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Reviews
Apocalypto (2006)
Best movie of the year
This movie is excellent because of the photography, the storyline and its humanism. The relation between son and father is very well depicted and really moving. The battle scenes are great. The ritual for the killing is majestic! This is the first time I see a movie which is going so quickly, with its slow moments and with its accelerations. This is not really a horrific movie, the cruelty stays between the limits of human understanding. It is true that Maya's had also their offering rituals just like the Aztecs, but the Maya's took slaves for their offerings just as shown in the film. The costumes of the priests are really well done. so the movie is historically correct.
Ex Drummer (2007)
No future, no message!
The soundtrack of the movie is good, some dialogues are good too, but the humour does not break away, it remains on the surface as everything in this movie. The actors just read loudly their lines, they even are not capable of "introspection". When Van Dorpe looses his daughter and when he goes into a sanitarium this does not appear real, it is just some fiction. He has sorrow, but just how? The homosexuals in the movie are laughable. Dikke Lul (Jan Hammenecker) is good and the mother of Jan Verbeke (Bernadette Daman) with her whig is also good. The locations are good, this is really Ostend.
One of the boys, Koen De Geyter, is a rapist and a woman hater but I did not understand while there was blood in his room and why he saw the world upside down (we seem him that way). The rally could have been better. Not all people speak Ostend dialect! It is more a fusion of Brugs and the region. Dries Vanhegen is not really an opponent of these boys, he is more like one of them! When he wants to stand up against them then he is just brawling his text without personality. When he quarrels with the mother of Verbeek he is just nothing and she plays much better. In fact he is nothing more than a strange mixture of Arno and Herman Brusselmans himself.
At the end one feels that the director did not know how to bring a finish to the movie and the ending is just catastrophically bad. The other film in Ostend dialect "Friday Fishday" by Jan Bucquoy has more people in it speaking good Ostend dialect. By the way: Jan Bucquoy was the director who had an option for ex-drummer 10 years ago. ("Camping Cosmos" (1996) is also in Middelkerke and Ostend). The smell of rotten fish is current in both movies! As "ex-drummer" has no message, it could never become a "cult movie": the emptiness of life of those losers is not a reason to avoid every setting off of the characters.
Passage to Marseille (1944)
Not a good film
Michael Curtiz made this movie as a propaganda movie. Bogart is playing well, but the weak script does not give him the ability for a good performance. The scene on the boat where he is shooting at the German pilots and navigators is a shame: shoot at people without defense! At war, it happened, so it is realistic that it is in the film. It is also true that some crew members were loyal to the London government (which had to be build up) and that they refused to give their ships to the Vichy government. The dispute between the commanders (army, navy an air) is realistic and well done. The shooting of the plane is a remarkable battle scene. The end with the Handley-Page planes coming back is moving.
I, Robot (2004)
Asimov betrayed
Is this movie a SF or a cowboy-movie? This is the worst SF-movie I ever saw. The action scenes look like cowboy or ramboo shooting with pistols. This movie is a mixture of Blade Runner and a Western. Willy Smith does not understand what he says, neither do we. What is this movie all about? The end has no real meaning and is without inspiration. And all the publicity around this movie that is not worth it! Asimov, the author would not have liked this movie. Again, the producers wanted a movie that has the name of a SF-movie that is not a SF-movie but a sheer deployment of violence of bad taste. The story has no direction and does not satisfy.
Secret Window (2004)
What is this secret window?
This movie is certainly not Stephen King's best. I do not understand the meaning of the secret window; it must have something to do with the garden of his wife? Stephen king likes to write about psychopaths or persons with a multiple personality syndrome but here it does not work. There is the divorce which works on the mind of the main figure, a rather cool Johny Depp, but this can not explain everything. How can the police know who is the killer? I cannot say more because I do not want the reveal the ending but some people will be disappointed I guess. The main figure is confronted with his alter ego from the start, he knocks at his door. Do we have to understand that all this was just imagination? The reference to Mississippi is there all the way with the strange accent of Shooter. The movie remembers me of the other movie with Nicholson directed by Stanley Kubrick; but Kubrick is a master and Stephen King is not able of turning his story into an interesting movie.
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Overrated
This movie is simply overrated. For specialists in Kung-Fu movies it even touches the absolute ridicule. I think Europeans will not appreciate this movie which is made in pure cinematographic language without references to literature or history. The scene with the outbreak of Uma out of the grave is physically impossible because of the weight-pressure of the earth. You simply cannot get out. Daryl Hanah (Elle)is superb and looks younger than Uma! The fighting scenes are an absolute childification of the great Eastern fighting-movies. I think that the director has seen too much movies and read not enough serious books. And all this hype about this movie is making me ask the question: what is a good movie?
Fermeture de l'usine Renault à Vilvoorde (La vie sexuelle des Belges, 3e partie) (1999)
Masterwork of editing
This movie is a splendid lesson in "montage alterné" like the French say and like Serguei Eisenstein did in his "Le cuirassé Potemkine (1925)" and "Octobre (1927)". Schweitzer, the general director, is a man used like a puppet to shoot at and his remarkable "No" reveals his stubbornness to deploy their construction of the Megane to Moscow. The music is good and well-chosen and the funny action at the end is really entertaining without unnecessary violence. This is the type of movie that the channels should show! The workers and different left-wing politicians are interviewed and they can give their commentary and reveal their feelings. This movie is an intriguing documentary of one of the greatest strikes in recent European history.
Camping Cosmos (1996)
The Sexual Life of the Belgians: why different?
This second part of "The Sexual Life of the Belgians" is more like a satire upon people on a holidays-campsite. British working-class on a camping ground would never react like the Belgians do in this movie. Lolo Ferrari as madame Vandeputte is very funny. The scene with the song-contest too. One wonders why people on their holidays behave so strange; because they are far away from their home, their friends and relatives? The sexual aberrations of the protagonists are a curiosity and do make us reflect on the Dutroux-case. But the film has a moral statement: sex without love has no value. The other Belgian items are well placed, such as there are: beer, French(=Belgian) frites and soccer. Indeed one is well aware of the universal message of the movie which is also a defense of the naturalness of youth in the person of the daughter of the organiser of cultural events (Jean-Henri Compère). Culture and pleasure can they go together when people only think about doing nothing during their vacations?