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Phonebooth * Joel Schumacher * 2002

A man receives a call when he wants to walk out of a phonebooth. The caller appears to be a sniper who has followed his steps closely in the recent time and wants the man to pay for his sins. When the man leaves the phonebooth, he will get shot. When he complies with the snipers’ demands, he will be free; but not really… The mans sins are mostly cheating on his wife, so he has to admit to her that he does, but of course he isn’t too eager to do that. This way a whole film developes around a man in a phonebooth who can’t hang up. Things go out of hand when the sniper shoots a pimp who attacks his victim in the phonebooth and soon police and TV swarm around the booth, but the snipers keeps his grip on the man.

The idea of the film is nice, a whole film playing just in and around a space of not even 1×1 meter. Schumacher even mentions to bring tension into his film and the victim surely gets the compasion of the viewer. Unfortunately here and there the story has a flaw and also I would have had a suggestion or two for the man in the phonebooth, but overall this film is surely not dissatisfying.

Pas De Repos Pour Les Braves * Alain Guiraudie * 2003

no rest for the brave

This is a wonderfull, French film about which the opinions differ. The film gets only a 5.4 out of 10 at the Internet Movie Database with as comment “One of few movies i ever walked out of”. Personally I loved the film. A young man dreams that his next sleep will also be his last, so he decides to never sleep again. The film opens with a very fast and long monologue with all kinds of philosophical implications of the dream. Then the story gets confusing. Is Hector the same as his discussion partner and is either of them Basil the murderer of an entire village? A young man is on the run, looking for a man that is looking for him. Strange scenes with problems in the drugs-scene. Definitely not a film for someone who wants a simple story and an understandable end! The settings are great. Some kind of remote mountain/desert society with very small villages and very old, French cars. The film is stuffed with weird conversations, sometimes deep, sometimes shallow. The characters are evenly strange and so is the atmosphere. Hard to explain. Really an experimental film that many people won’t like, but some may.

Paperhouse – Bernard Rose (1988)

I don’t believe in coincidence, so when first a friend mentioned this film which I hadn’t heard off and only a few weeks later my youngest sister too, there must be something with it. I suppose it was just rereleased on dvd recently and that is why it is back in the attention or so. Anyway, I watched it, so here we go.

“Paperhouse” is about a young girl Anna who does not quite feel comfortable with her surroundings. Also she has some unknown disease which causes her to loose self-consiousness on a far too regular basis. During these attacks Anna has strange visions/dreams that she later learns she can influence by drawing.
She starts with a house, so she dreams about a house in a big field. Then she draws the head of a boy in the window which she can’t meet, since the house has no interior. This goes on and on until Anna has created her own frightfull dreamworld mostly caused by forgetting things (the boy can’t walk since she didn’t draw legs, etc.). The dreamworld is far too closely connected to the real world. The boy is in both of them, to name one thing. Also the dreamworld influences the real world.

Overall a nice fearietale kind of film. For it’s time very good, for today just nice.

The Others * Alejandro Amenábar * 2001

When I write this, this film is not yet shown in Europe. As a matter of fact, it just started to play in the USA when I was there, so I guess Europeans will have to wait for another half year or so.
A horror/thriller with Nicole Kidman claimed to be in the vein of “The Sixth Sence” and “Unbreakable”, which is in a way true.
Kidman lives with her two children in a gigantic villa in the middle of nowwhere and her husband has been at war for the past months. Both children are allergic to light and the house is haunted. Since her staff keeps running away, Kidman has to get new gardeners, nannies and cleaning-ladies all the time. All the sudden three are at her door and they seem to have obscure plans with Kidman, her children and the house.
However I found the clue a bit too obvious (I also found this of “The Sixth Sence”), it is a nice movie, especially if you enjoyed the other mentioned titles.

One Hour Photo * Mark Romanek * 2002

A psychological thriller with Robin Williams? Not that strange, because at the same time as this film played in the cinemas, Williams was also a serial killer in the remake of “Insomnia”. “One Hour Photo” is about a man called “Sy” who has been working at the photoshop of a low-price-warehouse for many years. He developed an obsession for one particular family whose photos he had printed for years. When he finds out that the man of the family cheats on his beautiful wife, Sy wants to learn him a lesson.

You often hear that this is a very scary movie, well, not really in my opinion. The tension builds up very slowly, which is nicely done, but doesn’t really reach that peak that you would expect after reading a review or the back of the box. Not that this is a boring film, but also it isn’t the greatest thing from Hollywood of the last year.

