Fa Yeung Nin Wa * Kar Wai Wong * 2000
in the mood for love
A nice Chinese drama about two neighbours with partners who are always away for work. They grow towards eachother without getting involved in a real affair.
Fatherland * Christopher Menaul * 1994
Don’t confuse this TV-film with films with similar or even the same titles, I noticed there are a couple of them.
Fatherland is a political thriller that plays in Nazi-Germany, that is to say, an imaginary Nazi-Germany. The Nazis won WWII and Hitler now rules the biggest part of Europe as an empire that he called Gemania or “Das Neue Deutsche Reich”. He is close to turning 75 and not only big celebrations are prepared, but also the coming of the new American president Kennedy to Germania to revive the bonds between the two countries brings exiting times. The Germans are still fighting Russia in the East and Hitler needs America to make sure he will be able to keep and expand his empire. Most of the empire is peacefull and prosperous. The SS has become the police-force and the Gestappo is something similar to the FBI or CIA.
However the civilians are heavily indoctrinated and the Germanian government tells them what to think and to believe, decades of Nazi-government has made some people quite cynical and critical. Because of the coming of JFK for the first time since the beginning of WWII journalists are allowed in the Reich being carefully lead around in a tight program. One of them, Charlie Maguire (Miranda Richardson) is led to a trail that would mean the end of the Reich. A big secret that has costed many lifes and recently the lifes of a few high officers that know about it. One thing that is kept secret from the people is that hundreds of thousands of soldiers have already died in the war against Russia, but the biggest secret of them all, that almost nobody knows about is that six to seven million Jews have not been relocated to the East, but gassed and burned. Before JFK visits Germania, Hitler wanted to get rid off everybody who knows about this, but of course Maguire finds everything out just in time and shows photos to her president who leaves and the Reich falls to pieces. Maguire is helped by the SS-police-officer Xavier March (Rutger Hauer).
The idea is kind of nice. It is strange though that all Germanians speak English, or better said, American English. However newspapers, TV-reports are in German suggesting that the English language is only for the film, the Americans and Germans have no problems whatsoever to understand eachother.
Overall “Fatherland” is an entertaining film. A political thriller after American model placed in Nazi-Germany and with a not too far-fetched story.
Fallen * Gregory Hoblit * 1998
Not bad, for a Hollywood ‘supernatural horror’! John Hobbes (Denzel Washington) and ‘Jonesey’ (John Goodman) are two cops that have been partners for “12+ years”. Hobbes caught the gruesome serial killer Edgar Reese (Elias Koteas) who is fried in the electric chair. Then an amusing film developes in which you fairly quickly learn that an evil spirit wants to make the life of Hobbes miserable. However the story is slightly thin and some things are a bit too obvious, the end is still a bit of a surprise. The atmosphere is alright and the actors are doing fine, they even make the story fairly credible.
Das Experiment * Oliver Hirschbiegel * 2001
In a time that the “Big Brother” hype was at its highest and in England there was a similar experiment with prisoners and guards, the director of the German tv-crime-series “Kommissar Rex” and “Tatort” made this film with exactly the same idea as the Brittisch scientists. 20 Volunteers participate in a psychological experiment. At random 12 men are appointed prisoner, 8 as guards. The men are told to take their roles seriously. The prisoners are really prisoners and the guards have a job which allows them to go home at night. All the people will get paid afterwards, which for most is the reason to participate. Of course the experiment runs seriously out of hand.
The good part about this film is that I really got into it. It is filmed the way it would be in reality. In the beginning the prisoners make fun, the guards have to get into their roles and the two groups have to try out what they can, can’t, must or must not do. As in the real British experiment the guards’ power rises to their heads and the atmosphere gets pretty grim. For both parties the reactions are understandable, but Hirschbiegel looked up the extremes a bit TOO much. All in all a satisfactory film though.
Event Horizon * Paul W.S. Anderson * 1997
How many times a friend of mine told me to watch this film with me replying “well, it is scifi, and I don’t like that”, so after asking if I have seen it a few dozens of times, he put a tape in my hands… Ah well then.
So, “Event Horizon” proved to be everything I feared: a Holywood scifi. Based on a thin story about worm-holes (as if creating these will be experimental in 2045, they have been working out theories about that for years) and the things that the spaceship picked up from ‘another place’ (“fear” of course), the people of the “Event Horizon” didn’t live to tell about their experiences and when the maker and a few other go visit the ship after it returned our very universe, things turn a bit in the way of a horror which is not too well done (very cheap computer animations), credible or enjoyable.
Better filmtips in this section for sure!
