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1.
Dangerous Ground.(SA
movie by Darryl Roodt, starring Liz Hurley). Brain dead, lack of an intelligent
context. Satisfying camera work, though. An immoral portrayal: heroes can take
the law into their own hands and get away with it. Liz Hurley should be ashamed
of being used like this. No rating.
2.
10 Things I hate
about you. Teen movie with tantalizing script. **
3.
Falling
Down (VHS) (1993, Michael Douglas, Robert Duval). The script manages to sustain
tension even when dealing with the most mundane matters. “Ulysses” in LA. ***
4. Analyze this (Robert de Niro, Billy Crystal). Comic story of the clash in systems when the Mafia crosses lines with a NY Freudian psychiatrist. Both systems are “closed” and supply a hilarious context. Joke: by the use of the term “closure” the protagonist confounds his opponent who has it looked up in the dictionary!!! ***
5. All the pretty horses (Matt Damon). A lesson in Mexican politics, love and horse training. A young man loses his horse farm, goes to Mexico where he is unjustly imprisoned. To get him out of prison his girlfriend promises never to see him again. The young man’s simple honesty is his saving grace. **
6. Les amants du Pont-Neuf (Martin Scorcese, Juliette Binoche, 1999, French). A story told with pictures. This is the ultimate exploitation of the filmic medium. Visual poetry! The scarcity of dialogue synchronizes with the macabre world of the homeless. Paris, in all its splendour and beauty from a point of view few have seen. *****
7. Finding Forrester (Sean Connery). A movie without a car chase, steaming sex scenes or cheap laughs. A celebration of the mind! ****
8. Blonde. Latest production of the Monroe saga. Sickening to see a person being used to death by others. All will watch this drama, and by watching become part of the lynching mob. A gold mine for Girardian analysis: “Marilyn” triggered a mimetic rivalry that ended in a social conspiracy to kill her as innocent victim. What I want to know is how could anyone have avoided in making her a scapegoat? ****
9. The legend of Bagger Vance (2000. Matt Damon, Charlize Theron). Lyrical story set in Savannah in the 20/30s. Theron once again shows she did not need to pose for Playboy to be an actress. Her acting provides focus to the movie. ***
10. High Fidelity. Adult comedy with real humor. ***
11. Mis Congeniality (Sandra Bullock)—Amusing slapstick. **
12. Milton Ericson, 60 minute review of his life. Though badly made with terrible sound quality, this movie portrays something of the enigma and greatness of Ericson. I realized something for the first time: That “learning” can be a major source of psychological healing. And such learning can best be done through trance states. Ericson used unconventional, sometimes paradoxical, methods combined with earthy metaphors and original parables to convey his simple but charming messages in the trance states. This is what different religious traditions (Christian Orthodox, Buddhist) have done for ages. Reading a religious text is not as powerful as when it is performed to an audience in a trance state. **
13. Andrew Merton. Biography. Informative, but shows how dated Merton has become. I still do not understand what is meant by the “spiritual” in Merton’s life. How telling that he discovers after so many years in the monastery that he cannot excape life. And how tragic that after so many years of celibacy, at the end of his short life, he still finds it necessary to study the female form. Why not then choose to live a normal life from the outset? **
14. When a man loves a woman (Meg Ryan)— Unlike Ryan’s comic roles, this is supposed to be a realistic study of an alcoholic mother who is nursed back to normality by a loving husband. Ryan’s worst movie, but still worth watching for her 600 different kinds of smiles. *
15. Erin Brokovich (leading actress Julia Roberts; real story)—not one single cliche missed; photography presents a strange, non-lyrical cluttering of persons, with yellow filters too obvious. What makes the movie worth-while is its study of emancipatory female beauty, that of Julia Roberts. How refreshening that the audience is spared the court drama. **
16. The Green Mile (Tom Hanks, leading actor; after book of Stephen King)— Truly memorable, clearly defined characters, a gripping distortion of reality, a prison story that is different. However, the framing episodes at the beginning and end are contrived. ***
17. Flucht in die Dolomiten (German 1955) — Apart from a few glimses of the glorious Dolomites, this movie does not contain anything salable to a contemporary audience. No rating possible.
18. Madadayo — About the last years of a Japanese professor venerated by his students. It takes about 30 minutes to enter the fictional world of the movie before becoming a window on Japanese humor. On a different level it shows how a teacher who has retained the wonder of childhood impacts on society. **
19. Brother Caedfile: A morbid interest in bones / A swallow in the sanctuary — Vernon and Deanna Robbins introduced me to this delightful medieval mystery series. The Benedictine setting of the series fits perfectly with St. Johns Abbey at Collegeville, Minnesota.**
20. Kadosh (Amos Gital, Ivrit with Eng subtitles) — Instead of adequately exposing the ethnicist political ethics of the Hassidim, the emphasis falls on their repression of women and of sexuality in general. The profile of the women in the movie is a fair illustration of patriarchal hegemony. **
21. Enemy at the Gates (Joseph Fiennes, Jude Law, Ed Harris) — Brilliant war epic, senistive love story, unexpected twists, well-defined villain. *****
22. East/West — brilliant and moving account of what it was to live in the Soviet Union. My Slovak colleague at St John’s believes this to be a realistic portrayal of how the Russians treated foreigners. ****
23.
Rosetta — irritating appeal to the
emotion of the viewer; the image of a desperate girl in search of an honourable
existence sticks. ½ *
24.
Eyes wide shut — brilliant potential, but
left unexploited: it could have explored the theme of sex and the open society
(Arthur Schnitzler must have had something different in mind than Kubrick’s
commercialised compromise). Cruise and Kidman compete to see who is the worst
actor. In a remake I would vote for Catherine Zeta Jones and Harrison Ford. ***
25.
End of the affair — pretentious romance;
plain sickening. How long is Fiennes going to continue playing roles where he
steals other people’s partners? **
26.
The Bug — satisfactory develpment of a
significant theme: the erosion of privacy through the electronic technology,
for the first time refering to webcams. **
27.
Castaway — How a soccer ball, Wilson,
becomes an object of veneration in an island culture. [Having bumped a hole in the plaster wall as big and round as
Wilson, my children painted a face on it like that of Wilson.]*****
28.
Crouching Tiger — Chinese poetic
imagination at its best. *****
29.
Sweet November —Conventional romance.
Charlize Theron can become the uncontested successor of Meryl Streep. ***
30.
Cider House Rules — John Irving wrote the
book and the script. Both are brilliant. A touch of wicked humor. *****
31.
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· MY 10 BEST MOVIES SO FAR |
33. Dr. Zhivago
34. Passage to India
35. Ghandi
36. Decline of the American Empire
37. Emerald Forest
38. Romancing the Stone
39. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
40. A Land Apart
41. Goldfinger
42. Blue
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.