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Reviews
L'enfant (2005)
Jérémie Renier is brilliant
I don't think movies should have a lot of dialogue in them to work for the audience. This is another fine example of how more films should be made: an exciting story, emotional, surprising and marvellous acting by the lead characters. A lot of Hollywood productions have a good script with powerful dialogues but most of the time the actors tend to screw it up because they are missing the ability to make the right body gestures on the right moment ... you know that final touch to make it really convincing! This is a fine example of how it needs to be done. And I think a lot of actors who are overrated anyway like Colin Farrell (I'm just saying the first name that comes up) can learn a lesson or two from this young man Jérémie Renier.
We also know director Jean-Pierre Dardenne from La Promesse and Le Fils, very rewarding movies. They too are not much in words, but double in body acting. It is something different in style but I really dig it and I think I might just keep up with Dardenne's work in the future.
Do yourself a favour and watch this story about a young man who is living of thievery and recovery from horrible mistakes but is still able to keep a clean heart for his beloved ones.
(No offence to the Colin Farrell fans out there - I loved him in Phone Booth - but sometimes I get a little tired of him).
Mississippi Burning (1988)
decent film but Oscar worthy?
The film has been nominated in 1989 for 7 Oscars and it won the Oscar for best cinematography. It also won 13 other awards and was nominated for 10.
!! I don't understand that it was nominated for best film and Die Hard, a 1988 blockbuster wasn't - now that we're talking cop hero movies. !!
Anyway, the only other movie from the hand of director Alan Parker that I remember watching was "The Life of David Gale" and to those out there who haven't seen it yet I strongly recommend not to witness this one and only Spacey nightmare because you will be sorry!
Now let's focus on the good aspects. I still gave Mississippi burning a 6 because there are some powerful lines in the movie and the acting by Gene Hackman is outstanding. Frances McDormand looks really hot as usual (cfr. the major's secretary in Miller's Crossing - aaauwwwww aaauw aauw aaaaaaauuuuww babyyyyy !!!!).
Another Ku Klux Klan tale seemed to me rather unoriginal at the beginning but there were some nice twists in the film which made it well worthy to be keeping track of what would happen next. I checked the movie on IMDb before I zapped to the right channel (as always) to have a look at the rating (7,5). I was so surprised by a promising cast (Willem Dafoe - Platoon, American Psycho, Brad Dourif - One flew over the cuckoos nest, Lee Ermey - Full Metal Jacket) and a whole list of "official" appreciations. However it turned out to be not what I expected, which was obviously too much.
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
the snakes looked too animated ....
... which made it kind of special and fun sometimes. There were also a couple of cool lines but not the ones coming from Jackson. When he said "enough is enough, I've had it with these mother.... snakes on this mother.... plane" I almost vomitted, because it's so typical him in every goddamn movie he contributes to: that perplex stare and those upset words every time again over and over ... it was his thing for Pulp Fiction but does he really need to do the character in every movie? Just makes me sick. Otherwise he's an OK actor.
Also a couple of things didn't really make sense. I know now that male snakes become very violent when they sense feromones, but what I didn't know was that they would be able to fly an airplane. Also at the end Samuel L Jackson shoots a window in the plane, then he calmly turns around and pulls the cord that is attached to door of the cockpit. All the remaining snakes miraculously get sucked outside. Jackson and the other guy get into the cockpit and are still communicating (normally because of the pressure inside you wouldn't be able to hear anything). Finally the guy, who is a champ at some flight simulator game on playstation 2, and who had never been into a real cockpit before, sits down, knows his way around the main board and lands the plane like an expert.
In real life, if 400 poisonous snakes drugged with feromones would be set free on an airplane, the thing would be coming down in about 5 minutes.
Still I thought the movie was pretty entertaining. It certainly wasn't boring, too cliché or badly played by the actors ... 6/10
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
cool and sharp, very sharp - but too long
"And... The hat. That ffffffucking hat. How many times haven't I told you, don't wear that fffucking hat here? How many?" - "The customers wear hats." - "Yeah well I'm not the boss of the customers, I'm the boss of you. And I'm tellin' you to leave that sh*t kicker hat at home!"
When I saw the first Kill Bill, I said to myself this is something new. But what can you expect from a cineast like Tarantino right? However I thought the fighting scenes were too long and the dialogues could have been much better. That's what the second volume was all about: more spaghetti western, less Shaolin monkey sh*t. And this was mainly because Michael Madsen en Daryl Hannah had a huge roll in it in comparison to volume 1. Also there was lots of funny stuff in it, f.e. the dialogue in the beginning between Michael Madsen and Larry Bishop, the Pai Mai priest ... One thing bothered me in a "gargantuan" way: the pauses between every spoken line, especially by Carradine. They were simply too long and that's why I rated this movie 7 instead of 8. Other than that great flick!
