is a realistic one. It
tries to be as loyal to the historical facts as
possible as also to portray the passion of the media
to report all this. This movie excuses them. No war
picture could be as vivid as this story. We must know
our history, whether the photographers are crazy
themselves serving the tabloid interest or whether
they are souls loyal to their profession of serving
the truth. Tens of them died in that war and this is
to their commemoration. An honorable tribute to their
work. (all-movie-info-page)
Seen:
22 may 2001 Directed
by J.B. Rodgers With Heather graham, Chris Klein and
sally Fields. A nice comedy with original jokes making
a farce of romance and american civil life. A boy
meets a girl. He falls in love with her, but then he
discovers that she must be his sister. She flees town
to meet her corrupt millionaire fiancé and is
later followed by her so-called brother when he found
out she that she was not his sister at all. He has to
win her back and defeat all the adversity of being
called a pervert. He finds an accomplice in a Vietnam
veteran type of black guy with no legs and an airplane
who turns out to be his best Cherokee (io%) friend.
This is in short the framework for a comedy-show that
especially in the beginning is original. The clumsy
girl is a hairdresser messing up all the hairdo's of
the guys that want to make it with her. Our hero has
to miss a piece of his ear for it but gets her
picnicking on a rooftop. A pity is that half way the
story is a bit too predictable in the save the bride
cliché-model but the quality of the jokes and
the actors makes up for that less important aspect.
Not telling too much of the jokes, go and have worth
the money for a lot of laughs. Also the website is
original and worthwhile the visit.
(website)
Seen:
30 may 2001 Dir:
John Hertzfeld. With: Robert de Niro, Edward Burns.
Celebrity-cop Eddie Flemming is tracking down two
east-european criminals who are bored coming just out
of prison. The first thing one of the two does is
steal a video camera. With that camera he shoots the
scenes of their own crimes: the killing of an old
friend who wasted their money and the killing of a
prostitute that doesn't cooperate to their wishes.
This introduction leads to a complete madness of
media-involvement in which the criminals get into the
delusion of being successful in America by selling
their home-movie to the media. For that success they
kidnap cop Flemming and kill him. Selling the product
for a million dollars to the networks they think to
get away with it claiming insanity. The assistant of
Flemming , a fire brigade inspector, tries to protect
a witness and can't believe his eyes when one of the
two criminals arrested is defended as a case of
temporary insanity. He is the factual hero of the
story that puts an end to the ridiculous game the two
criminals play with the american way of life, the
system and the moral corruption of the tabloid media.
The movie is a strange combination of a serious
murdercase and a comedy. It reaches just beyond the
level of normal reality in presenting a plot that
makes celebrities of criminals that no one can believe
they exist. But the theory of this movie has no
trouble with it. The movie even accuses the onlooker
of being guilty: he pays for it, he wants the crime.
The industry, criminal or not does the rest. The
highly original story nicely enacted by the best cast
available, only in the end falls into the
cliché of the failing criminals that betray one
other and are shot in a final showdown with the
fireman and the media present. A more open end leading
to a possible sequel could have been more attractive.
But that nightmare we may not go for of course in the
same american style of the illusion of a 100%
catch-rate only defeated by the devils of Christianity
in the I-am -possed-genre who to the greater of horror
are never defeated completely. Just before the
criminal who shot the movies really dies does that
cameraman wounded and all play to die filming self.
Those who want to discover the strangest smiles on
their own face laughing about all the sickness and
drama of his own tabloid interest should go and see
this masterpiece of the genre.(website)
Seen:
22 may 2001 Dir: Robert Redford. With: Will Smith,
Matt Damon, Charlize Theron, e.o. Redford belongs to
the Hollywood directors that are not tempted by the
endless possibilities of the medium. He specializes in
nice photography and realistic stories told relaxed
that touch the heart of man. In this movie one sees
the story of a caddy-guru that operated in the
thirties in America. An expensive new golf-course
begins a tournament to save itself with the fame of
the time including the local hero of golf that has
little confidence in his own talents. He Mr. Vance
mystically meets with the downcast Junuh appearing
from nowhere to save his honor. He receives a complete
course in selfrealization of being aware of the
'field' and finding ones swing and just before the
victorious end of the game (all three competitors end
equal in a great sportive mood), he disappears denying
to be the hero who saved the game and the honor of its
players. It is a nice meditation, but one should not
see it too late in the evening. Be fresh and see
fresh, that is the way to the self, that is the way of
the spirit. It was also nice to see Will Smith playing
the wise guy with his big smile. Matt Damon was his
usual self which suited his part fine. A movie worth
the contemplation.(Movie
Database)
Seen:
22 may 2001 Dir: Stephen Sommers. With: Brendan
Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, There is a pattern
emerging in the cinema: there are the movies with all
the latest technology of digital manipulation and
movies that simply try to tell a real life story that
doesn't require all the trickery of digital
manipulation. Anything can be shown digitally and it
is certainly another computer-game world we are
getting into. The mummy is back this time in a horror
world full of wonders. There are complete armies of
anubis-soldiers pictured as demoniac. Pygmee-types of
mummies that stab you to death or use their blowpipes
with poisonous arrows. There is a mystical pyramid in
the midst of a mystical oasis where the so-called
scorpion-king resides to be reawakened for the next
overthrow of evil. Enfin, it is a beautiful adventure
in realms unknown. A real lust for the eye. The
digital capacity fully used makes an attractive artful
scenery that leaves the audience hardy a minute to
recover from all the excitement. But tough guys will
like it. Never a dull moment with the Mummy returning.
There is also a novel character in the movie. The
victorious couple archaeologists of the last
Mummy-story gave birth to an adamant little humorous
son that accidentally puts on a mystical bracelet of
the scorpion king. The one who has it controls his
army and it locked on his wrist. So he is kidnapped by
the evil guys etc. If he does not meet with the temple
of the scorpion-king he will have to die. Thus there
is the great urge to find the evil and the inevitable
confrontation with all the evil and less sincere
characters also interested. Indiana Jones in digital
heaven one could call this one. The scenery changes
constantly from London bridge with mummies to Egypt
with mummies and there is a lot of fighting going on
that is also artistically worthwhile seeing. How would
two egyptian goddesses fight? If you're not afraid of
tired eyes go see, but this movie might use two breaks
in stead of the usual single one. The peace is in the
break. (website)
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backgroundgraphic: Argotique