Reviews

A basic Romeo and Juliet story about two teenagers from different sides of the river, who use each other for their own gains, but end up falling in love. A simple story, told many tomes before, but what's interesting are the values movie, that are opposite to that of a possible Anglosaxon version of the same story.

Germany has a fairly egalitarian society and attaches great importance to well-being as opposed to material gain, and that seeps through. The billionare parents of Isi are obsessed with her getting a college or university degree and oppose her wish to train as a chef at a prestigious course in New York, which of course would have seemed a wonderful idea to American billionaire parents. And Ossi, the working class boxer, needs the money not to buy flashy cars or clothes, but to pay of the loans his mother has taken out to invest in her gas station for an electric charging station. How frugal, environmentally conscious and sensible!

In an American version the uncouth boxer would have been taken to the billionaire world, playing the clash of civilisations in that atmosphere, where he would bring some swagger to be finally tamed and put in a suit. In this movie the billionare girl starts working in the run down burger bar, and learns to appreciate life with little money and not even ideals.

This accumulates in the moment when Isi confronts Ossi about his life, his lack of intellectual ambition, his dire circumstances. He replies: our relationship can never work, because I never felt my life as something of lesser value, but you make me feel that way.

And that makes the final point: his life is not of lesser value. The lack of money is a problem, but that's more of a societal problem of division and opportunity. (In the beginning is a scene where the fairly intelligent Ossi learns that in his school, on the wrong side of the tracks, he'll needs his fists more than his brains.) Money does not equal happiness nor personal development, circumstances do.

So Isi buys the burger bar and plans to work there, with Ossi following his boxing ambitions which are quite clearly nonsense. She wants to build up their life from the ground, and doesn't want to climb as high as her mother, who was of humble beginnings herself.

The side story of Ossi's granddad adapting to life outside of prison by becoming a rapper is hilarious, and deliciously politically incorrect. Both leads are charming and adequate, and the story has enough unexpected turns to avoid the cliches. Germany is not America, und das ist auch gut so.

One of the best things about watching a good Agatha Christie drama, is the sport to look for the murderer in the right direction, which in my case, is almost never correct. Even remembering that always something from the past, an impersonation, a secret (family)bond or a smart slight of hand plays a part, it's always something else that turns out to have happened.

In this case, there is some subtle hinting to nuns, who might have been dressed up family members, but the dress up was of another kind. And the beauty is, that the first scene, which seemed quite oddly acted, WAS in fact oddly acted in the drama itself.

So big bonus points for the plotting; but what makes this episode of the series remarkable are the production values (great castle, furniture, good lighting and terrific music) and the acting. David Suchet IS Poirot with no doubt whatsoever, and uses all the nuances available to him for this ondimensional yet complex character. Michael Fassbender is stunnigly handsome and gives unexpected depth to the troubled nephew, who falls in love with his idealistic though clumsy niece, a charming Lucy Punch. Geraldine James as Georges mother makes every second count as she realizes she knows something but is unsure what.

Monica Dolan makes the acting class complete, as the mousey maid who dreams of a teashop, and grabs the opportunity in a savage way. It is to her credit that we understand her character's motives, and are unsure about her mental state: is she really gaga, or just very cunning? And that for a tea shop!

Sometimes it's harder to watch a movie that had a lot of potential that didn't materialize, than just watch a bad movie.

I am a sucker for melancholic movies about student life, the first uneasy steps into adulthood, and this movie is set in Amsterdam so it reminds me even more of my own student days, and the title alone could bring me to tears: the loneliness of those years is my most beautiful memory as well as the saddest.

The story has some good starting points: three young students befriend each other, and make their way in the small world of fraternity, and all three have a difficult relationship with their fathers. In the meantime they navigate their sexual experiments and have to deal with the consequences. The main character has to learn some lessons, about life and the value of friendship, so he can stop getting it wrong. Unfortunately the script is uneven, ridden with clichés, and the dialogues are either too improvised or too old fashioned. The fathers are cardboard figures, the reasons for the sons' grievances sound contrived and the mothers are an afterthought. A gay guy from a conservative background with an unaccepting father is a valid story, but already told so often that it needed a new twist; his suicide is just another box to be ticked, and seems necessary only so the hero can feel the guilt of not having been a better friend. And why the hero has a bad relationship with his father is never explained.

The acting is unremarkable in most scenes, but as soon as any real emotion is required, the three actors fall into first year drama school improv. The lines don't help, either too explicit or too textbook, and sometimes you feel just how happy they must have been when the scene was over. The gay guy is the only one with some depth, but relies to much on his resigned frown in half of his scenes.

The director has used light symbolism in a lot of his work, but here he overplays. During the movie actors pose as their characters as for imagined photos, a formal break that serves no real purpose. Rain, sun and leaves of trees are used elaborately to underline emotions, and in each scene there is at least one object, move or framing that tries to convey something more. Mise-en-scene is used to beautify the movie, but gets in the way of the story.

And then there are the standards of Dutch movies since the seventies: unnatural swearing ('Godverdomme, klootzak!') and gratuitous sex scenes. Both can easily be avoided, so why put them in?

All in all, the makers were the ones getting it wrong. The movie could have done with a much better script, more rehearsals, better casting of some roles and a director with a steadier hand who dared to ditch 'ideas'. It left me with the thought of the movie that could have been, and returned me to my own memories, of when was a young student and the city seemed deserted.

Jane Fonda once said she would only play in movies that had relevance, and with this one she does herself proud.

Landed as a film that concerns itself with the aging population in Europe, it is often paralleled with the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. But that British film is set on aging with courtesy (strangers getting on with each other) this French one focuses on aging with love.

