Gandalf-64 Reviews

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

All became silent...all were in awe....all loved.....

[10/10 · 19 March 2001]

Why did I not write a comment on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" before. Why?...because I would not know what to say.

I have seen it seven times now...Let us see if I can tell something about it now....

The best romantic story I have ever seen....Shakespeare would have enjoyed the development between Li Mu Bai and Shu Lien. This is top drama & top tragedy, set in a culture where people don't easily show their emotions. Michelle Yeoh was not nominated for an Oscar, but should have been and should have won.....

The most natural Martial Arts movie I have ever seen. And I have seen hundreds of them in the seventies and eighties. In all the martial arts were the most important piece of the movie, even in the Bruce Lee ones. The story was made up around the martial art scenes. In "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" we see some breath taking action that is clearly a part of the whole story.

That is why this movie is not strictly a Martial Arts movie, but a brilliant fantasy tale within the Chinese culture during the Han dynasty.

What can be said of the characters....I have seen no weak performances at all. But, again, the performance of Michelle Yeoh as Shu Lien has literally taken my breath away......I do not know the superlatives to describe her performance.

What can be said of the movie......All became silent, all were in awe....all loved......

10/10

Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970)

One "movie" you can relax with

[7/10 · 19 March 2001]

Strictly speaking this is of course not a movie, but a documentary and a live recording of Elvis Presley in Vegas.

No, I never was an Elvis fan. In the seventies Elvis was almost history and I went for Uriah Heep and other loud loud bands. I did not buy Elvis records and I hardly watched his movies, saw his concerts etc.

Then this movie appears on the main screens. My curiosity wins...I am older now, my musical taste is much broader. So, I wanted to see it. I wanted to see the movie, to see what kind of guy Elvis was, or at least catch a glimpse of who he was. And I was pleasantly surprised.

Then came the recording of his live concerts in Vegas in 1970. I sat, watched, listened, enjoyed....and almost became an Elvis fan myself...wooohhhh.......

8/10

Pay It Forward (2000)

By far the best movie I have seen this year and last

[9/10 · 8 February 2001]

The idea is so simple. Do something good to three people and then these three people do something real good to three each. Just calculate how soon the world would be reached with this simple plan.

But in the movie realism never leaves the screen. For the boy who thought of the idea (Haley Joel Osment in another splendid, Oscar deserving role) it does not work out. Worse even, the working out of his own plan will cost him his life.

The stories behind the main characters are so realistic and so brilliantly set to screen, that at times the movie shocks you and scares you. Yes, this is happening in the world. Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt both deserve Oscars as well for a brilliant performance of very difficult characters.

Mimi Leder has done it again (the last movie directed by her was Deep Impact). There are no heroes here who save the world. There are people here who struggle with their past and present lives, but in the struggle find a way to do good to others, even if that means sacrificing themselves.

The way all this is presented on screen is so real, so life as it is, that it will always touch you, whoever you are and whatever you are in this world.

Thank you Mimi Leder, thank you Joel Osment, thank you Kevin Spacey and thank you Helen Hunt, for making this the best movie I have seen in the last few years. Just makes you wonder why this movie is away from the cinemas after only two weeks...........

jan

October Sky (1999)

Wauwwww...

[9/10 · 17 December 1999]

I have always loved movies that are based on true stories, so I was naturally curious about this one.

I don't need to use a whole lot of words to say what I thought of this movie. Only one word will suffice: Wauwwww....

This movie is so real that there is no place for overdrawn romanticism, no love scenes to make it more tasteful. This is about four boys. living in a small mining town in the States who start experimenting with rockets, after one of them has seen the Sputnik in the skies orbiting the world. There are no overdone characters, no special effects, nothing of that kind. Everything is just so real, so real....

Brilliant!!! 10 out of 10 from me.

East Is East (1999)

Superb image of cultural clash

[6/10 · 10 December 1999]

Finally I managed to go and watch this movie. Most of the comments I had read about it were very good, so that made me very interested.

It is all about a mixed British/Pakistani family of which the father is a very believing Islamic person. Islamic culture states that the father is the head of the family and decides what happens even to the level of marriages of children. Islam can have arranged marriages, in which the children have no influence of their own. And of course Islam states that the father decides on the family affairs and everybody else has to obey.

British culture in the seventies was of course very different. We had just had the sexual revolution or were still in the middle of it. People, if they married, married for love and not because the fathers arranged the marriage. Children learned to think for themselves to the point of rebelling against the parents if necessary.

Those are the two scenes in this family. The children have grown up in British culture and adapted brilliantly to it (i.e. they like pork meat, disco, alcohol and wanting to make decide for themselves), but the father wants to put Islamic principles on his whole family when it comes to religion and arranged marriages. This of course creates major conflicts and that is how the movie starts. The oldest son walking out of an arranged marriage on the wedding day. In Islam this is a disgrace to the family and the father is ultimately responsible.

In the end the conflict heats up so much that the father has no other option than to use violence against the only child that wants to live the life the father wants him to live and against his western wife, brilliantly portrayed by Linda Basset. However, although the violence is quite severe (black eyes, wounds etc), Ella in the end sticks to her husband and stands up for him against her own children. The end of the movie is a romantic open ending. The audience will have to decide.

