Reviews

Yes, the French were capable of making comedies in the thirties. Look at this one: Le mort en fuite, with its ridiculous title which means that the two main actors will be in great danger at one moment. I liked the scene at the court with Achille Baluchet (the ever-ugly Michel Simon) crying out: "Je suis innocent" and the scene at the military court of Poland (?) where Hector Trignol (a subtle Jules Berry) shouts: "Je n'y comprends rien". His mistress knows him but very well and can even prove who he really is... How he manages to escape I cannot tell you but it has something to do with love and customs examination. The end of the movie delivers us a typical French and thus charming surprise. Life is not always what it could be even when one becomes a celebrity. André Berthomieu gives us here a comedy which could have been written for theatre, it is all amusement without too much mind troubling. The best proof is that the writer Carlo Rim worked along for many years more in French cinema.

The problem of this movie is that the novel by Eça de Queiroz is stronger and put in another country and another time than the movie. Carlos Carrera is going good until the second part of the movie where it all becomes too mixed up. I am not living in Mexico but I think that this movie could not have been made in the Portugal of our time. The question is: does the interpretation of the novel work in the Mexico of the 21th century with its drugs dealers and left-wing priests?

The plot is good and the actors Bronson, General Strelsky (Patrick Mcgee) are good but the movie has gone out of time. One of the weaknesses is that we now know that it is impossible to hypnotise people for an extent of more than 10 years. People just tend to forget and to cure from psychical injuries of the time.

The special operations by convicts are described in the books in the series 0011 by the Germans on the East-front. There were never American convicts doing an action in war. The attack by the SS-parachutists and convicts on the headquarters of Tito were well conducted and at the last moment Tito could escape but there were heavy losses specially on the side of the partisans. Oberstürmbannführer (he never became general but he laughed at the action by the parachutists on the raid on Tito) Otto Skorzeny did a lot of operations in the uniform of the enemy and he even got into the headquarters of the Hungarian army. In the battle of the Bulge he just had not enough American material (jeeps, weapons etc...) to conduct a similar operation. I think Robert Aldrich made the movie at a moment Americans needed support for their war against Vietnam. However, in reality German sharpshooters shot and did not miss their target, something the Americans seem to have forgotten since then. I found this movie a pleasure to watch at but at the same moment I had to imagine that it was only cinema and had nothing to do with reality. So I imagined that the killed human beings in the movie were only puppets and that it was only a game. The actors are good and the action is good. Telly Salavas, Don Suterhland, Bronson, Lee Marvin they are OK. Just one question: in our time of computer-games, did this movie get old?

The man who has a little neurosis (Nicolas Cage)is a character without depth and without past. He is a crook and normally should remain a crook. But the movie shows how life can turn... I think the character-depicting in the movie is a little bit annoying. The daughter of Nicolas Cage comes in in the movie at a moment that she can save his future but she will bring him in another life. One feels pity with Nicolas Cage's character but one should not forget that he took a lot of money from people which is not decent and not morally acceptable.

This movie falls apart after the dead of Donald Sutherland. The irony of the Ukranian mafia at the end is not in the mainstream of the movie, what is going to happen with him? Do not disturb mother-in law, mother nature or the Ukranian mafia is funny but is not in well put in the movie. This movie is hollow because the actors how good they might be to save the movie cannot give the impression that this is a serious thing. Even when somebody is killed it all looks too funny. Thorize might be beautiful but her one-liners are not convincing. Nobody in this movie seems to know what real sorrow might be when you loose a person to which you were attached.

Georges Lacombe makes a somewhat light interpretation of this social and psychological drama by Pierre-rené Wolf. The court at the end with its "avocat" and "ministère public" deliver us quite sensational dialogues and this second part of the movie is the most interesting; the end of the movie is anti-climax but is in the line of the Martin roumagnac and his adversary. Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich save the film for our memory but Marlene dietrich should have been more developed.

This movie is interesting because it shows the effect of the terrible bombings by the allies on cities crowded with civilians: especially Frankfurt and Berlin. It was made on location in 1947 and therefore a testimony of the ruins. It was only released in Germay 8 years later. Professor Bernhardt is handled with a surprising respect by the American officers during the investigations. Robert Ryan as Robert Lindley seems to be more accurate. Jacques Tourneur develops the thriller with skill.