A set of old friends become aware of the fact that if your health leaves you, one is left in an institution where the last days of your life feel like a school camp. They decide, spontaneously, in the spirit of their 60's rebel years, to beat the system, and live together, taking care of each other. A boy hired to walk the dogs, turns out to be an ethnologist, and he starts observing them, in order to determine 'how Europe deals with its elderly'.

Every one of the five friends has longings and flaws, and the movie keeps from judging them which is quite beautiful. For example, one is a womanizer, in his last years resorting to the care of prostitutes, which is nearly his undoing, but never is his behavior portrayed as evil, all human flaws are first of all human.

Acting always shows tension between vanity and shamelessness. These five actors have reached an age in which the vanity has changed in to its meaning: vain. All five give a depth and humor and realism to each role that astounds. (Maybe Fonda is the only one that demanded wardrobe approval, and is sometimes dressed as a twenty year old.) A good film has three things: a message, a good story and great acting. This one scores high on those three points: the message, so profound and so topical, is never lampooned or annoying. The story is well crafted and keeps the right balance between humor and drama, often using two at the same time. (An inundation is both comical and tragic.) And as mentioned before, the acting is great: no one is trying to be an Actor, or reaching for an Award, I assume the must love their characters after the filming.

Please, see this movie, as it makes a profound point on the future of us all, how to live, how to take care of our last years. And thank the actors for being old, not trying to be young, but old, old.

Sometimes I want to see a film not for the story or the cinematographic value, but to gain insight in the society of a period and location, and that is the case with Quartet. Paris in the twenties of the 20th century interests me for the audacity, the freedom, the excess, and the seeds that were sown for the development in arts, fashion and philosophy in the years after the second world war, when Paris became touchstone in those areas.

In Quartet Marija, a girl from the French West Indies tries to find her way in Paris after her stateless lover is jailed for communist sympathies. She encounters a British female painter and her husband, the Heidlers, who give her food and shelter, and even as she has her doubts, her lover encourages her to stay with them. Soon it becomes clear that the couple has an agreement, by which the husband is allowed to have affairs with young girls like Marija. The painter makes these allowances out of love and the knowledge she would otherwise lose her husband.

The "game" however, as they call it, turns sour as nobody seems to be aware of their true feelings, and when the husband gets free, he and Marija get back together, leaving the Heidlers to assume their old life, probably looking for a new girl.

Biggest problem for the perhaps otherwise entertaining plot, is the casting of Isabelle Adjani as Marija. Marija is said to be a rough, barely civilized beauty from a French colony, and Heidler tells her time and again that she is from a "whole different world" and has no understanding of their society. However, Adjani looks like every other Parisian beauty in the film, and behaves as if she is at a British boarding school. This discord might be a story device, but that is unlikely for it makes the story not more interesting, but more dull. There is no contrast between the couple and Marija and her husband, all seem to belong to the Parisian artistic clique perfectly. Alan Bates as the husband is quite bland, and not a feverish, dangerous, charismatic man that one would expect Mrs. Heidler to love so deeply. Maggie Smith as Mrs. Heidler is her usual condescending, slightly sarcastic self, hiding a vulnerable soul, which she shows wonderfully in the scene where she breaks down and sobs boundlessly.

The scenes in the cabarets and cafés could have been expanded for they provide such a great backdrop, and show glimpse of the naughty nightlife that makes the period so interesting.

There are two thing great in this movie. Richard Gere's eyelids and his blue overcoat. Both have allure and timeless beauty.

Gere uses these features to personify a bad guy. Or not really a bad guy... Who knows. The theme seems to be ambiguity, having the audience wonder which side to take, but is ambiguous about it.

Miller, a millionaire, or even billionaire, has troubles. He owes 400 million to a friend to cover up a loss after a bad investment. The friend wants his money back and the only way to accomplish this, is by selling his company, with the covered up loss, to an investor for a large amount. This Mr Mayfield stays out of reach to the growing frustration of Miller. To complicate things, Miller has a car accident with his lover, a mediocre French artist with bad teeth, which leaves her dead. He flees the site of the crash, calls Billy, the son of a former employee, to pick him up.

He is in a mess because of professional failure, he gets in more mess because of emotional failure, and now creates even more mess because of moral failure. His attorney tells him to confess, but he decides the hassle is too dangerous for the all important sale of his firm. Why oh why would we care for this man? The answers are unclear: is he a bad investor? Is he a uncaring husband? Is he a lousy father? His daughter loves him, but finds out his fraud. In a conversation in the park there seems to be some message about responsibility and the corruption of money, but again: seems to be. The problem is that everything stays as superficial as possible.

Miller escapes narrowly his fate, by some bluff when he finally confronts Mayfield and closes the deal. As by magic he knows how to annihilate the evidence that would have Billy surely jailed, which turns out to be fabricated by a discouraged policeman. Bad man gets away with bad things but only because other people are bad as well? Luckily we still have his wife who has a scene left where she tells him she knows EVERYTHING and confronts him. What does she want? A contract. (O God, another one.) Because he corrupted their daughter. The scene is badly written and played out quite annoyingly. Strangely enough, we never know if he concedes, although he appears with his wife and daughter on the charity event that both have been bugging him about the whole two hours.

The message could be: money corrupts, but to have a movie bear such a cliché is insulting. But I cannot find another one. Everything seems to be arbitrary. Ah, that's almost the title. Now I understand EVERYTHING.

This is a disturbing film, but perhaps not in the way Michael Haneke intended. Bad things happen, and the way people deal with those determine if we as an audience sympathize with them. We want characters to make the right decisions, behave well, be good people.

