Gangleri – filmreviews

Not a bad surprise. “Together” came for free with “The Girl With A Pearl Earring” and is not a bad film at all. Liu Xiaochun is a violin playing wonderchild, heavily supported by his father. When he has reached his top in his own small village and region, his father decides to take him to Beijing to send him to a real teacher. This does not entirely go as planned. Besides showing a violin playing boy, also a boy in puberty is portrayed and by this some unexpected friendships are formed. All in all “Together” is a nice Chinese drama.
-3-

I suppose you all saw this film, but in case you didn’t, it is about Valerie Solanas an extremist feminist with a temper. Trying to get her message spread, she gets involved in the group around Andy Warhol who eventually falls victim to her illusions. “I Shot Andy Warhol” is a nice film about some weird youth subcultures in New Yorks 60′ies and an insight in the mad mind of the shooter of Warhole who appears to me a little like a female en feminist Unabomber.
-3-

This film ‘aged’ a lot faster than I thought! I remember it being released and figured that I wanted to see it some time, so, five years later I did. I suppose you already know that a whole story is spun around the famous image of “Het meisje met de parel” as Vermeer named his painting. In the film the young working maid Griet comes to work for Johannes Vermeer who was a renowned painter while alive. With his work he supports his wife, ever growing amount of children, his mother and some workers and all in a rather big house. When he is captured by the beauty of his new working maid, he lets her help him painting and eventually paints herself to the big dislike of his wife. The events seem a little far-fetched to me, but the film has a nice atmosphere, setting and good acting, which makes the film a nice drama playing in times past.
-2.5-

“Hot Fuzz” is a British police comedy with a story reminding of “The Stepford Wives” and of course of load of “Police Academy” or “Naked Gun”, but with more subtle humour. Rather silly and not the best British humour that I know, but with the over-the-top ending and a good joke here and there not a bad watch.
-2-

I hate it when this happens, but I can’t find the original title of this film so/and I can’t find it on IMDb. In any case, Takahisa is supposedly one of the main directors in the so called Japanese “pink (eiga)” genre. I think this is my first encounter with it. The box promises something between soft porn and thriller with that Japanese twist, so I decided to give it a try. “Dirty Maria” begins promising with erotic / very soft porn scenes and a quite a lot of blood. The film develops more towards a twisted drama in which a man and a woman undertake a journey to a health resort high up in the mountains developing a strange relationship. “Dirty Maria” is interesting in the way that Japanese film differs notably from Western and this is a good example of that. The film is a little primitive and doesn’t keep the level it starts with, but overall this is definately not a bad watch. Perhaps I will try to get some other films from this director and/or the genre.
-2.5-

I thought that I picked two thrillers in my 30 seconds of last Friday, but “Long Lost Son” is just a standard drama about a woman who lost her son and finds him back 14 years later. It might just as well have been one of those Wednesday night ‘based on a true story’ TV films and indeed, IMDb has it listed as “TV”. Sorry about this one!
-2-

Yesterday I had about 30 seconds to choose two films for this weekend and that in a ‘normal’ video rental (not the arthouse specialised rental that I usually go to). This is the first one. “The Deaths Of Ian Stone”, a promising title, the story on the cover seemed interesting. The film starts very nicely as a dark and grim mystery / thriller / horror; good atmosphere; perhaps a little too ‘teenagy’. The main character has a weird habbit of dying and waking up again. About halfway it becomes a bit too clear why and the film slides towards a more fantasy-like film with some not too strong elements, storyline, credibility and even acting. Some gruesome scenes remain, so I guess in total this film can be labeled as “horror”. The story is quite original and come up with nicely, but could (should) have been worked out a little better. So, after a very promising start, this film suffers a bit from the last part. Not bad at all and an interesting watch though.
-2.5-