This movie is not comprehensible. Distortion of the personality is too difficult to implement in a movie and to construct a script because the different imagined personalities cannot be identified in the action. Especially the child at the end cannot be well placed into the action. Some things have no importance: the birth-date of the persons involved are not relevant. The woman in the beginning saying when the police-car is passing by:"there is a cold passing here" does give you a wrong direction of the story. The same with the story about the cemetery of the Indians, the names of the states. The only good thing in the movie are the confrontation of the lawyers, the doctor of psychiatry and the judge.

The script of Rick Ramage has so many turns and twists that the story looks like a mixture of real life and a religious novel. This gives the movie a certain quality. At the other hand one is surprised by some human reactions f.i. the reaction of William Hurt (Arthur Barett) at the end. The end is so strange. The actor Kenneth Branagh (father Michael McKinnon) gives a more value to the movie. I think that one must be a catholic to really understand the complexities of the movie involving the problem of couples not having children and the significance of marriage and above all the importance of purity for priests.

Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins) delivers us here a good sort of Dracula of modern times. This movie is going between England and the U.S. and has something of both countries. The script is good and Dan Curtis made a good job. I did not like the end of Willie (John Karlen). The story has some interesting twists who confirm the bestiality of the main character. The house of dark shadows is the house of dark souls as it is dominated by the tomb of Barnabas. Sometimes it is confusing to know where the action takes place, but that does not slow down the movie. The quest for love of Barnabas does not make of him a human being, it seems to accentuate his lust for blood.

How is it possible that no journalist or critic reminded us of the resemblance with that other better Flemish movie "Congo Express (1986)"? There are also some characters in congo Express put together without having really a relation to each other: Jean, (de Congolees), the workman, the two taxi-drivers, the street-singer, Roger, Guy, Lucienne and Gilbert. Of course, Tom Barman is a star and Luc Gubbels wasn't. That should not be a reason to pardon the flaws in the script (if there is a script) of Anyway the wind blows. The joke (the only one!) at the party about the ice in the refrigerator is taken from that great Flemish movie "De Witte (1934)" where De Witte is putting too much salt on the potatoes. Some accidents happen in the movie but there comes no explanation after. Tom Barman delivers us here a movie that is more like an experiment to watch at the television than a movie for the theatres. Another missed chance for Flemish Cinema.

This whirling movie looks more like a combination of music-clips at MTV than as a real movie. There is no real story and as the movie goes on you ask yourself: "What is going to happen?"; but nothing happens. The story around Eric Cloeck, the frustrated writer, is the only good thing. The other persons seem to have nothing in common: then why bring them together in a movie. With music you can make watchable the worst movie. When I open the tap and there comes water out with the music of Bach then most people will like to look at it but this is not a movie. The director should learn how to write a script for a movie of 100 minutes or more before starting to direct a movie.

The movie is slow and surprising. You cannot foresee the events and the ending. Brad Pitt is convincing. The dialogues are sober but efficient. The encounter of Joe in the dining room is well written. Is this a movie of our time? I think it is too spiritual to be commercial. Anyway, well tried by the producers, the actors and the director. The Enron case has now (dis)appeared and people look different at all forms of fraud; so this movie has really a message.

Emmanuèle Bernheim presents us here a script with so many riddles at the end that you think you have not understood the movie at all when you leave the theatre. There is no rhythm in this movie and it lacks something to be a thriller. It is neither a psychological study of a teen-age girl who is oversexed. Charlotte Rampling (who also played in the other filmscript by Bernheim: "Sous le sable (2000)") is a formidable actress who saves what she can in this movie. François Ozon has the chance to work with such actresses who can dress up the movie to something you like too see.

This movie reminds me of "Irréversible (2002)", another art-work movie with is a violent and radical approach of human nature. I did not like the movie but I cannot say that it is a bad movie, it is just special. I reminds me also of "Camping Cosmos (1996)" where a bunch of low-class figures are residents of a camp at the sea in Belgium. The same description of people living together, side by side against their wills and with all the confrontation of characters that do not match together. I also thought about the books by the French writer Emile Zola who was a writer of the style that is naturalism. I did not like the movie and I also do not like the people who are in it. They all seem so vulgar, without any basic good taste. One could ask the question why do they live, they all seem to be on this planet a a member of a big farce, forced to live against their will. Or you could say: the hell is on this world.

