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arnoldko
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Phantom (2013)
Videotrack to an inner conversation
For me, a film works if it manages to silence my relentless need for analysis and makes me to just go with the flow. This movie did the trick.
It is about a girl going to bed, after an unfulfilling days work, having a dream / an inner conversation about her lonely life.
(Many reviewers here belief the guy you see her with to be an actual character, but I think he is just a phantom friend. If you listen to what she says, you'll notice she yearns for someone to be around, to listen to her.)
The cinematographic deal of this film is that the sound track is detached from the video track. It's the sound track that is in the lead, and the video track takes what normally is the role of the sound track: a supporting role. The sound track mainly is this inner conversation, and sometimes some electronic music.
Now, what really did the trick for me was that the well formulated spoken word was in Japanese, and the subtitles in English, so that as a Dutchman I had to deal with three languages. That clogged my mind, opening it up to the images and the sounds.
Staatsgevaarlijk (2005)
In the Rotterdam harbor an oil tanker explodes. Is it Muslim terrorism?
In the Rotterdam harbor an oil tanker explodes. In this post-9/11 era, everybody immediately assumes it's a terrorist's attack. The next morning a young Moroccon and his blond girlfriend are lifted from their bed by the police. The girlfriend gets out of custody soon, thanks to her lawyer-dad, and the long search for her friend and for the truth starts. The movie fits in the current wave of movies about the tensions in the Dutch multi-cultural society. It's a good one in its genre, I think. Good acting, good pace, nice plot (though a bit predictable). In any other genre it would be classified as crafty (at best), but the political and social subject matter makes it interesting. The movie was shot before the murder of Theo van Gogh, which is remarkable because after the murder the general public became aware of terrorist cells, with young Moroccons participating, focusing on Dutch soil. Theo van Gogh, BTW, who earlier that year made a very good movie ("Cool") in the same genre.
Torowisko (1999)
Life is not easy on women in the Polish countryside.
For a railroad man it must be painful to see all the careless walking about in the yard, where much of the action in this movie is going on. Two young women, one of them employed by the Polish railways, face the challenges of the awkward periods between school and husband, between country life and living the big life, between Warsaw Pact's Poland and European Union's Poland. The movie failed to catch me, however.
Starship Troopers (1997)
anti-american satire
Paul Verhoeven, a Dutchman, is known in Holland for his socio-critical movies. Watching his "Turks Fruit" or "Soldaat van Oranje" is painful for any Dutch, in the way he paints us. After moving to Hollywood, Starship Troopers is maybe his best effort of applying his way of movie-making to his new surroundings. It is quite interesting to see how almost only non-American viewers seem to see the underlying themes of the movie. The self-awareness of Americans don't seem to be up to Dutch standards, which explains the limited success of Paul's efforts. Confronted with american-style glorification of militarism, 90210-arian actors and downright intolerance and racism, his public jumps into denial. Perhaps he has seen this coming and has aimed at a European public, ignoring for example american double-standards when painting a gender-blind society. It's a great film, and movies like Alien(s) become quite ridiculous and shallow by comparison.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Not worth watching.
This is a typical Spielberg movie. The basis is formed by a layer of american chauvinism, on which lies cheap, californian intellectualism, and the top is formed by multi-million dollars of special effects. The movie is pretentious and hollow, and commercial in the way that it pushes a couple of the buttons of turn-of-the-century american obsessions: family values, fear of the chaos of life and violence. It's quite understanding therefore that so many americans regard it as a good movie, as it strengthens emotions already there, instead of disrupting the mind, as any art should (in my opinion). As a war movie, it's mediocre. The agony of war is captured much better in films like Full Metal Jacket, Stalingrad and Das Boot. The sad thing is that it is the nationalism that is promoted in this movie (the whole movie is framed by a waving flag) that is so often the cause of wars.
Xích lô (1995)
Fascinating movie about corruption of innocence.
On first sight maybe just another nouveau-violence movie, but actually much more than that. It's about the coming of age of three characters: a riksja-rider, his sister and a poet/pimp/ganster. The innocent riksja rider is forced to join a gang, his sister transforms from water-carrier to some sort of geisha (somehow staying virgin), and the poet who "moves" them suffers from a mental crisis. All this against the decor of a busy, and quite noisy, Ho-Chi-Min City. Every now and then the story is put in a frame by seemingly uncorrelated shots of o.a. posing children. Fluids, like blood, paint and water, are present in almost every scene. Perhaps it was a (failed) attempt to soften the censors, but any western influence that shows up in the movie has a negative aura. And then there is the funny shot of a us-army helicopter that is carried by a low-loader through a busy crossing and that falls side-ways on the street.
It's 120 minutes of fascinating cinema, and one of the very few movies I give my 10.
Tikhie stranitsy (1994)
Great film. Poetic and dreamy.
A film made after a poem (or was it a book?). Distracting elements like a plot or oral conversation are omitted. You experience the film as a moving, impressionistic painting. It's poetic and dreamy. The sound track is fabulous. It's like being a full hour on the break of sleep and awareness. My favorite film.