Casino (1995)
"Be a man, don't be a f*cking pimp!"
What can you expect when Rob Deniro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone, James Woods and Martin Scorsese put their heads together to make something for the viewers? Right, a masterpiece. Flawless, beautiful, bad ... brilliant is what Casino is. Las Vegas, the late Seventies, early Eighties, a place in the middle of nowhere set up only to make money for the big bosses and the fast hustlers. Just like Deniro puts it: the players don't stand a chance. Of course with lots of money comes lots of trouble ... and lots of killing. Joe Pesci is Nicky Santorro, a rough-and-ready but nevertheless smart bully with his own gang ready to hit the jackpot in Vegas by robbing from every booky he can get his hands on and stealing jewelery from the rich gamblers. Paragraphs of words that you wouldn't say in the presence of your parents come and go like little children in a candy store. It's the dialogues and the way they are thrown in your face that makes this movie so impressive, really. If you you like strong dialogues, genius and hysterical acting and are totally in for the maffia way of life on screen then you should get a hold of this one because you will be blown away, I guarantee you. Goodfellas was fantastic, but in my opinion this one is even better.
Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
Seven years in Tibet took me about seven years
Being one of those overrated movies and in my opinion the worst Brad Pitt movie I've seen so far, I'm going to take a dump right now and start thinking what to write next because I cannot remember one scene of this desert nightmare.
It was that much of a disappointment I guess. No it wasn't that bad, but still not passing the shoplifter movie making exam. I remember dramedy, chasing scenes and arguing about sharing stuff but I could be wrong. The other actor David Thewlis really disappointed not to mention the rest of the cast and most of all I found this film to be so bloody boring.
With four hits in a row it was probably meant to be going downhill at some point. I'm guessing Brad's energy for acting was still stuck with Se7en, Twelve Monkeys, Sleepers and The Devil's Own.
Memento (2000)
how exhausting watching this !
I just don't understand what it is that makes this movie so popular, especially with male viewers, I mean 8.6? Come on, what is that?! ...
Leonard suffers from short-term memory loss and tracks back using notes and body parts to find the man who killed his wife. On his journey he encounters a number of people who he has to be able to assess at first sight because of his deficiency.
The acting by Guy Pearce is very convincing and even appealing but the story however is most of the time way too irritating because you constantly have to backtrack yourself in order to completely understand what's going on. I like flashbacks in movies but a film that turns out to be one big flashback by itself may be a little too demanding for me. I guess this is just not my kind of entertainment ...
The Family Man (2000)
big cast + poor script = fast money
Red Rock West, Kiss of Death, Leaving Las Vegas(!), The Rock, Con Air(!), Face/Off(!), 8MM(!), Gone in 60 seconds ... These were all great Nicholas Cage films with entertaining action and a story that kept you wide awake. This piece of crap however turned out to be a huge waste of my time and precious money. After watching Bringing out the dead which I also found rather disappointing I thought it couldn't get any worse with a great actor like that ... but I was so wrong. I'm guessing this was just another fast production film with a poor script, not that the acting by Cage was below average but after all it kinda was when you look back at this headach aggravating Hollywoodish dildo piece of garbage production. But it had to come down to this at some point. To quote a line from The Devil's Advocate: nobody wins 'em all ;-).
I will not give up on you Little Junior Brown.
K-PAX (2001)
"I travel light"
Kevin Spacey plays a man who is a patient at a psychiatric hospital in New York City and who claims to be from another planet. In the research they did in several mental institutions, in order to make this movie, one of the questions Spacey would ask the staff was if they had anybody there who believed they come from another planet. It seemed that this belief was not uncommon because their answer would be there were like a dozen of them believers. Jeff Bridges plays the psychiatrist, whose job it is to try to determin whether he is a patient who is suffering from some kind of amnesia, whether he's had some kind of trauma, whether he's a multiple personality, delusional, exceptional ... On some level the film is about what happens when you encounter a stranger who has some rather extraordinary effect on all the other people around him. It is also a mystery where it keeps going back and forth between this question of "is he?" or "isn't he?", "could he be?", "possibly?", "no not?". It manages to walk this fine line right up to the end of the film.
When doctors or people of science are looking at the facts up front and there's nothing to indicate the thing that the're worried about, for instance suppose someone goes in and they suffer from extreme headachs all the time and you're trying to find some evidence of that but there's nothing to prove that there should be this thing. It turns the situation very mysterious. At first, when Prot says he is an alien from the planet K-PAX, they attribute it to to some kind of psychosis or memory loss, but there's nothing to indicate that. So it rouses the doctors up and it peeks their curiosity because he has the facts of the world where he comes from.
This movie is not about science fiction but about the science of humanity. What do we believe is true and what don't we believe is true? How do we begin to understand things that we don't see and things we don't comprehend? How do we categorize things in order to feel safe?
