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The Bridge of San Luis Rey * Mary McGuckian * 2004

The third time this film was made seems to have been quite a prestige-project. Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, exquisite stages and costumes.
In 18th century Peru there seems to have been a quite European court. The story is about a bridge that breaks and kills five people. A monk takes years to write a book about these five people, but the book is regarded heretical by the Arch-Bishop. A court is brought together and the monk is handed over to the inquisition and burned at the stake together with his book. The film is filled with the flashbacks of the lives of the victims as told by brother Juniper.
The film is a mediocre costume drama giving a nice view of the Peruan court and a bit about the Spanish, but the story is rather boring and the film isn’t much more interesting.

Breaking The Waves * Lars von Trier * 1996

A cheap DVD was made available just before “Dogville” came into the cinemas. “Breaking The Waves” is also a long film (158 min) and also divided in chapters. Also it is not too cheerfull and a bit too long.

Bess is a girl that is “not right in her head” who grew up in an extremely religious community in Scotland. She marries a ‘man of the world’ from an oil rig who gets paralysed after an accident. Bess’ faith in God (who she speaks with) and Jan (her husband) is tested.

Good acting, original story, but a bit too long.

Brabant 900 * 2006

1106 to 2006, 900 years of Brabant. That is to say, 900 years ago the duchy of Brabant was ‘founded’. Meanwhile a lot has happened as regular visitor of these pages may know. What used to be the duchy of Brabant, is now divided over Belgium and the Netherlands. I like the idea of the ‘greater Brabant’ and somehow feel more connected to the Belgian Brabantians than to the Dutch living ‘above the great rivers’. The Dutch provincial broadcasting company has made two series about the history of greater Brabant and the first is available on DVD. 10 Episodes of 25 minutes about “Bourgondian Brabant”, “Romish Brabant”, the farmer culture, nature, the language, etc. Not too much about the Belgian part of Brabant though and also the historian who speaks in the episodes is often over-critical towards concepts that we Brabanders are proud of. But, the series do give a nice idea of the history, there are nice old films, photos, etc. to be seen and heard and of course there is always something nice to learn.

Bowling For Columbine * Michael Moore * 2002

I had wanted this documentary since it came out (that long ago?), but apparently not enough to see it before it came on TV… Of course you all know about this documentary. Moore wanted to make a critical documentary showing why the USA have such a high number of killings caused by weapons. He hung the documentary on the Columbine Highschool shootout where the killers played a few rounds of bowling before their gruesome act. Also the killing of a six-year-old girl by a boy of the same age is dealt with at length. Moore wondered why in the USA so many people get killed while other countries such as the UK or Germany have an equally violent past (which is one argument in the USA) and a country like Canada which has just as many guns in comparison to the number of inhabitents (which is a big point for the anti-guns campaign). Moore’s conclusion is that it is the government and the media who (try to) keep people scared. Indeed, the one-sidedness of American news is horrid, but Moore goes a bit in the same direction. Whereas in the USA most media are very right/conservative, Moore tends to be a little bit too leftish in his vision and he shows this a bit too clearly at times. Still I think this documentary surely had to make American citizens think about things and maybe things may change a bit some times. As for us Europeans, we get an idea of the States that we already had, but too far driven through and not completely accurate in my opinion. This documentary is -I think- meant for the American market.
Filmographically then: a nice documentary with some rather sick / over the top films, some humour (like from South Park) and a few things that you even wouldn’t see or hear on the news here. Good to see some time, but I think when somebody made something similar about our own countries, it would possibly be (almost) just as shocking. Another point is that Moore, almost by himself, brought back the genre of documentaries back to the cinemas, which is something to respect as well.

Bound * Andy and Larry Wachowski * 1996

Shame on me! I hadn’t heard of this movie I believe until recently. It is made by the brother Wachowski who later made the brilliant sci-fi film The Matrix. Bound is very much different from that film though.

Bound is an intelligent thriller with a very good story. Often it is compared to Seven, The Usual Suspects, etc., but I don’t agree with people who say that. Where the other films make you wonder “whodunnit” until the end, in Bound this is obvious from the first second. Also Bound is just a story in one line with here and there a flashback, but nothing going back and forth to make you confused.
The story is about the beautiful ex-convict Corki (Gina Gershon) who is seduced by the also beautiful maffia wife Violet (Jennifer Tilly). Violet has grown tired from the violent maffia life and wants to get away. She seduces the just-out-of-jail Corky who got some plumbers-work in the appartment next door. The plan is to get the 2 million dollar that Violets husband Ceasar (Joe Pantoliano) has to give to the big boss Gino Marzzone (Richard Sarafian) and put the blame on someone else, being Marzzones son Johnnie (Christopher Maloni). Of course the plan doesn’t work out the way the women wanted, which makes the story turn and twist in unexpected directions.

All in all quite a nice film, but I don’t think it’s all that special.

The Boston Strangler * Richard Fleischer * 1968

I usually don’t care too much for old films, but for some reason I wanted to see this one. I am glad I did!
Of course the film is about the Boston Strangler, a serial killer from the beginning of the previous century in the USA. The story isn’t told too great, but there is something about this film that does make it interesting. The montage of the film has some very original aspects. Often Fleischer used a picture-in-picture way of showing different scenes. Sometimes the different pictures show different things like the first five murders, but sometimes the pictures show different angles of the same scene, which is really well-done. You see -for example- a close up of the face of someone driving a car, but also the car from the front and from the back. Often a scene starts full-screen, but later zooms in something and then other pictures start to pop up. I don’t believe I have seen something similar in any other film, either old or recent.
The film itself is interesting enough to keep my attention for the whole running, so this is definately one of the best old movies that I know.

Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul Geurigo Bom * Ki-Duk Kim * 2003

spring, summer, fall, winter… and spring>

This is the second film of Ki-Duk Kim that I see and comes closer to what I expected when I bought “Seom”. “Spring, Summer…” is about a monk who lives on an artificial island in a lake (again!) with his pupil. He teaches his pupil the lessons of life. When a sick girl of the pupil’s age comes to the monk to be cured from her illness, the pupil and her fall in love and the pupil eventually follows her to ‘the world of men’ only to return disappointed. “Spring, Summer…” is a very slow film with beautifull images and (Buddist) lessons for life. This is a very ‘spiritual’ film shot in a ‘meditative’ style. Some aspects of “Seom” come back in this film, but not the ‘gory parts’! A very nice watch, available on DVD for a very nice price.

Blue Velvet * David Lynch * 1986

Just before “Mullholand Drive” came in the Dutch cinemas, Lynch old film “Blue Velvet” was brought back to the Dutch filmhouses on some kind of ‘tour’. In most filmhouses this film is just shown once and then the tapes are brought to the next cinema to please the local Lynch-freaks there.

Of course I have seen this film quite a long time ago even so long ago that I didn’t remember too much from it anymore. I didn’t even remember if I liked it! Well, to any Lynch-freak reading this I have one advice: go and see Blue Velvet on the big screen! The overall effect of such a dark film as “Blue Velvet”, “Lost Highway” of Mullholand Drive” is 100x better in a cinema than on your own television with the lights on. “Blue Velvet” indeed is the masterpiece of mister Lynch as many filmcritics say. It’s yet not as absurd or extreme as the other two mentioned films, but already here are the vague scenes with out-of-focus filming, dark drones, weird sounds and extremely dark filming that can only really get to you when seeing it in a ciname.

For the people who haven’t seen “Blue Velvet” yet (and to clear up the memory of those who saw it a long time ago), the story: The young and naive man Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle Machlachlan, best known for being special agent Dale Cooper in Lynch’s “Twin Peaks”, but also playing in Lynch’s “Dune”) finds a human ear in a field close to the remote small town where he lives. He brings it so a police-officer who lives in his neighbourhood and however the officer warns him to let it go, Jeffrey starts his own investigation together with the officer’s daughter (Sandy Williams played by Laura Dern). Jeffrey gets involved in a twisted world of crime where the extremely disturbed Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rosselini) is blackmailed by a group of criminals who have her little son and husband (who’s ear Jeffrey found). The first of the criminals Jeffrey sees is the over-emotional Frank Booth (a great part by Dennis Hopper) who starts to cry by every song he hears, but when not overwhelmed by sadness he is extremely violent, speaks only in terms of abuse and uses a gas that makes him feel to be an oversexed baby. Jeffrey also meets a couple of Franks friend, one of which is called “Paul” (Jack Nance played in every Lynch production until he died in 1996), Franks gay boss Ben (Dean Stockwell) and a corrupt police-officer.

I won’t tell too much of the story, but it is a fact that back in 1986 there still is an understandable story with a beginning and an end. The film has a great Lynch-atmosphere, some pretty sick scenes, rough violence and a beautiful contrasts in whichever way you can imagine.

And as said, “Blue Velvet” is 100x better on the bigscreen, so when you get that change, don’t let it pass by!

Blow * Ted Demme * 2001

George Jung (Johnny Depp) didn’t have the best imaginable youth with his loser-dad, so when he groes up he and his buddy Tuna (Ethan Suplee) move to Callifornia where they are immediately introduced into a youthfull world filled with sun, sex and softdrugs. Pretty quickly the duo starts to sell marijuana and they do pretty well. When they run into a friend from their hometown and find out that the homelands are crying for pot, they start to smuggle marijuana in large quantities and make a lot of money. This is possible with the help of George’s Callifornian girlfriend Barbara (Franka Potente) who is a stewardess.
Then the money gets to George’s head and he makes contacts in Colombia to get larger amounts of marijuana faster. With the help of Derek Foreal (Paul Reubens) who they bought their first pot from, they sell huge amounts very rapidly. Then George gets caught and spends some time in prison. There he hears about cocaine (something new in that time) which he is also able to get in Colombia and he becomes the first to import it to the USA. Also with the help of Foreal George manages to sell 50kg in three weeks time, which brings him under the attention of the biggest Colombian drug-baron. For a while Jung is the only importer of cocaine in the USA and he makes millions of dollars. When he breaks up with Barbara, the Callifornian groups falls apart. Later George meets a new girlfriend called Mirtha (Penélope Cruz) who he marries. Then his business-partners betray him and George is out of business and he even is caught by the police with the help of a former friend.

All this is told in the modern crime-film-manner. The film indeed reminds a bit of “Boogie Nights” and maybe even a film like “Snatch”, “Thursday” or “Sexy Beast”, but it is not as violent and funny as these.
The film is based on “the book by Bruce Pollar” and supposedly “based on a true story”.
All in all quite a nice film, but not brilliant.

Blood Simple * Joel + Ethan Coen * 1984

The very first film of the brothers Coen is a nice one. A strange crime-film with weird humour like more of their older films. The wife of a bar-owner sleeps with with an employee and the bar-owner/boss finds that out by hiring a private detective. He can’t cope with that fact and asks the detective to kill the couple, but gets shot himself. A strange story develops which you shouldn’t know on forehand.

A very good debut, as all Coen films are very nice to watch. Also funny to see that Frances McDormand is also present in this film, as she is in most Coen films.