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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.

The Blair With Project * Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez * 1999

I had already seen this film a long time ago and I suppose most of you have too, so this review is for the few who still haven’t seen this film.

Back in 1999 an artificial hype was created around the supposedly finding of the bodies of three students who wanted to make a documentary about the myth of the Blair Witch. An internetpage did the job, spreading news and rumors, such as the finding of the car, the finding of the bodies and eventually the finding of the material the students filmed and recorded. As claimed the film is the result of the recordings of the students. They had a handycam, a 16 mm camera and a DAT for the sound. The film looks like a holiday-film with the students talking to eachother, getting ready for the travel, etc. First they shoot images for the documentary, later they start a hike into the forest for more images and information. After getting lost, hearing strange sounds in the night, the film gets scarier and scarier. Because you see everything through the eyes of the students, the effect is quite stunning. You don’t get to see what it is that scares them, but the atmosphere is heavy and genuely scary.

Very well done, very cheaply done, an open end. On TV not as impressive as on the big screen, but I at least didn’t get sick this time!

Later this film was followed by a cheap horror by another director and the real follow-up is still anounced. The DVD comes with a documentary about this documentary.

True cult, even though a lot of people liked it.

Birthday Girl * Jez Buttersworth * 2001

Oh well, I guess you know about this film. Nicole Kidman is a Russian girl, bought by a frustrated Brittish young man via the internet. From the first minute on, you can see that it can’t be that easy to just buy a beautiful woman. This shows immediately when Kidman can only speak Russian. Still she wins the mans heart and a few nice scenes with Kidman (who looks 10 years younger than she actually is) with no cloths on pass. At Kidmans birthday two Russian friends arrive and this is when the comedy is supposed to go over in a thriller. Well, it doesn’t! There are a handfull of nice jokes in the film and Kidman is lovely, but overall this film is terribly disapointing. The story is not logical or credible, there is no tension and a completely stupid ending.

Big Fish * Tim Burton * 2003

Ah, a new Burton. I had just heard about “Big Fish” and a relative already had it on DVD, so… As you may expect from Burton this is not your average film. It is again a fairytale-like film, fairly funny and of course strange. Ed Bloom is a story-telling father who bases his stories on his own adventures, but gives them heavily worked-on to make them more interesting, a bit like the Baron von Münchhausen a few centuries ago. The major story is about the catch of an enormous fish which isn’t really a fish. Funny are the stories of his life; his career in the circus, his friend Karl the Giant, the way he met his wife, etc. In all it became a bit too much a family-film, but still it is very amusing and has some wonderfull jokes and filmographic inventions. Also well-known actors in sometimes unusual parts: Ewan MacGregor (young Ed Bloom), Steve Busceni (Norther Winslow) or Danny de Vito (circus director).

Beowulf * Graham Baker * 1999

As the title suggests this film is based on the epic poem “Beowulf”. If I am correct this is the oldest known text in the English language. It is said to be from the 6th century. So, in the 6th century they already wrote sci-fi?! I don’t know “Beowulf” myself (but I know the personage with the same name from “Tristan and Isolde”, a German saga), but I suppose this is a very loose interpretation or everything that isn’t described in the text is filled in by the makers of the film. The film “Beowulf” became one of these sci-fi’s playing in an imaginative past (?), like “Mad Max” or “Highlander”. Christopher Lambert is the mysterious stranger Beowulf who travels to a castle to fight the beast Grendel who kills all the inhabitents. The superhuman Beowulf falls in love with wonderbra Kyra and of course kills the supernatural beast and all ends happily. Alright.

The Belly Of An Architect * Peter Greenaway * 1987

For a Greenaway film, this one is very ‘normal’. The film has a story which is shown chronologically, there are no stretched scenes with repetative music, no picture-in-picture or strange montage, no explicit nudity or absurd sexual moral (only a wife cheating). Fortunatly it does have a Greenaway atmosphere, but not too much. I think this is a Greenaway for a larger audience.
Stourley Kracklite is an American architect whose lifework is an exibition about an obscure but influential French architect. The final stage of the work is the preparation of the actual exhibition in Rome, but this soon proves to be Kracklite’s end. His wife leaves him, he gets very sick and looses control over the exhibition.
“The belly of an architect” is a nice film which is completely covered by the title. Nice, but for Greenaway standards maybe too normal and average …?

Avalon * Mamoru Oshii * 2001

You know these Japanese are crazy, but this does it! A Japanese film shot in Poland and spoken Polish! I had heard about this film soon when it came to the cinemas and it played in the local film-house (where you go to see the smaller productions) for quite a while. Still it took until I found it cheap on video before I finally saw it.

“With a story like Exitenz or the Matrix” the box says. It is actually quite a lot like Existenz. “Avalon” is a virtual-reality computer war game. The players entirely go up in their game trying to get as good and far as they can. There is a lot of Arthurian mythology in the film, but the game itself is just a shooting war game. Ash (Malgorzata Foremniak) is almost the best player, a good-looking but lonely girl who makes money playing the came and flees from the grim reality of Poland. The players contact eachother to get information to reach a secret level and when Ash reaches it, we no longer know what is reality. The secret game is the real world, or not?

Nice fairly grim atmosphere, nice colour-settings, mediocre story.

Around The World In 80 Days * Frank Coraci * 2004

What do you get when Jackie Chan is involved in a film with an all-English story told ‘in an English manner’? Just try this film if you think you can stand that. The film is of course based on the famous book of Jules Verne, but this book is only the basis of the film. I don’t think Verne has a story of an Asiatic bankrobber who has ‘to kung foo’ his enemies with fast Jackie Chan scenes. Furthermore there is nice Brittish humour and a bit of a Tim Burton sause poored over it. The result is a funny film for the entire family and it surely made my planeflight to bit faster.

Atanarjuat, the fast runner * Zacharias Kunuk * 2001

This film has played in the local filmhouse for a fairly long time, but it had to take until it was shown on TV before I saw it. Atanarjuat is one of these films being a crossbreed between film and documentary about a small group from a culture we know little about. Just think about ‘Once Were Warriors’ about Maori’s, ‘Die Salzmänner Von Tibet’ about Tibetans and films like that. “Atanarjuat” is about an Eskimo/Inuit tribe who live together during the winter, but go separate ways during the summer. They don’t do much more than hunt, but you also get an idea of the social structures. Also the story itself is said to be an Inuit myth about an evil spirit. The film is fairly long (2,5 hours), but enjoyable, informative and funny. I will not say anything about the story. The film is mostly to create an atmosphere anyway, so…

Any Way The Wind Blows * Tom Barman * 2003

I probably heard about this second film of the singer of the Belgian popband dEUS, but for some reason I hadn’t seen it. Shame on me! This film is really wonderfull! There is no story, no plot or anything, just scenes of people who on first sight have nothing incommon, but who all end up at the same party after which everyone goes their own way. “A friday in june” is all you get. Everything happens on one day with no background information, flashbacks and you also don’t know what happens after this day, even though one element could have become a plot or storyline. You only get to see the lifes of individuals living in Antwerpen. Youngsters paste posters of music-events throughout town and get caught by the police, a teacher French has problems with his wife, a girl’s father just died and she seeks comfort with her brother, etc. There is one ‘unreal’ element in the film, which is the “windman”, but I will leave it to you to find out how he got this name. The film has a nice speed, contains all kinds of music and shows the (drug-influenced) life of youngsters in the city of Antwerpen. If you know the city and its inhabitents, the film somehow gives a familiar view of Antwerpen and its atmosphere. A very pleasent watch!