Change Your Image
BrianPatrix
Reviews
Microsoap (1998)
Lucy Evans
the amazing thing is that this show is virtually absent on the net!!! Where are all the Microsoap pages? I mean apparently this show is everywhere, Canada, France, Holland, Germany, Belgium. But not a lot of net-exposure. Oh well, not even (C)BBC deems it worthy of showing the credits in full .... grrrr!
Take heed of Lucy Evans as Felicity. She's really good as overenergetic little bratty perky sister
Once and Again (1999)
It's nice but ...
... it is typical WASPish crappy emotional melodrama. I mean, it's very whitey-whitey. Not a bad show, but taking itself way too seriously. For all those people who wrote that it is such a 'natural' show and so 'real-life', the actors are way too pretty and polished to be natural. Who would believe that mothers with two teenage children can look like that? With maybe the exception of Grace Manning, who shows that an actress CAN be successful, even if you have fat butt. But then again, she too, is way too pretty to be real.
(For those of you who don't know, WASP=white anglo-saxon protestant)
Dark City (1998)
Undiscovered Gem
Now this is a great movie, i dare to say it's better than Blade Runner! just check the other comments, there's not a single one which is negative! It's the atmosphere, the intelligent story (which is important for Europeans), the adequate special effects , everything! Rent this one! I mean, who are these guys that made this movie? Give them a bigger budget, please!!
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
For Softies! ;-)
This a soft, soft movie. The music is soft, the photography is soft, the (male) characters are soft and the camera is often in soft focus. This is a good thing, don't get me wrong. The Virgin Suicides managed to suprise me, but not in a abrupt way (it's soft!) the story line was off of the beaten track, just as the dialogues. Definite plusses are: the five daughters, painfully pretty and acting very well; as well as the musical score by Air ("Playground Love" i think, is the 'lead' track). So it scores good on the predictability criterium, but less so on the balancing of characters. Dunst as Lux Lisbon is too much on the foreground, we don't see or get to know the other sisters at all. And it's a little bit ridiculous to get an 18-year old actress (Dunst) to play the role of an 14-year old girl. And the voice-over is also too much present, somewhat less would have been nice. Worth the trouble.
Rocket Gibraltar (1988)
It's about atmosphere
This movie invoked in me a funny kind of feeling. What feeling exactly, or why I don't know, but it was with a definite contentment that I watched it. Just go and rent it, you'll see. Maybe it was the time that I watched it, Sunday afternoon, or the fact that I felt good for other reasons, but the interaction between Lancaster and Culkin is so nice and touching ('cuse the sappy language) that it makes you feel good with the world. The movie just has the right atmosphere and incomparable good acting by Culkin (8 years at the time) especially.
I don't want to go into the story line or that kind of crap, just go and see it.
The Exotic House of Wax (1997)
Getting out of the crap zone
Pretty good for its genre, the actresses are at least pretty, the actors are not offendingly ugly. Story's okay, not too good but what do you expect? Not worse than your regular police/sitcom episode. And the girls are extremely(-ish) well built. Enjoy!
Stikkfrí (1997)
Seriousness with a smile
Simply a good movie. Story: a 10 year-old girl (Bergthora Aradottir as 'Sofie') realises that her father is not abroad, as her mother has always told her, but simply has left her mother and lives with another woman. She decides to look him up and confront him, with the help from her best friend (Freydis Kristofersdottir as 'Yrsa'). This leads to complications such as the kidnapping of Sofie's half-sister. This movie is exciting, the story doesn't leave you bungling somewhere. Every time you think, where do we go from here?, the director takes you along some path which seems logical but not predictable. The two main characters play their parts exceedingly well, with Aradottir as the doubting and sensitive one yearning for recognition and Kristofersdottir as the more streetwise(-ish) tomboy. Real emotions are displayed and the drama is never too thick. It's quite amazing how well these children act. There's more balance between Aradottir and Kristofersdottir than for example in a comparable film like "Selma and Johanna" (Sweden, 1997), where it is sort of lacking. The movie is quite realistic, it is only unrealistic in the fact that it IS a movie, for children at that. Only at the end one gets the feeling that they ran out money or time.
Het 14e kippetje (1998)
A typical case of "Mwah"
This movie poses an interesting socio-philosophical question: Does 'successful integration' imply that filmmakers from an ethnic minority make the same mediocre stuff as the ethnic majority filmmakers? Hany Abu-Assad is completely integrated in Dutch society in this respect. Not that "Kippetje" is a really bad movie, but after "Zusje" we all expected (hoped) that the average Dutch movie would have been better. Not so.
The story itself has potential: Party guests are waiting for a young couple who are going to married the next day. While waiting they tell stories about the couple and we see flashbacks of how it all came about. However, the story is not developed properly, just hasn't got 'it'. While waiting, the party guests show boredom and general uneasiness with each other and the situation. Their despair has not the effect of amusing the audience. It makes the audience desperate as well. And their boredom makes us bored too. If a story is slow, like this one it should have good directing and acting. I'm afraid it lacks this, both are so-so. The movie disappoints severely on the technical aspects as well, actors who are not sync, strange editing, shaky image.
The dialogues are sometimes very funny and intelligent, but to hear the high-pitching, nails-on-the-blackboard screeching voice of Dirk Zeelenberg immediately at the start of the movie is not very pleasant, one thinks that this must be a joke. But alas, all hope disappears when we realise that he is not the narrator but one of the main characters which is horrifying. Either Abu-Assad has a staggeringly different ear than most people, or he didn't really understand the meaning of "Singing in the Rain".
The now-and-then brilliant dialogues cannot hide the fact that this a case of a job not so well done.