The bad thing in this beautifully shot movie is a double attack that hits the retired piano teacher played by Emanuelle Riva, and makes the end of her life a sad affair. Though they have lived a good life, with art and family life and live in a spacious Parisian apartment, the couple acts as if the greatest injustice has been inflicted on them. The woman, even healthy not really sympathetic for her strict composure, becomes unbearable, not appreciating when a former student, now a world renowned pianist, visits them and even plays her favorite piece of music. She acts moody, demanding, victimized. During all this I wanted to shout to them: yes, this is life, this is what happens when you age, you get ill, incapacitated, and then you DIE! But they keep behaving as if it's a great burden for them, so rich and beautiful and cultural, with such a difficult daughter (who they raised themselves to become this way), and even to deal with a second nurse that treats the Mrs. too harsh. A second nurse! There are people in the same situation that are not nursed at all in this world, even in Europe, even in Paris!

The most perverted part is when the burden becomes too much: the man kills his wife. An easy way out if there was one, telling the audience: it may be hard for a few minutes but it saves a lot of trouble, discomfort and grief in the long run. His consequent suicide, leaving the house as it is, taking no precautions, is even more selfish and inconsiderate, and is a sign of amour, but only for himself and his wife, and not for his fellow men who are left with the mess these so important people leave.

Such amounts of egotism are seldom displayed, but I doubt if that was the point Haneke was making, for that the characterizations are too veracious and unironic.

'You need a strategy!' is the advice that Pat's therapist gives him to master his bipolar disorder and the violent outbursts that come with it. This is good advice, and something that the writer/director should have taken himself, as it seems to be the thing this movie lacks.

First, this is not a comedy. There are no jokes,no humorous situations, and the witty quips are seldom spot on. The movie unfolds as a dramatic story of a psychiatric patient's reintegration in society after his treatment. A valuable cause that is played out pleasurably understated, and confronts the audience with the tension between theory and practice, and how families and patients cope. It helps that Pat is played by the hunky Bradley Cooper who oozes good will, for some decisions Pat makes border on dangerous ground.

Enter Jennifer Lawrence as Tiffany, a fellow patient, struggling with the loss of her husband; okay, two people in their craziness against the world, that is a theme. But just as the movie lingers on, seemingly about the daily life of these people and their families, we are confronted with some sidelines, and without a warning we are just a few plot twists away from a dance therapy center for troubled youth, and could the movie be renamed Step Up 5 or Dirty Dancing 3.

Then we get the relapse (on a very sunny and warm day for December), and a crazy bet that is such an obvious plot device to 'wrap it all up' that the rest of the movie is as predictable as it gets, abandoning the theme, changing from perspective (to Tiffany's) and all secondary characters join in the victory and the get together of the two leads, when suddenly it is suggested that Tiffany wasn't crazy at all and just played crazy to gain Pat's trust to get closer to him. Oh what?

It unnerves me that Jennifer Lawrence has received an Academy Award for this role of a crazy, non-crazy, lying, non-lying woman, so very unsympathetic and so badly written. Robert de Niro displays all the laziness he gets away with, culminating in an atrociously acted angry scene, exemplary for first year drama students. Cooper forgets in the last quarter of the film that he is a psychiatric patient, becoming the sensible, down to earth, perfect specimen of a man as by magic.

Not a comedy, not a drama and certainly not a dance movie (with such an important dancing scene one would hope they hired actors who could actually dance a little bit and not strut around like vegetables on sleeping meds). A very mediocre effort on all accounts.

The pretentious title containing the too hip ampersand which will no doubt be passé in a few months, leaving an unpronounceable name, directs the movie immediately to the corner of embarrassments, and sadly, it stays there. The book on which the movie is based is called Fremdkörper. A perfectly suitable title so this choice is the first of many that puzzles.

Then we have the story of two people, leaving behind their unfulfilled lives to head to Bruxelles, the capital of the European bureaucracy where nobody stays forever and everybody always is on the move. They fall in love instantly and move in together. The books of Oscar van den Boogaard are packed with people who feel deeply and voice those feelings and therefore his characters are often not very believable. In a film we need to believe the characters, and in this case the director gives us very little reason. Both are unhappy in their respective lives. For the girl, 24 and still living in a hotel with an overbearing mother, leaving is almost a logical step. However, Eduard, the male lead is obviously a very successful law expert with a life full of friends in Berlin that he leaves behind. His sister doesn't understand his depart, and so doesn't the public. There must have been a terrible experience, a lost love, treason, something to make him leave for Bruxelles and fall immediately in love with a woman even though he is gay. (And can get laid anytime because he is a very hot man with a very large and beautiful house.) But neither in the beginning, nor in the course of the film do we get any explanation, and this absence gives his dramatic choices an arbitrary streak and makes his emotional outburst in the bath a parody.

The girl, Edurne, is modeled on the 'crazy funny girl', like an Audrey Hepburn in Funny Girl or Monique van de Ven in Turkish Delight, and she is no doubt cast for her resemblance to Penelope Cruz. However, she has nor the acting abilities, nor the script to make Edurne a round character. Her ridiculous demands for promises to never leave her, don't make her sympathetic just a demanding lunatic.

Some relief comes when Teun Luijkx as Richard joins the menage, and with a few lines he establishes his character as someone who really needs love. But at the same time he makes a puzzling transition in clothes: from a shabby mover/dealer to a sharply dressed hipster.

Happiness doesn't last, but that Wisdom comes at the end of this movie, which is curious because when things do not last, is when the drama comes, and that is here exactly one and a half scene. And again, nothing explained and nothing felt by the audience: they are just making notes. "Ah, relationship over." The last shot is a curious exotic landscape where Richard walks. Is there a message, a pointer or is this poetic justice? One fears that the production got some money from Catalonia, for the scene is superfluous at least.

