Soldaat van Oranje (1977)

July 28, 2019 / Drama

Soldaat van Oranje (1977) AKA Soldier of Orange

——UPGRADED——

This bracing World War II epic was the film that brought Verhoeven to Hollywood’s attention. It follows a group of college friends through the Nazi occupation of Holland, as two becomes heroes of the resistance movement, while another turns traitor. As usual, Verhoeven’s moral ambiguity and skewed sensibility keep things complicated: far from a patriotic flag-waver, Soldier of Orange is as knotty, subversive, and gonzo as war movies get (witness the hero performing a homoerotic tango), while demonstrating Verhoeven’s ability to balance action with involving human drama.

WATCH HERE

July 15, 2019 / Documentary

Engelen des doods (1998) AKA Angels of Death

The Soviet General Vlasov remains one of the most intriguing, yet least known figures of World War II. In 1942, the German war machine had come to a halt near the Russian city of Leningrad. The Russian Second Assault Army, led by General Vlasov, fights itself to death in an effort to break the German siege. Their general is captured and later defects to the Germans. In ANGELS OF DEATH we experience the fate of General Vlasov’s army as we hear the personal accounts of those who died in the massacre through their poems, letters and photographs.

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June 27, 2019 / Comedy

Lef (1999) AKA Guts

Olivier is working with his friend Luc on a film they have long dreamed of. Olivier hopes at last to become the classic hero in a story he wrote himself. Working diligently on his cinematographic alter-ego, his energy is really put to the test. For instance, he does nothing when he sees a woman being beaten up. This incident haunts him and increasingly creeps into his script. When he falls in love with the same unsuspecting woman in real life, the incident gets in the way of the relationship.

WATCH HERE

June 14, 2019 / Drama

Opname (1979) AKA In For Treatment

The plot follows a Dutch horticulturist from the day he leaves his farm to be admitted to hospital for a cancer treatment to the inevitable sad ending. The film displays intensely how the different people concerned deal with the taboo of cancer (which was very strong in the 70s). Nobody tells the protagonist that he is in fact fatally ill, so that he has to discover that by himself and come to terms with it.

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November 14, 2018 / Drama

Ciske de Rat (1955) AKA Ciske the Rat

“Ciske de Rat” belongs to dickensean model “little man’s hard life” and tells a deceptively simple story about a boy in modern Netherlands. Persecution, loneliness, adults’ hostility, fear, mixture of obstinacy and tenderness, and even an imprisonment. Excellent camera movement and delicate portraying of Ciske’s fragile soul put this film out of merely historical context and ensure the place in the Great Cinema History for it.

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July 26, 2018 / Drama

Felice… Felice… (1998)

Tragic love story about the photographer and explorer Felice Beato who travelled back to Japan in 1895 to seek his former wife O-Kiku. On the way he describes in a nostalgic letter to his brother how much he yearns for his lost love O-Kiku and how impotent he feels in an ancient Japan subject to rapid change.

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May 20, 2018 / Mystery

De komst van Joachim Stiller (1976) AKA The Arrival of Joachim Stiller

The film tells the story of Freek Groenevelt and Simone Marijnissen whose lives are taken over by Joachim Stiller. He’s a bizarre character who influences Freek and Simone’s lives in different ways.

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March 15, 2018 / Arthouse

De Noorderlingen (1992) AKA The Northerners

Alex van Warmerdam’s award-winning second feature is set in a remote small Dutch village in the early 1960s. The village is actually just one street of a new town that was never completed, and the behavior of its inhabitants is invariably determined by their unsolved sexual problems, leading to a number of comic situations depicted in a tradition of absurdist black humor.

WATCH HERE

Tag: NETHERLANDS