Odishon * Miike Takashi * 1999

audition

Japanese films seem to get some more attention in alternative circles. This film got good critics overall as I remember, but still it took a while before I saw it. “Odishon” (better known by the english title “Audition”) is a film about a man whose wife died 7 years ago and who lives with his son. He is the second man in a film-business and as his son starts to get an interest in girls, the man feels a growing need for a new woman in his life as well. With his companion he sets up an audition for a film which he can also use for picking out a possible wife. Immediately after seeing the photo of Yamazaki Asami, Shigeharu Aoyama feels attracted to her. However Asami doesn’t get the main part in the film, Aoyama tries to keep the contact and eventually things seems to go in a direction that he hoped for. Then this nice drama makes a violent switch…

Asami turns out to be an abused girl with extremely violent fantasies and an equally grim sense of humour. Not knowing whether Aoyama dreams or not the viewer gets exposed to some of the most explicit and gruesome torturers that I have ever seen on a tv-screen. Needles pinned in the most painfull places (chest and face), feet cut of with a wire, images that will deeply disturb many.

So, in the end I don’t even know if I liked this film or not. It is original and it is good, but like the “ear-scene” from “True Romance” I definately think that this is a few steps too far.

Nueve Reinas * Fabián Bielinsky * 2000

nine queens

“For people who like Memento and Amores Perros” the cover of my rental version said. Well, the story is much more like Christopher Nolans (of Memento) older film “Following”. Anyway, “Nine Queens” is about two small time crooks who accidentally run into eachother and decide to work together for one day. They filch some peoples money and then get a bigger job than they are used to: selling nine very expensive stamps. The whole film you are made to wonder who is fooling who, which is the whole idea of the film so I won’t say anything more. Nice film. <3>

Ninth Gate * Roman Polanski * 1999

I saw this Polanski horror with Johnny Depp when it played in the cinemas. I remember not liking it too much, but I still watched it again was it was on TV recently.

Ninth Gate is one of these early ‘horror’ films with an occult theme. This time the story is that Depp is a ‘book-detective’, a collector of old books to sell them with profit. Boris Balkan is a fervent collector of works about the devil and he has one of the three remaining copies of “The Nine Gates To The Kingdom Of Shadows”, a truly magical book from which big powers can be drawn. Balkan hires Dean Corso (Depp) to compare his copy with the other remaining two. Corso discovers that the copies are not identical, the nine engravings are not the same. Six are signed by the author, three by Lucifer. The story goes that the author poured directly from the devilish source. Corso figures that the nine engravings of Lucifer will unravel the secrets of the book, but of course his quest isn’t without problems. Corso’s employer at least tries to gain ultimate power with a childish ritual, but when Corso himself has the real and original nine engravings, he only has to walk through the ninth gate. A mediocre film with a terrible end.

The Negotiator – F. Gary Gray (1998)

I don’t watch popular Hollywood action films very often and after watching “The Negotiator” I remember why. The promising cast with Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, David Morse, J.T. Walsh, etc. was no guarantee for an enjoyable film. The story is standard: ‘negotiator’ Jackson is set up by his colleagues for missing money and the murder of his partner. Normally trying to talk hostage-takers out of their actions, Jackson takes people into hostage himself to prove his innocence. This does not go as planned, which is an opportunaty for some action-scenes. Spacey is called in to talk Jackson out of his actions, he develops a sympathy for Jackson’s situation and after an ‘surprising’ scene, all ends well. Not the most entertaining film. Not that the acting is bad, but the story and the way things are worked out are too 15-in-a-dozen.

Natural Born Killers * Oliver Stone (1994)

For a few euros I bought the “director’s cut” DVD with “over an hour of extra footage” and I know what extras. It must have been a long time since I saw this film. I really wonder why it became so popular. It is extremely strange and most of all, extremely violent. Strange in the sense of comics mixed in the film, strange images on the background, unusual colours, rediculous scenes and a vague sense of humour.

As you will know “Natural Born Killers” tells the story of the two lovers Micky (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) who drive across the USA killing people and making love. Heavily drug-influenced and completely insane. The media turns them into heroes and there is major interest in the trial and interviews. In the end of the film the two escape.

Anyway, a great film and if you see the cheap DVD somewhere, don’t hesitate!