Then there are some clichés (drunk scene, Maria Callas for dramatic effect, ending in the Atomium) and some errors (Edurnes first day in Bruxelles her apartment is fully furnished with even dirty dishes, Ich Bin Wie Du from Marianne Rosenberg being a Dutch hit for her and not a German one (that's Er Gehört Zu Mir)) and technical problems: lots of long shots out of focus.

What is left is a very immature, puzzled and pretentious film which leaves this viewer quite embarrassed.

In a relatively small country like The Netherlands it is difficult to produce movies that take place in a different time and place than present day Holland. The amount of money needed to recreate the past or suggest a foreign landscape is impossible to recoup with even a highly successful Dutch movie. A solution often found is to take the filming to Eastern Europe, where ancient locations are easily found and labor is cheap.

For this movie the production took to Italy, to give the imaginary country of Katoren a late medieval and Mediterranean feel. For the most part this works: the villages and buildings have a certain charm, and sometimes an almost alien atmosphere. Combined with the creation of a bureaucratic dictatorship and outskirts of the country which resemble Austria, a Dutch high tower suburb and an American desert, it is familiar and strange at the same time, exactly the way this parable of a hero who wants to become king of his country by solving five tasks needs to be. The writer of the book on which the film is based wanted to show children the serious problems of society (environmental pollution, religious division) and their possible solutions by abstracting them as well as making them tangible. Together with the acting these are the assets of this movie.

However, Italy is also a weak point. The Italian extras, needed to fill the cities and town squares as habitants of Katoren, often don't seem to know in what kind of movie they're in, what they're supposed to do and some, perhaps in a leap of ambition to European stardom, act like they're doing Sophocles. The building posing as the regal palace is covered in green mold. The ministerial chamber is a derelict room with dust on the floor. To keep believing in the script one needs to close one's eyes to these shortcomings, because the reality of filming is seeping through relentlessly.

The script is another foible. A Dutch broadcaster co-produced, and sometimes you wonder if you're watching a marathon of television episodes: each task is introduced with a journey, an acquaintance and the slow unfolding of the assignment in the same careful pacing. The solution sometimes is painstakingly easy (the Pantaar suddenly deciding to sacrifice himself), and Stach seems to thrive more on luck than wisdom or even drive to make Katoren a better place. When the apprentice journalist asks him why he wants to be king, he answers: 'To be cheered by the crowds.' An honest answer but not one to expect from a hero.

The ending is being stretched to its limits, and when Stach finally becomes the King, by landing in a pile of pillows and a muddle of confused Italian extras, the movie is suddenly over. Two hours feel like almost three, and a greater efficiency in storytelling would have benefited the rhythm of the movie as well as the use of locations and props that now seem to be expensively prepared for unnecessary scenes.

"No pets or children" sounds a guideline for filmmakers, and for screenwriters it should be: "no creative problems or stage careers as a theme". Only a biopic can portray stage scenes and popularity on a level that is believable, just because that is what the audience knows about the subject: yes, this star was popular.

The theme of this movie is arguably a love story, but with the title Music and Lyrics, the creative process of writing is at the center of the tale. From the start the love affair of the ex-POP! singer Hugh Grant and the wannabe writer Drew Barrymore follows the road of the romantic comedy, albeit that they need to "write the music and lyrics of their love themselves". There we have the first problem: any depiction of a creative process becomes tiresome, regardless of the many dead pan jokes Hugh Grant gets to make. Watching people try to rhyme or look for a song idea is watching... people try to rhyme or look for a song idea. It is like watching people work.

Then we have the performances of the movies superstar Cora, which should be valued somewhere between Britney and Christina: but how on earth do you simulate a big, expensive, explosive pop concert without doing exactly that: staging a big, expensive, explosive concert? Well, you do it slightly cheaper, smaller and, not so explosive. And it shows. Yes, there is a large Buddha from where Cora emerges, but would Britney or Christina put up a whole show with just one large Buddha on stage? Ten different Buddhas maybe, and a pyramid, and a temple and a burning sky scraper. The audience knows what a superstar concert looks like, and is not easily convinced.

The actors give it their best shot, and some even succeed, but all in all this is a perfect example for how a screenwriter best avoids depicting fictional popular concerts, and showing the process of creativity. They're implausible and tiresome, and both traits are ill- fated for a commercial movie, which a rom-com, with all its rules and clichés, is.

Traditional film theory advises this: all things that happen in a movie need to support the overall story, and the overall story bears a theme. To stray from this advise is a choice that needs to be argued. The writer might need a star-vehicle, some locations are just to beautiful not to use or she might think: "All traditional theory is an arbitrary imposition of the white male heterosexual so we will liberate the queer black masses by ignoring it". Any argument is valid.

But what if such argument is missing? What if no valid reason to not use the traditional formula is found? Then the movie is likely to end up as a seemingly arbitrary succession of scenes, trying to be a story but hopelessly failing.

In this dramatic picture we witness a set of stories that resemble other movies: the handicapped person trying to make peace with her deformation, the single father finding new ways to raise his son and learn responsibility, the low class family trying its best to succeed in life, the illegal fight club where men discharge their fear and loss of power. But none of these stories is connected with a theme or with the other stories. They are just arbitrary "things that happen".

As it is a French film, we get lots of sunsets, wind through the trees, scenes in kitchens, and people having sex or going to the toilet. All is beautifully shot, and well acted. Mathias Schoenaerts is brilliant.

But there is no logic in the acts of the characters. The acts are borrowed acts: seen in other stories, where they had meaning. Here they are idle shots, loose cannons. The dramatic ending only establishes that: a dramatic ending. We even get the "interesting facts voice-over", tying a symbolic knot. And where do we tie it? In Poland. Why? There is no answer but: just because.

