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.
9.04
- 9.27 2000
Seen:
09.27.00. Dir. Stephen Frears starring John Cusack.
Made to the bestseller this movie about the lost
generation fills a gap in the cinematographic diet:
now we can witness what happened to the generation
after the sixties (without the immature
college-cliché): how the the young New Adults
wrestle with quality in popmusic and relations,
philosophy and continence. The story is about a
recordshop owner living together in his shop with a
couple of pop-freaks. They have love-affairs and
especially the owner has the greatest trouble of not
being a complete asshole of Love. He tells in the
movie his story, partly talking to the audience the
way people tend to talk to God or themselves. That
always gives an extra dimension to the witnessing as
an audience. The picture painted is not a false one,
the makers were in pain to make a realistic estimate
of modern/post-modern feelings of insignificance in a
word too big and indifferent for ones individual needs
of togetherness and recognition. After funny and
interesting adventures in post-modern selfrealization
the story leads to a success for almost all the
parties. The only real victim is a somewhat elderly
ponytailed alternative psychofreak modeling for the
intruding and paternalizing previous sixties
generation with a cheap psychology and fake
spirituality. The movie doesn't really get out of this
negative and does only fill in with success and an
-alternative- happy end. Although not a philosophical
masterpiece still a successful picture of the real
problems of a generation in progress.
Seen:
09.20.00. Dir. Wolfgang Petersen starring George
Clooney. The story is very simple: a fisherboat gets
lost in a storm . That's it. It is interesting because
it really happened. The emotional about it is clear :
it takes an american hero to go down in a blaze of
glory. Of course this is not true glory, but it works
that way. In fact the movie is made because people do
not understand the law of karma. The idea is that If
we steal from the sea and destroy all kinds of
beautiful creatures without necessity, we should
experience the consequences. Although we usually
suffer a lack of life-joy and difficult diseases and
neuroses in a overstressed society, it, this karma,
can also work out like a revenge of the gods: nature
wins. It was good to see that, impressive as hell, and
the varnish of heroism the fisherman may have: it is
still a bit of tough and a good sport to kill wild
animals for food, a primitive instinctual drive, but
win one must from those beasts! (poor
swordfish..)
Seen:
09.20.00. Dir. Ben Eton Starring Hugh Laurie. The
comedy of people expecting a baby is known: they try
all kinds of thing s to be successful. Nicely married,
always beautiful sunlight, having sex in the open and
all that. The english maker had double fun: he as well
parodied the whole effort of making babies as making
the american style of romantic comedy. It even follows
the american cliché of plotting: first the
problem, then the alienation and then in the end the
reconciliation: end good all good. Still all the
subtle humor keeps the fascination and sets the mind
on quite something else than the story: is this cinema
itself capable of producing such a baby? Is especially
the english cinema still capable of keeping up with
the fervor and virtuosity of american storytelling at
the one hand and still stay its own cynical and
humorous civilized self? This movie proves they can.
One babystep for the english cinema.
Congratulations!
Seen:
09.12.00. Dir. Gregory Holblit. Starring Dennis Quaid.
This movie is on the by now familiar theme of
time/space oddities and parallel universes. It deals
with the question what would happen if we could
influence the past. The story begins with the Aura
Borealis, the northern light that confuses the
electromagnetic spectrum and thus also time/space
relations, so the story goes. A firefighter discovers
on his radio, the forerunner of the internet, another
person talking to him from another time, 30 years ago.
That person turns out to be his own son warning him
for all kinds of danger about to happen. The son has
become a cop. He warns his father against his imminent
death and tells him how avoid it: the father returns
on the pictures kept, for he was dead in the future.
The mother is about to be killed by a serial killer
that ran three murders in the books but turns out to
have made a dozen of victims after the father was
rescued, The movie is about finding this murderer and
preventing the crimes. How boring is linear time and
how interesting and exciting is such a time-loop
through history! But once you know that the boredom of
linear time is to be counterbalanced by the
intricacies of cyclic time, one no longer shares the
longing for cyclic oddities like timeloops. Still good
to know how dangerous it can be.