Hermann Sudermann, a real-born Prussian, wrote this book of which Benjamin Glazer made the script. Sudermann wrote among others also "The Song of Songs (1933)" with Marlene Dietrich and "Frau Sorge". He is really a writer about women and he can catch the soul of a woman as did T.S. Lawrence. Greta Garbo is superb in this movie and also is John Gilbert as Leo von Harden. Clarence Brown maintains a photography with winks or the twinkling of an eye that make us understood what is happening in the most secret part of their minds. The end of the movie is somewhat unexpected but is in fact already announced by the Holy Mass.

François Perier as the alcoholic Henri Coupeau is unsurpassed as sick man having his overdose and delirium by alcohol. Maria Shell as Gervaise is convincing as the poor woman working day and night for the drunken men she is having in her home and her little daughter! This movie should be shown to all people having drinking problems. As it is set in a different period (the end of the second Emperor Napoleon's reign) is has something universal. The general atmosphere of this epoch is however very accurate.

This movie has a strange mixture of ingredients: Kung Fu, Opera Science Fiction and Superman. In style it resembles "The Fifth Element" but it has not is approach of the ridicule. However the Frenchman, in the movie, the lover of Persephone (Monica Belluci) is a caricature... How he drinks wine! The battle scene with the hundred Smiths is exaggerated. The encounter with the Oracle is not very suspense. The planet Zion (of the Zionists?) is a strange, dark, planet made without taste. After all certainly not the best Sci-Fi ever made.

The Americans should keep in their mind that their civil war has costed the double of the casualties of all the other wars together! When you see this movie you understand why. Above all a lot of Confederate war-prisoners were shot by the unionists when they surrendered. The South was left empty and broken. Jake Roedel (Toby Maguire) is one of the outlaws of a little regiment of non-official fighters against the Union behind the enemy-lines. When they capture a town they commit atrocities and kill a lot of innocent civilians. The movie shows us the horror of every civil war at any time. Ang Lee is showing everything without hiding the reality.

David Benioff tells us the story of Monty (Edward Norton) in a typical New-York settlement with the strange distance between freedom without money and the feeling of having lost your life. Monty thinks he will not be capable to cope with the inhuman prisons. He is white and he is learned and above all he is not a drop-out. The Russian Mafia is well depicted and realistic. The scene in the dancing was too long. The environment of the stock market and the brookers is realistic and is in counterpoint with the college. At the end of the film there is a mystery but after all every one can decide for his destination.

Edward Anhalt, the writer of this movie was an experienced writer and he wrote more than 40 movies. Stanley kramer adapted the script to an interesting movie about the medical world; most details are right and Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum (dr. Lucas Marsh) deliver an outstanding performance. Dr. Marsh is Robert Mitchum and vice versa. A doctor like him is rare nowadays but they still exist. His passion for truth makes dr. Marsh vulnerable but at the same time it is also his strength.

This is a movie with no story, as it is a sequel, the story was in the first movie. The fighting-scene at the highway is splendid but has no sense. Who is fighting who? Why are the mrs Smith involved in the pursuit? The philosophical matter of choice is well put forward, it was already a big problem with the philosophers Leibniz and Malebranche. The Oracle says: you do not want the future, but the reason why. The confrontation with the maker of program of Neo is fascinating because this older man knows everything about the future of Zion. It is strange and a little bit racist that the bad guys in this movie are all whites (with the exception of Neo and Trinity) and the good guys are all coloured people.

Caroline Eliacheff cannot tell us the story of this typical French family with a past. When the French have no inspiration, they turn to the WW II. The story is not convincing and the actors just talk to say nothing. The plot is ridiculous and tante Line (Suzanne Flon) must tell us the story of her life at the end of the movie to reveal us the background of this family. The only interesting thing of this movie are the visits by the female political candidate to the apartments of the "hlm".

Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Jurgensen wrote this comedy about two women who feel a strong friendship for each other. They are clever enough to understand that friendship does not automatically mean sex.

They however feel very attracted to each other and they will find a solution for the problem of their friendship which gives them both so much happiness. Their surroundings will have to accept it even if they are Jewish-conservative. This comedy reminds me somewhat of Woody Allen but it lacks its bitterness. Everything seems smooth in this movie. No accidents, sickness or deaths and a splendid coherent family-life seem to be the most normal of all things even if her mother has to find out that their daughter is somewhat Lesbian...