And that is the answer from someone who is out of arguments, and has nothing left to say. Was there something to say to begin with? Maybe, but it never made the screen.

An ambitious young person has to deal with an arrogant, strict, unhappy, over-ambitious and mean boss and deal with her every whim. Sound familiar? The Proposal is in a way a copy of The Devil Wears Prada, be it that instead of a mother-daughter relationship, this one has romantic possibilities.

Sandra Bullock, however is no Streep, and that's what makes this movie so much less entertaining to watch. To play mean is not to be mean, and instead of deploying all the wonderful techniques that the lady with the three academy awards has to her disposal, Bullock just is a bitchy whiner. She never really is scary or powerful. She seems reluctant to be perceived as mean by the audience, and that takes any venom out of her remarks or actions.

Ryan Reynolds does not make up for that lack of credibility by never being really terrified. Bullock's character just tires him.

The plot has enough twists and lines to make the movie take flight, but it doesn't happen. The grandma could be the one that makes us laugh, but Betty White is no Streep either and just plays the clown, which is almost never funny. If you create a scene where an old lady thanks the Godmother in the woods dressed in a rug, the actress needs to take that ritual as serious as possible. Not act as if she is dressing up for a family play.

Comedy is the hardest form of acting, and this movie is proof of that.

This movie seems to have all it takes. The story outlines itself clearly, the characters are designed with purpose and there were surely made many sketches to get to this animated scenery.

But everybody involved took another road and never did those roads meet.

The questions that torment me are so simple that I doubt if anyone directed this movie. It is clueless all over.

Why is the story set in 1914? There is no obvious reason nor a subtle one. It could be as easily set in 1950 or 1850 or 1500 so why not choose 2001? The only thing you end up with are steam-engined submarines (??) and high-hatted scientists. There must be some flaw in the story that forced the writers to this era, but I couldn't find it, as there are so many flaws that this solution is plain ridiculous.

Why do they go out on the mission in a freighter? Why take hundreds of sailors in a fake nautilus to have them killed off in the first incident that occurs? What's the point the storytellers are making? Why is there not a single stroke of wonder in any of the scientists when the arrive in the underworld? They put up camp, take their steam-engined (!) vehicles and decide to take the roads that they find laid out for them. When they find an ancient pillar of enormous size they blow it up. When Milo arrives in Atlantis he wants to leave as soon as possible because the blind king orders him to. When they get to stay one night, instead of making notes or interviewing or doing research, he hops around with the girl taking almost everything for granted.

If the Atlantians have lived for hundreds of years without any contact to the outer world, why do they have special clothes to deter aliens? How can they speak French and English? And how did they lose the ability to read? Do they really need a bespectacled American to decipher the signs that they engraved themselves? The motor fish laying around are unused because the Atlantians just did not find the way to put their hand and crystal together in the right place? They lived hundred of years of stupidity? When the girl is called by the crystal, why does she return to the surface? Why does she get captured by the evil guys so easily? She carries the power of a whole civilization, surely she would be untouchable.

Why do the bad accomplices leave their leader so easily in about... uh... twelve seconds? "Ow, where about to do something bad, let's change sides and instead of sneakily overthrowing the Bad Man, we decide to stay in Atlantis with Milo, so were dead already."

Making a fantasy or science fiction movie asks of the writer a serious attempt to make the story as logical as possible. Impossible or unlikely happenings are only accepted by the viewer if they're explained well and within a logical environment. Here both sides are cripple: things are not explained and the real world is not logical. The story can be scored with the most dramatic Champions League music, any empathy, sympathy, drama is absent.

The animation is adequate, but the designs are often plain awful. Sometimes it looks more like a He-man Masters of the Universe-episode than something by Disney. I never have seen anyone with square fingertips, but here everybody has them.

The characters are terribly cliché, with some racial and cultural stereotypes mentioned by other reviewers. The jokes are not funny.

In the end it seems that there must have been an idea somewhere but it went from hand to hand and everybody had a say, and decisions were made and in the end... Not a lost empire, but a lost film.

The genius of Noel Coward is combining fluent dialogue with a complete acknowledgement of the characters and their feelings: he takes them seriously. The witty remarks are there to uncover a deeper, thoroughly unwitty truth. He shows us the morals, but never becomes a moralist.

In this beautifully crafted script, there is no wit. The woman in the bar at the train station and her admirer have the snappy dialogue to juxtapose the tender, almost sentimental conversations of the heroine and her hero. But they mirror the troubled love of Laura and Alec: they can have a relationship starting any minute if they only would acknowledge their love. Alec and Laura utter their love, but can't have a relationship: there is simply too much at stake.

Anyone who has been in love, fiercely, relentlessly, knows what Laura and Alec are going through. Their falling in love is not the bored housewife with the flirty doctor. It's finding something you didn't know were looking for, and as you find it you don't understand how you ever could do without it. They don't fall in love because they are unhappy in their present lives. They fall in love because they understand each other perfectly, and more important, feel understood by the other person. It is beautiful irony that the aspects of their personalities that make it impossible to continue the affair are the ones that they appreciate the most. The fact that Laura is so haunted by the affair is why Alec loves her. The gallantry of leaving for Africa to give them both their freedom back, is why Laura is so attracted to Alec. For modern audiences the thought might rise: just leave both your spouses and get on with it. But their moral standard, not to throw away something good for something better, not making five or six people unhappy for your own careless happiness, is something to strive for, even now.

The fact that their affair is presented as something that imprisons them instead of a liberation maybe the only moralistic point in this movie. They kiss, multiple times, and probably would have gone further had Alec's friend not returned too early.