Seen:
09.12.00. Dir. Spike Jonz. The concept of soul is a
difficult one: it has something to do with reckoning
with others, but how does that work? This movie
presents a very interesting vision on the soul. The
soul according this vision is a collection of ego's
that try to run an interest in immortality. It is
pictured as getting into the body of an actor (John
Malkovich). We are all actors possessed of some kind
of spirit of togetherness with the elders, ancestors,
friends, beloved ones, etc. From this love new ones
are born that have to take over. But one must not get
locked up in ones body, the togetherness must stay. So
this story is about a puppeteer who discovers a secret
porthole into the head of Malkovich. Together with a
colleague he begins exploiting it. Normally one
doesn't stay for longer than 15 minutes, but our hero
learns to take possession of poor John. And then the
story really gets complicated as the stronger one, the
guest spirit, is living his old life on the ego of the
famous actor while his wife fell in love with the
co-exploiting colleague. Now John Malcovich becomes a
famous puppeteer. The council of the soul (where did
that come from?) though needs his body for their
togetherness of transmitting the science to the next
generation. It takes a philosopher to follow the story
here. In the end the whole experiment turns out bad
for the exploiters and John becomes the head of the
council in his new life as the unifier of the elders
leading the next generation to the same union. The
head of the council in reality is our Lord who keeps
the proper lead against demoniac possession. But this
far the movie doesn't go. It doesn't preach how we
should be possessed or what to do with all this
struggling about who the boss is in our lives of
spiritual identification... Don't miss this one, it is
very funny.
Seen:
09.04.00. Dir. Edward Norton. The night after seeing
this movie I thought: a flying saucer is made of an
alloy of lithium stabilized by magnesium and
strengthened by aluminum with 'increasing fractions'
(?). I saw other planets and the first I thought of
waking up was the image of the beauty starring in this
movie (Jenna Eifman). As if she is of another planet.
The story is quite simple: Two old friends have a
common girlfriend since their youth. They lose sight
of her but later she returns finding the one a
catholic priest, the other a rabbi becoming. The rabbi
may marry and fall in love with her. The priest does
also. It is a classical lightweight sense-movie with a
reasonably predictable plot. The special of this movie
was about keeping the faith in the friendship whatever
the (test of) religion. Not a bad theme for a uniting
planet. I loved to see it, but I really don't know why
I dreamt of other planets about this. Coincidence? go
and see for yourself!
Seen:
09.04.00. Dir. Nikita Mikhailkov. This is a
masterpiece. The movie begins and ends with a soldier
that has to wear a mask because he persists in liking
Mozart as a great composer. It turns out to be the son
of a banned cadet of the russian military academy that
served in the military opera choir. Quite funny to see
men playing woman's roles. The drama is about him
falling in love with an american woman, the so-called
daughter of an american technician that invented a
machine for cutting trees in Siberia. It has the name
of the movie. His whole social life is ruined finding
that his superior is also in love with her. Of course
he loses as well his integrity as the contest (as well
as does the superior).' I am not a woman one marries
with', she says. She is political in sex, but still
has a conscience. He is blind and deeply in love.
There are so many comical scenes and the russian
culture is pictured that beautifully and soulfully
that no one should miss this brilliant movie. Not
speaking about the wider implications of a Russia
self-critical with its absolutes of banishing people
to Siberia and its relating to foreign cultures.
'Russians do everything extreme' is one of the
reminders. It is their passion. They have an integrity
problem of it, but still they win all wars. We do also
have passion, have hypocrisy about it and lose wars
thereof. From now on I say ' What dr. Shivago?, I love
Russia, and that's it'.
other
movielinks and searchengines
|
add
a link |
backgroundgraphic: Argotique