During the movie, I continuously had to be alert of what I was thinking. As a Western European person I was appalled with the way the father wanted to force his principles on his family, especially his sons (in Islam the sons are much more important to a father than the daughters), from the circumcision of the youngest to the violent reaction against the other sons when he had arranged their marriages and they did not like it and showed him very clearly. My thought: "Hay, we live in a free country"... When thinking of my (very small) knowledge of Islam and Asian cultures, however, I could not help and sympathize with this father, who really wants the best for his children (the best according to his own cultural background) and gets to the point of despair when his children appear to think completely different (Western/British).

The movie was a comedy, but one with a very serious underlying theme, the clash between two completely different cultures in one family.

Random Hearts (1999)

Very intense, emotional, but very beautiful

[6/10 · 10 December 1999]

Just trying to help bringing things in the balance, which won't work anyway when I see all the negative reactions.

Random Hearts is a movie with a very human, but complex theme. Two people meeting each other after their loved ones have died in a plane crash. Then they discover that both of them have had an affair. Coincidence, the affair of Dutch Van den Broeck's wife was with the husband of congress member Kay Chandler. Both character are brilliantly performed by Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas. They have very different ways in dealing with this issue.

Van den Broeck, being a policeman, who never suspected that his wife was having an affair (the movie starts with her inviting him to bed), just wants to know why... ("When was the last time that she spoke the truth to me") Kay Chandler wants to get rid of the thought as soon as possible and tries to concentrate on her job, being elected to congress again, and her daughter ("She must not know what her father has done"). They meet each other in Dutch's search for the truth.

While going through a very difficult time of accepting and dealing with their partner's death and adultery, both Key and Dutch grow towards each other. This is pictured very intensely and beautifully. Kay states is beautifully in the interview she gives in the hospital when Dutch has bee shot, "We are friends, but because of what we have gone through together, we are now more than friends, we are survivors".

There is no real why for the adultery, as Dutch discovers when listening to the voice-mail of the telephone in the apartment that was used for the adultery, when Peyton Van den Broeck says, "Why are we doing what we are doing?".

I don't see why people cannot just enjoy this very intense movie and they think it is a dull and horrible movie. OK, the end was a bit disappointing, but that was probably because I was under the impression that I was watching a romance and romances must have a certain ending. I think, however, psychological drama, may be a more fitting description of this movie.

One thing is for sure: I came into the cinema when the movie started and when the movie ended I went out of the cinema again. In between I was so taken by the beauty of the movie and the intenseness of the development in the two main characters that I just hadn't noticed how much time had gone by.

Dreaming of Joseph Lees (1999)

4.9 average??????? Not by my judgment!!!

[6/10 · 3 December 1999]

When I go to the movie (having an 8 weeks unlimited movies pass) I usually have to plan. I can't be out too late, because I have to get home by bus. But I still would want to watch two movies, if possible. Yesterday the possibility was there in taking "Dreaming of Joseph Lees" as a second movie. I had to run from one screen to the other to be in time, but I managed. entering the screen that played "Dreaming of Joseph Lees", I had the whole cinema to myself. Then having watched the movie I wondered why that was and why the average is only 4.9 for this movie. I am almost giving double figures for this movie.

Some reasons maybe: - It is about very common people. - It is not sensational at all. No real violence, no real sex, etc. - Too much complex psychology. - It is too British. - The story is too simple.

The story is about a woman who by her own acting runs into the dilemma of the feeling of responsibility for Harry (with whom she lives together for a while), a psychopathically jealous partner, even jealous of a book that Eva is reading, and her love from childhood Joseph Lees, who in an explosion loses a leg. Samantha Morton (never heard of her before) plays Eva brilliantly and Lee Ross does a very good job on the complex character of Harry, the farmer. Then there is Janie, sister of Eva and only wanting her sister to be happy. And Eva doesn't really see until the end, but she is happiest with Joseph Lees, who enters her life again at a wedding.

The end of the movie: Get your handkerchiefs out for a brilliant climax....

My feelings went from "I don't know what kind of a movie this is going to be, probably not a very good one" (4.9 average) to "What a beautiful movie". It is a shame that so few people seem to appreciate this movie....And the cinema streamed empty...I was going home.

Runaway Bride (1999)

If you don't expect it to be Notting Hill, it is really a nice movie

[6/10 · 11 October 1999]

One thing I had planned from the beginning. I am not going to Runaway bride and think of Notting Hill all the time. The comparison between the two movies stops at Romantic Comedy and Julia Roberts. Notting Hill is British, a completely different set of humor. Runaway Bride is American, straightforward, predictable etc.

Take all this into account and you're bound for a very nice evening of enjoyment. The plot of Runaway Bride is indeed fairly simple, but some in depth psychological research is not missed. The actors, at least the main ones Roberts and Gere are fit for each other, but I knew that since Pretty Woman.

Indeed, Runaway Bride is not Notting Hill, and I am glad for it, because it would never have been half as good to me if it were a kind of Notting Hill 2, or Pretty Woman 2 indeed. An eight out of ten from me. I have enjoyed myself very much! and that is what movies is about, isn't it.

Gandalf

Notting Hill (1999)

Can't get enough of it

[8/10 · 20 August 1999]

I will keep it short. Tonight I went to see it for the sixth time since it has come out and for the third time in three weeks. This movie is costing me a lot of money, but it is worth every penny I spend on it. Brilliant characters, main and support. Julia Roberts just shows how you can play a perfect cast, even if you do not have that much dialog. The other characters are so real...Everytime I go to a cinema or pass one and I think of the movies playing...Star Wars, Austin Powers 2, The Matrix....I end up going to Notting Hill again.