Europa * Lars von Trier * 1991
Maybe not the best Von Trier film, but still this is the better kind of film. “Europa” tells the story of the American Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) who goes to the post-WWII Germany to be conductor in a sleeptrain. Germany is in ruins, a terrorist organisation practically rules the country and everybody tries to make life as livable as possible. The film is almost entirely in black and white with here and there some colour to bring things under attention. Further you don’t get to see the light of day, which makes the film extra grim and depressive. Also it is very slow and not much happens. Actually it is mostly an atmosphere-picture.
If you like the more independent/alternative kinds of films, this is one that you should see some time. <3>
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind * Michel Gondry * 2004
How the hell did I manage to miss this film? Is it because Jim Carrey is in it or because I don’t know the director or was it just hardly announced in the Netherlands? In any case, the title comes from the poem Eloise To Abelard by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) (How happy is the blameless Vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot; Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d. (excerpt)). This is indeed a very typical way of giving the story of the film. A company appropriately named “Lacuna” found a way to erase those memories that their clients choose. The impulsive Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) decides to erase the memories of her unlikely relation with Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) when the relation becomes boring. Joel on his part decides to do the same, since Clementine doesn’t remember him anymore anyway and he is caught by the pangs of love. The larger part of the film plays in the memories of Joel which are being erased by the operators of Lacuna. The ‘memorized’ Joel finds out what is happening and tries to prevent is. He runs from one memory to the other, even to his suppressed memories. Meanwhile he hears the persons who are doing the operations on his physical body talking, flashback rush through, but everytime things vanish as another memory is erased. This is done very nicely and confusingly and it may remind you a bit of the film “Being John Malkovich”. This is not an accident, since the story is again by Charlie Kaufman. It is safe to say that “Eternal Sunshine” is as good (or as bad if you don’t like this kind of films) as that film; surprising, well-invented, a nice atmosphere and very good acting (I could even stand Carrey).
Equilibrium * Kurt Wimmer * 2002
“Forget ‘The Matrix’! This movie will blow you away!” Quite a tagline, especially when you don’t live up to it. “Equilibrium” has only a few things incommon with “The Matrix”, but its level of quality is at best half that of the sublime “The Matrix”. The idea of “Equilibrium” is nice. In a future world, emotions are rooted out, because they are the source of war and other problems. This idea immediately raises a few problems, that are by far not solved in the film. Why a leader make his people enthousiastic about his ideas when they are not allowed to be happy or glad? How can the leader and inventor of such a system get angry and hold a grudge? Drugs are prescribed and “sense-offenders” (what a horrible term!) are hunted down by a special police force. It is the “cleric” John Preston (Christian Bale) that we follow in this film. Of course he becomes opposital to the system and tries to destroy it. So where is “The Matrix”? Maybe in the few way too fancy fighting scenes and the camera work? Oh well, “Equilibrium” is a scifi action film like you can see many these days, a weak Matrix spinnoff.
Epidemic * Lars von Trier * 1988
I had seen this film before, but this was probably before I started this filmsection. I didn’t realise that it is as old as it is. “Epidemic” is a film in which filmwriters have five days to write a new script. They decide to write something about the plague. You see them writing the script, doing research, etc. The film is alright, but the end is terrible. 28/2/04
Ed Gein * Chuck Parello * 2000
“The true story of Ed Gein” as told in all it’s gruesome details resulting in a disturbing horror film. NOT!
This film is actually called “In The Light Of The Moon” and of course tells the story of one of the many American serial killers. Ed Gein (Steve Railsback) lived with his brother, mother and authoritive father on a farm somewhere in a small, remote village. Somewhere along the line the father died and Ed was happy about it. Shortly after that Ed accidentally kills his brother and makes it look like an accident, he was already quite aged by that time. Then for quite a while Ed lived alone with his extremely religious/Christian mother who gives him most of his ideas. When his mother dies and Ed lives totally alone on the big farm he is a bit of an outcast in the village where he lives. Not seeming too intelligent, Ed does read a lot about headhunters, grave robbers and similar subjects which in combination with his extremely ‘fundamentalistic’ Christianity results in a twisted logic. Obviously confusing fantasy and reality Ed starts to dig up corpses from the local graveyard and decorates his house with heads, faces, lamps made from spines, skulls and similar objects. After a while Ed starts to make corpses himself, again under influence of his mother who he has visions off. After killing two local women and feeding one to a befriended family, Gein is caught and taken to jail.
“Ed Gein” is nowhere more gruesome than any other film and only on a few places there is ‘something to be seen’. Neither is this a horror film (fortunately!) in my opinion, because it is not made to make you jump out of your chair with fright. Actually this is a drama also showing the human side of a serial killer, mostly just being a man having lost it. Also I find the film rather chastened, since only in one short scene you can see Gein dressed up as a woman in the skins of his victims. Gein was even more disturbed than this film dared to show!
A pretty boring movie.