Film reviews

Intruders is a slick little thriller that folds in on itself.  It's the story of what happens when a little boy and a little girl, years later, dream about the same faceless figure who is out to torment them both.  The film is told in two parallel stories that dovetail together in a surprise ending.  It's very entertaining and I quite liked it, even if they did waste the lovely Dutch treat Carice Van Houten in a small role.  

 Roadkill is a highly entertaining horror thriller that walks a fine line between being just another cheesy Aussie flick about bad shit going down in the outback and being a tight little horror thriller.  Two sexy young 20 something couples are on a camping trip in the outback when they get set upon by a demonic truck, or as they are known in Australia, a road train.  They undergo all sorts of hardships and injuries before they figure out the sinister secret of just what is propelling the truck.  I'd tell you more but if I did I'd give away a lot of the suspense and the fun of the movie.  I recommend this one for all fans of thrillers, the outback, and sexy young people.

Flame & Citron are two Danish freedom fighters who kill Nazis and Danish collaborators in the final months of World War 2.  They shoot and terrorize who they are told to and they do it without complaint, until they figure out they've been double crossed, perhaps even triple crossed.  This film, based in part on actual events, is very good, even if it does drag a bit in the last third.  The performances shine and the body count is astronomical.  It's violent but it's a war movie after all.  It's also surprisingly tender at times.  I highly recommend this subtitled Danish gem.

Action: The October Crisis of 1970 is an excellent documentary about the events that led up to the kidnapping of two upper echelon politicians in Quebec in 1970.  For many years English speaking Canadians ruled over the majority Franco-phone population of Quebec.  This film shows how that institutionalized oppression led to the Quebec separatist movement, an offshoot of which was the FLQ (aka the Quebec Liberation Front), which was responsible for many acts of domestic terrorism which included the kidnappings and the subsequent murder of one of the hostages.  I found this documentary to be terribly interesting and compelling.  It lays out all the facts with out any spin and it doesn't moralize or point fingers, it lets you decide who the villains and who the heroes of this crisis are.  I find Canadian politics and the crises of this era, the 1960's through the mid 1970's, to be very interesting, so I loved the heck out of this film.  I vaguely recalled some of these events when they went down, so it was nice to finally learn what actually happened.  I highly recommend this one.

A Monkey Movie Review

Remember when they used to make good movies that were a bit long but you didn't mind because the film was so engrossing that you would have watched it for another hour or two if you had to? Remember when they made movies with damn fine actors who hooked you in the second they came on screen? Have you seen a film like that come out of Hollywood lately? No?


Well, I did see one like that last night but it came out of Holland of all places.
Black Book is a larger than life movie that is one of the best films I've seen in years. It tells the story of a Jewish woman who is trapped in Holland at the end of World War Two. I'm not going to delve into the plot because if I did it would spoil the movie for some of you. I'll just say that this film has more twists and turns than a mountain road. Paul Verhoeven, director of RoboCop, Total Recall, and many other pieces of Hollywood fluff, has gone back to his days of making good films outside of Hollywood and in his native language of Dutch.


The leads, Carice Van Houten and Sebastian Koch, are brilliant, especially Ms. Van Houten. She plays her character with verve and gusto and she she does all her own singing in the film as well. She looks great in and out of all the 1940's period costumes they put on her. Koch, who some of you may remember from his turn as the playwright in The Lives of Others, manages to play one of the most sympathetic Nazi's ever. Other outstanding performance were turned in by Halina Reijn, Thom Hoffman, and Waldemar Kobus.


I can't say enough good things about this movie and it's surprising because I thought I had had my fill of WW2 films. It just goes to show you that if you have a good story and you tell it well then the material never gets old. Of course it doesn't hurt if you have Paul Verhoeven directing and you cast Carice Van Houten in the lead. I highly recommend this movie.