The techniques that director David Lean uses are highly symbolic but they're realistic at the same time. It keeps par with Coward dialogue, equally symbolic. As with the last lines of Laura's husband who says: you were far off in that dream, but I'm glad you came back. That sentence sums up the movie, the affair, the relationship with her husband. But for him it's something he says to comfort his wife.

Love is never easy, but as hard as it's presented here with such a tender pen, makes you realise why it's the most important thing in the world.

When filming a book, one has the possibility to correct the flaws of the story to make it fit the two hours attention span that the audience needs to have. Reading a book for two weeks, immersing yourself in another world, is a different feeling than watching a story unfold in front of your eyes.

Sadly no one bothered with this book to make it into a believable script. First of all there is a never ending list of invented names: kings, kingdoms, cities, knights, princes... After the first minute you don't know where you are, whom you're watching and even in which country you are. Confusion is created. That goes on with the next scene in which the aspiring knight Tiuri just has to sit quiet in a chapel for one night. Not an impossible task. But with the first knock on the door and a voice whispering for help, he opens it and has failed the test. No internal struggle, no struggle with the other aspiring knights, just plain stupid behaviour.

And after this unbelievable act, there follow many. If the main character, which of course needs to be the one with whom the audience identifies itself, takes these kind of inexplicable decisions, he never gets any compassion. And he is not the only one with strange behaviour. The scoundrels who rob him, let him choose between a ring an a horse, and set him free after he has made his choice! Then there are the characterizations. No character gets any depth. No one is tormented by doubt. Every thought is said out loud. The "writer" helps Tiuri "because strange things are happening in the country". Even the red knight that decides not to kill Tiuri after he has saved him from falling of the cliff, tells him as if it is a material issue instead of a moral one: "Now I cannot kill you anymore." (-Why, is his sword stolen? -No, it's something moral but I'm not sure what it is.) The friendship that can evolve between characters who need each other is missed here completely. Tiuri and Piak, his, yes, what? Helper? He never helps him. His companion? They never share anything. They just ride next to one another through the endless woods.

The letter in the end turns out to be nothing that couldn't have been told to the king via other ways. The way that the treason is stated by the king: "He wanted to murder him!" is plain painful. We are watching a movie for eight year olds! (And even they might be bored.) To cast not really beautiful people is not a crime, as long as they either can act well or have a devastating charisma. The role of Tiuri, a boy we have to watch almost the full two hours, is played by the not so handsome Yannick van de Velde and he neither can act very well nor has any charisma of sorts. He is like a spoilt, artistic kid from Amsterdam, complete with pretentious brawl. His hair is strangely yellow although the whole film the evil people are looking for a boy "with brown hair".

The rest of the casting is made up of TV-actors, never taking the time to deliver the lines, being used to the "just say them"-regime. With a good script you can get away with that. With this crappy writing you can not. (Only exceptions are Jeroen Willems as the Lord of the Toll and the first Broeder Martijn.) To take this script, these actors and head for eastern Europe with all the medieval rental costumes of Holland ("voor al uw feesten en partijen"- no costume seems to be made especially for this movie) plus the ugliest wigs ever made borders on hubris. Let's hope this director, these producers get punished for that.

I am not a fan of the Thiel/Boerne Tatort-team. The fact that one of them is not a investigator but a pathologist drives the scripts to always implicate him personally in the case and that feels somewhat forced. And their "comic" exchanges, the simple, straightforward Thiele against the complicated and refined Boerne, are a cliché in itself.

But this episode plays down those flaws. Boerne is implicated naturally as it is his student "corps" that has something to do with an ancient murder of a fellow student. And his "refined and complicated" academic surroundings are set off nicely to the normal but sincere troubles of kommisar Thiele who has his father in the hospital.

They both are tempted to be bribed, but both are strong enough to withstand the temptation, although the audience understands their doubt.

The supporting roles are magnificently created by some fine actors. No one is just evil or just good. A fine example of Tatort.

Watching this movie, made just 5 years after the invention of sound in the movies, is watching the invention of movie making itself.

With only 5 years experience in scripts for "talkies", this script is outstanding. It is not a stage play on celluloid, the dialogue is wonderfully emotive and not descriptive. The tone is light but not too light. There is enough space between the word and the role to create a character.

What is more remarkable is the absence of sentiment. A lot of movies from that era "create" the moment for the audience: the music decides when the viewer needs to be scared, to be touched, to cry. Here there is no such forced reaction. And yet the order of the events keeps us interested, keeps us with both lead characters and their emotions.

The funny thing is that it is a comedy, often referred to as the first screwball comedy, but it has no jokes. There are witty lines, of course, but no "laugh or I'll shoot"-remarks. The funniest bits are when Claudette Colbert proves how to get a free ride by showing her leg and the driver who comments on everything by making a song of it. Those moments could be clichés now, but at the time they were original and fresh, and even to a 21st century audience, used to so many comic situations, those scenes are still funny and touching .

The sympathy and understanding that this movie show for humans in general gives the viewer the same sympathy and understanding. How not to be touched by the scene in the bus where people are singing a song they all know, and where strangers take turns singing the different verses. To see such community feeling in an era that was struck by poverty and despair is heartwarming.

Both leads achieve to be likable and believable just by portraying a round character. A film that celebrates humanity, extraordinarily simple but touchingly effective, and that in 1934!

A historic movie can be made with four intentions: to tell an exciting story, to teach history, to analyze the present by referring to the past or to shed a new light on history as it is told: deconstructing myths.

After watching Marie Antoinette is tend to believe that Sofia Coppola's intention was the latter, with the third intention as a side effect.