Atanarjuat (2001)
magnificent story about love and hate
Welcome to my top 20 of all time best movies Atanar Juat. Here's a picture that will leave no one untouched. It tells the story of two Eskimo brothers, Atanar and Amaqjuaq, who learned to look out for each other all the time. When Atanar falls in love with Atuat, who was supposed to marry Oki, things start to get hot around the tribe's residence and the two of them have a traditional fight to decide who will be her future husband. Some years later, Atanar passes Oki's tribe as a married man and future father. The local family suggests he takes another woman along on his journey, Oki's sister Puja (with the Eskimo's a man is allowed to marry two women). The two of them get along fine and Atanar decides to marry her too. But then a family problem rises when Atanar catches his older brother doing it with his second wife. At first Puja's stay with the others is unwanted so she runs back to her family in tears and tells them about this incident. When Oki hears about this he becomes furious and decides to kill Atanar and his brother.
Great acting and a splendid insight into Inuit traditions and moral values regarding life and death, love and hate. Do yourself a favour and get this one!
Buitenspel (2005)
"Off-side"
Buitenspel is a movie about a 12 year old boy who is ambitious to become a Red Devil for the national soccer team of Belgium. After his father, played by Filip Peeters, dies of a heart attack Gilles gets to deal with a lot of emotions in his "new" life: mourning the loss of his father who happened to be his biggest fan and best friend, having to deal with his mother's new partner,... Also Gilles' soccer future gets threatened by a serious foot injury which causes him to having to make a very important decision.
Being a soccer fanatic in school at the same age as the main character I found this picture touching. The acting was great, especially from Joke Devynck and Filip Peeters, and I thought the camera work was pretty good too considering we're talking Belgian film making here.
On the overall I think Jan Verheyen did a pretty good job with this movie. Still Team Spirit en Alles moet weg had that special ingredient this one was missing. In my opinion the story could have been worked out a lot better by using other characters in an understory and I also felt the acting by Ilya Van Malderghem wasn't too satisfying. Sometimes I could just see where a scene was going from the beginning on. I'm not saying I could forecast the ending of the movie because I was expecting to see Gilles turning out to be a "Rode Duivel -15", but there were lots of times where I could have just get a drink without having to pause the film. It was often predictable is what I'm saying... The main character Gilles was played by someone who had no experience at all in movie acting. Maybe Jan Verheyen should have picked a kid that had already been there and wasn't so good at soccer instead. There were a couple of scenes where you could really see that Ilya isn't much of a performer in regard to expressing emotions, f.e. the scene where his mother (Devynck) reminds him his father is dead because of all the psychotic experiences he's having. Also his mother calls him "venteke" which is an Antwerp dialect for "my little guy" for about 563 times in the movie which got a little on my nerves.
Nevertheless there were a lot of aspects I loved about this movie: the story is very likable, the music is fulfilling and I also enjoyed watching Filip Peeters on the screen. Any movie with him would have to be ridiculously catastrophic to be rated under 5 by me. This is a movie worth watching whether you live in Belgium or anywhere else. Emotion is guaranteed!
Bowfinger (1999)
F****** Hilarious !
I just loooooved this movie because it is so funny from beginning to end.
My favorite part was where Bowfinger tells his main crew he persuaded Jerry Renfro (Downing Jr) to start shooting the film Chubby Rain, which he actually didn't. They all start shouting and jumping up with excitement. Steve Martin joins them in their happiness - starts jumping up too - and then all the sudden realizes he's f*cked and he has to put it all together himself, without Kit Ramsey knowing about his part of the acting. THE LOOK ON HIS FACE WAS PRICELESS!!!!!! I rewinded this part about 56 times and I had to laugh so hard every time, I needed to reattach my balls afterwards.
Just the whole performance of Steve Martin is great and hysterical. His enthusiasm for making the work of his life and the way he encourages his crew in the most ridiculous ways ... so funny.
I gave it a 10 just for that one scene...
Forrest Gump (1994)
tremendous acting, beautiful surrealistic story
This movie is definitely in my top ten list. Every scene makes you want to have a taste of the next one already without even knowing what will happen in that previous one. It's surrealistic because so many great events happen to the main character his life almost turns into a modern fairy tale. It's funny because it's meaningful and honest and true. The story is inspiring and once you've seen it you won't ever forget it because it's simply a masterpiece. When I saw Forrest Gump for the first time I couldn't think of doing anything else. Because normally I get a drink, roll a cigarette or get something to eat when I watch at home, but with this one I was so fascinated it just flew me toward the end on a cloud of movie wonder and top acting. Thank you Robert Zemeckis for directing this work of art. Thank you Gary Sinise, Robin Wright Penn, Mykelti Williamson, Sally Field ... for amazing performances . Thank you Tom Hanks for being Forrest Gump and making millions of people happy and moved because this is one of the best!