Reviews

Maybe it's not really Angelina Jolie's fault. Maybe it's not the director's fault. Maybe it's just the fact that I saw "Girl with a Pearl Earring" two days before seeing Taking Lives.

This is not a good movie people. The story is flimsy at best - and nothing you've not seen before. Worse, it's even predictable (although the character of Kiefer Sutherland gives the story an unexpected, dramatic twist) - especially the end. No, this is a movie based on the appearance of (I admit, very sexy) Angelina Jolie.

But Angelina's lips and eyes are no match for Scarlett Johansson, the female lead of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Moreover, where the latter is a movie about art and beauty, an action thriller should not be based on Angelina's lips.

Taking Lives: 5/10 Girl with a Pearl Earring: 9/10

Sofia Coppola's an old friend of mine. No, we've (unfortunately) never actually met, but this is the second time that she's been able to move me, to talk to me and leave me with a beautiful and at the same time horrific feeling of melancholy... few friends are able to do that.

Of course, last time was in 1999 with the heartbreaking "Virgin Suicides". I can't remember how I persuaded some friends to go and see that movie, but afterward nobody complained. Except my heart, which was bleeding for a good three days after.

Lost in Translation seems to be doing the same thing (although I only saw it yesterday). Thank God for independent cinema complexes in Belgium, as the large ones didn't carry the movie. As with the Virgin Suicides, the movie doesn't grip you immediately, it just kind of slowly creeps up on you. You get to like Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson for the losers they are, and, let's face it, we've all been in that position before (those who have had to travel for work anyway) - so we can relate, although we might not want to admit it. A short summary: Bob (Bill Murray) is a somewhat over-the-hill actor who's in Japan to endorse a brand of whiskey for the money, Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is married to a photographer on mission in Japan. Both are lost in a country where they don't know many people and don't speak the language, and their chance meeting is the only thing that keeps them sane. And of course friendship (and love?) grows... And leaves you and me, spectators, overwhelmed.

Rarely have I seen such beautiful photography in a movie (the colors, people, the colors!) - and the actors are brilliant. Bill Murray's Oscar nomination was more than deserved, as well as Scarlett's BAFTA award for best actress. And of course Sofia's Oscar for best original scenario - although the movie deserved (even) more.

Was going to give it a 9, but finally settled on 10/10. A rare gem in a field full of pebbles.

I don't know what it is with Jan Decleir. He seems to play the lead in almost every Belgian quality movie of the last 20 years, just think of Daens, where he played Adolf Daens, a 19th century priest that changed the lives of the poor and the political landscape in Belgium.

We were seriously robbed by France of the Oscar for best foreign movie that year.

This time he plays an assassin with Alzheimer. When his target is a young girl, he goes after the people that hired him - people involved in child abuse and prostitution - along the way leaving breadcrumbs for a policeman he respects, in the hopes that the police would end the job for him should he not be able to do it himself.

See the movie as a cross between Memento and Heat (especially the confrontation between the assassin and the policeman is incredible).

Jan Decleir (could someone PLEASE give him an Oscar?) and Koen de Bauw as the policeman act incredibly strong, and the directing by Erik Van Looy based on the bestseller by Jef Geeraerts solid. It's probably the best Belgian movie of the year. I give it a 9/10.

Being Belgian, we always hate it when the Dutch do something better than us. Well, Jeroen Krabbe is both an actor and a director for which we have difficulty finding a match. Left Luggage is a movie about a girl (Chaya, played by the immensely beautiful Laura Fraser) that becomes a nanny in a ultra-orthodox family of Jews. Both her and the family need some adjusting to each other, but in the end they become very close and she is accepted into the family. Both her own parents as the father of the children she's supposed to watch have difficulties letting the past go, and the movie tells this in a subtle way.And of course, disaster strikes in the end, though in an unexpected way.

I'm not going to tell you the content of the movie, but it is very emotional, very gripping.

Try it. I give it an 8.

I'm not in the habit of commenting on movies I've seen, but people, go see this movie. I'm not a fan of road movies, but what David Lynch accomplishes in this movie, is not just great, it's brilliant.

Alvin Straight's an elderly guy that hears he's in bad health. When his brother is reported to have a stroke, he's determined to go visit him - driving throughout an entire state on a lawn-mower.

Those are the facts. It doesn't prepare you for the sheer emotion of the film, the way the random encounters and conversations grasp your attention and, at least in my case, brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion.

And finally: Richard, wherever you are now, thanks man!