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.
(Dutch movies are discussed in Dutch)


 6 May-22 August 2001:

 

Heartbreakers

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)

 

 

Malena

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)

 

Dr Dolittle 2

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).

 

One Night at Mc Cools?

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)

 

Dude, where's my car?

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)

 

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

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)

 

Evolution

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)

 

Shrek

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)

 

 

 

Pearl Harbor

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)

 

Bridget Jones's Diary

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)

 

Titus

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)

 

Almost Famous

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)

 

 

Harrisons Flowers

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)

 

 

Say it isn't so

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)

 

15 Minutes

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)

 

The Legend of Bagger Vance

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)

 

The Mummy Returns

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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