The movie clearly enters the discussion about the historic Marie Antoinette, who is, especially in France, seen as a reckless and spoilt half-spy, interfering with politics and who was executed rightfully after the French revolution. That last event is not even shown, but the director expects the viewer to know the end, as it is with more "things one knows about Marie Antoinette". It is even made explicit when the role itself refers to her most famous remark: "Let them eat cake!" "I never said that!" states Kirsten Dunst.

But what exactly is this new light that Coppola wishes to shine on the subject? It never becomes clear, maybe because the script is torn between staying true to history and showing a woman's coming of age.

It could have been a girl thrown into the cruel protocol of a highly organized court. But Marie Antoinette, though subjected to awful habits, never really suffers. The problem with getting pregnant from a almost impotent king troubles her and her mother, but before it becomes a life-threatening burden, history breaks in and a child is born.

To be laughed at by the rest of the court is never sketched as intolerable or the reason for her to take flight into sugar rushes, a make believe rural village or into the arms of a passing Swedish officer. She just does as all the others do at this court of leisure and endless parties.

By use of music Coppola tries to link that lifestyle to the lifestyles of the party people of today: the young and rich attending to their hairstyles, clothes, where to be with whom without one thought for the real problems of the world.

But even that analogy is never stretched to its limits: Marie Antoinette takes an interest in arts, reads Rousseau and genuinely enjoys the eggs and the milk in her life like farm resort.

So what do we end up with? A movie that never seems to know what it wants to tell: it is not history, it is only chunks of it. It's not a parallel with the present. It is not a real light on Marie Anoinette, maybe just a candlelight. And what the greatest miss is: it's not an exciting story.

Kirsten Dunst can be adorable. Some scenes are clearly charmingly improvised. And Jason Schwartzman is as dorky as Jamie Dornan is hunky. But if that is all, it is not enough.

This must be the worst krimi made on German public television.

The main character is inspector Süden who is on the team for missing persons in Munich. He has of course a connected childhood trauma: his father left him without telling where he went. This proposition is already dangerously pretentious, but it is only the beginning. We have an alcoholic sidekick that walks around morose, a cocky love interest, a dumb lieutenant and a bespectacled beginner. And they all treat the hunt for missing persons as something that is deeply philosophical and the only way to redeem themselves.

Two stories try to intertwine, but that never happens. We have a flashback to the "hectic and traumatic" days when the team was on the missing persons of the 2001 tsunami, a seldom seen example of melodrama at its ugliest when Süden takes over the phone from the alcoholic who "cannot take anymore" and succeeds in still being human and understanding to the caller. Music and camera tell us that this was enormous important, but as a viewer you think: please, grow up. (The tsunami is 8 years ago, but all of the characters are exactly the same, even the hair loss of Süden is at the same stage.) A woman decides to start over again, but is suddenly back in Munich. A talented soccer player disappears and sleeps in a Volvo somewhere. And that's it.

All lack of plot is over painted with a lot of atmospheric images of Munich (days turn into night in quickened pace), semi deep dialog, stupid tricks, terrible jokes and an awful fight scene between the returned woman and he husband with which, supposedly, we are told "how people nowadays never interfere with violence in public". All scored with especially hideous quasi progressive almost atonal jazz. But never, never is any of the suggested higher content realized. The flashbacks of the little Süden and his father in the 70s are so gratuitous that you feel exactly the opposite as intended: I wish you never ever find your father again! The actors are trying too hard or too little, no one hits the character home. Hope the plug on this formula will be pulled soon, because this is a waste of a lot of money.

A good crime novel might be material for a fine movie or even for some entertaining distraction, as the hunt for the killer is a plot technique that keeps the attention focused. How they made such a gruesome movie out of an Agatha Christie novel is an art in itself.

As not having read the novel, I'm not sure if the plotting mistakes are due to the writing or the adaption, but either way, they are there and aren't going away. The poison in the pills that the major never takes? Why would he take one now? The killer not trying to hush the possible poisoning but even informing the police about it? The exhumation based on the fact that a pill bottle was in his bathroom that wasn't there before? The hotel nurse telling someone in a highly suspecting way that she saw the killer? Why not tell the police or even her 'new friend' miss Marple? Dramatic effects like the exhumation during the night, some tiny voodoo and the nervy score cannot save the lack of drama.

Badly scripted, awfully acted and Barbados seems a perpetually overcast island with some techno-echo-crickets chirping away every time we are supposed to witness outdoor scenes at night. This isn't even entertaining anymore, this movie is a crime itself.

This movie is an interesting movie on many levels. There's the question how something that was made with integrity turned into a camp classic. And why, after seeing some hideously acted scenes, bad dialogue and the worst make up ever, we still are moved when Joan watches Christina accept an award in her name.

One problem must come down to the fact that playing an actress is difficult. It's no wonder that there are not many films with an actress as the main character. Dancing girls, singing girls, showgirls yes. Aging actresses falling in love with young men or actresses as suspects in a murder mystery, yes. But an actress as a character role: no. To play a character who plays a character is such balancing on a thin thread that it takes a lot of experience and courage to take on such a role. Furthermore it is profoundly hard to write about an actress who plays brilliantly: how do you attest in a film that an actress (who is played by an actress who should play well) plays well? Either you get two performances who are quite alike or you get some over the top playing which quickly seems bad acting.

Joan Crawford was a skilled actress. Faye Dunaway is a skilled actress. But matching the two there emerges a character that no longer acts like a skilled actress but uses all techniques to override life. Every scene Dunaway enters with fire. She takes the emotion, and we see her sometimes taken aback by her own energy. She also is trying to act brilliantly, which means that she is 'in the moment, in the character' and lets her character decide how to proceed: with laughter, with anger, with an evil look, with a deep breath. There are a lot of moments where we observe Dunaway look for the right reaction as Crawford, just as is teached in acting classes all around the world: but the effect is so strange and overambitious, that the whole performance turns into 'anger for beginners'.

