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To watch or not to watch? I will tour around Amsterdam’s cinemas and answer this crucial question every Friday. Without mercy, of course. Sucky movies will be slaughtered, cinematographic pearls will be appreciated as such. Or the other way around. After all, good taste is in the eye of the beholder.
Les Femmes du 6ème Étage
Cute, charming, what else can I say? This film doesn’t go deep, but that’s fine. It tells the story of the women on the sixth floor of a big town-house in Paris, 1962. The women are all Spanish immigrants, working as housekeepers for the rich French families in the same building. The young Maria works for madame and monsieur Joubert. She is beautiful, very, very beautiful. So beautiful mister Joubert (you might know him from Potiche) falls for her. He even leaves his own fantastic apartment and takes a small room on the sixth floor. That’s the film actually. I could say something about the interesting social differences between the wealthy French and the simple Spanish people, except that’s not a big issue in the film. Luckily the warm characters make up for the thin storyline.
Watch this film in: Cineville’s: Cinecenter and The Movies, or in Tuschinski.
Route Irish
Director Ken Loach, known for The Wind that Shakes the Barley, made a dark film. Frankie and Fergus have been friends since they were kids, and as grown man they now work as private contractors in war areas. One day, Frankie dies in Iraq on ‘Route Irish’, the most dangerous road in the world. Fergus doesn’t trust the official story and is determined to find out what really happened. By doing so he puts himself and anyone near him at risk. Could have worked better if Loach went a little faster; now a lot of (not that interesting) scenes slow the story down. Besides that, Mark Womack is great as the traumatised Fergus. The scene where he stands with his gun on the balcony gets you by the throat, just as the real footage of American air-strikes. War stinks.
Watch this film in: Cineville’s: Rialto
Club Zeus
Dutch talent David Verbeek (R U There) shot this movie in twelve days. Twelve days! Nothing about this film reveals the immense short shooting period, so well done David. Club Zeus is about two host boys in Shanghai, Leonardo and Sly. The guys have to make women feel loved and admired, and they have to make sure the women buy a lot of champagne. In the meantime, Leonard and Sly each deal with their own problems. I couldn’t care less though; Verbeek provides the audience with too little background information about his protagonists, so they stay one dimensional figures. The exact opposite applies for the total ambiance in the film. Very ‘Asian-metropolitan-gloomy’.
Watch this film in: Cineville’s: Het Ketelhuis.
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