The other actors are answering with good old fashioned acting (just saying the lines in the right emotion) or trying to match themselves with Dunaway as the grown up Christina does. She is making every emotion as tiny as possible, counting on this less is more principle to counter Dunaways fury. This doesn't work: she just turns into someone who is either careless, numb or lazy. (Her ridiculous wig doesn't help.) She is supposed to be an actress as well, but more out of an 'I don't know anything else to do' that out of ambition or love for the profession.

The script is uneven, bad at times and puzzling in its message. Are we to feel compassion for the little girl for being adopted by such a monster? We don't feel it, because the little girl is a monster herself.

And that might be the answer for the unbalanced movie: there is no monster, there is no guilt. What we see are two people entangled in love and war, not being able to step out of themselves, out of their anger and ambition, to reach out, not only to the other but mostly within themselves. Hell are not the others, hell are we ourselves when we oblige ourselves to reach the top no matter what, to act brilliantly no matter what: the standards set for themselves, for Crawford and her daughter, as for Dunaway and Diana Scarwid are simply too high. And so we make the hell ourselves and we are left with one hell of a movie.

To make a first movie, to write it, direct it AND star in the leading role might either be genius or heading for the big big fall. Jesse Rosen has decided to take his chances and really, he did not fall.

There's a lot to comment on this movie: superfluous scenes, overplayed emotions, clichés, amateur actors and pretentious camera-work at times. But that does not get in the way of the story. The script is well wrought, although the juxtaposition of the straight boy going gay and the lesbian going straight is a little too symmetric, but things are left to guess and find out for yourself. Does Jon really go gay? Will Maddie ever make something of her life? Is Paul a predator or just looking for love? The acting by the two leads, and some supporting actors (the history teacher, the best friend), is good and a times funny and on the dot. ("Oh, you were the cutest bottom boy!")

Why the ending is not more pronounced might be a question of taste, but the scene where Jon is getting back with his friends (who are supposed to be straight but seem played by very gay actors...) is plain weak.

So Rosen did not fall, that's good, but it is no work of genius either.

Life can be an inspiration for fiction but the artist who uses it must adapt it to tell a story of importance. There must be a beginning, an end and there must be a reason to tell.

In this, almost I would say worst movie ever, there is none. Yes, there is a beginning and an end, but they do not seem related and everything that happens in between happens for almost no reason at all. Just like in life, one could say, but that was clearly not the message of the makers.

No, they had to tell about... a woman losing a child and getting another one back. OK, might be interesting. But not if the woman's only reaction is to scream: "I want my son! This is not my son!" (And that about twenty-four times.) Then it's improvisation by amateur theater players. Not if the bad men are just bad men, no dimension, no nuance, just cruel and evil.

The script goes nowhere, does not know what to tell, and the heroine, the unbelievable bad acting Jolie, does not once take action. She is constantly invited by others to do anything.

The change from a 'give me back my son'-theme to a 'evil guy abducts little boys and slaughters them for his pleasure'-theme is made with no preparation, and the themes have nothing to do with each other. So, at once there are two stories to tell. Follows the 'psychiatry in the 20's was a fraud'-theme, with bad bad doctor man and evil sister woman. And, oh yes, the good hooker for good measure.

The last half hour adds nothing. Why do we get 10 minutes of hanging the crazy boy killer? The last scenes are good, but just because of the little boy and his mother, two sincerely played roles. The onlooking Jolie does what she does the whole film: get out the emotion and then repress it. A weak technique by a weak actress. (Oh, and of course, the hand to the mouth, another brilliant technique.) Malkovich is talking so unclear that you wonder if that was his revenge to be cast in this one penny melodrama.

Accompanied by music seeming to be made for a burial services commercial, this is an example of how a true story is not a story. Not if you don't have any clue what to tell and just tell everything: and then you get, instead of a possible sandcastle, a pile of mud.

Nowadays we have seen so many detectives, krimi's, whodunits that the rules are clear: the murderer must be known to us and it usually is the one you don't suspect.

So, in this movie: who is there that you don't suspect: the intended victim, the movie star herself. And yes, in the end it is she who turns out to be the killer.

But why? Why did she kill the country girl? Yes, because the country girl kissed here when she was pregnant and that way she contracted a disease which led to her son being born retarded. But is that a reason to kill someone? And to be so cold blooded that she decides to do so in a few seconds, prepares immediately the poisoned drink and even thinks about the drink being spilled so that the poison would seem to be meant for her? No, that is not believable. A feeling of revenge, of anger... yes. But instant decision to kill? No.

And so we have a solution that is made to measure the plot, and not a plot that leads to the conclusion. A weak story.

Added up are some really messy acted scenes. Either the actors did not rehearse, or they rehearsed too much or they refused to learn their lines. Examples are Hudson's reaction to Taylor's mention of Doris Day (not funny at all), and the strange yell from Novak at the end of her questioning by the inspector: it seems to come from nowhere and she needs three seconds to finally get it out. Angela Lansbury is too young, and cannot decide between truthfulness or comic strip.

The only acting of any worth comes from Taylor, and ironically in the scene where she is supposed to be acting: the moment that she realizes that someone wants to kill her as she echoes a scene from a long forgotten movie. But the movie loving inspector recognizes the scene and bursts her bubble and both the acting as the reaction after are equally good. It is a rare scene where she finally has something to act rather than just say lines.

The other actors are bland, over the top or just lost.