Tag Archives: Dutch

J. Kessels / Road Duster (2015) Erik de Bruyn, Fedja van Huêt, Frank Lammers, Ruben van der Meer, Adventure, Comedy, Drama

j-kessels-2015
J.KESSELS is both a hilarious road movie and a bittersweet trip down memory lane, a crazy ride in a flame-adorned Plymouth Gold Duster from provincial Holland to Hamburg’s Reeperbahn and back. And a hallucinatory trip through the mind of an author, who no longer knows if his novel is a product of his own imagination, or if he is actually living it. The lead character is Kessels, a chain smoking tough guy with a heart of gold. Kessels and Frans are ageing youngsters who like nothing better than to consume nicotine, beer and country & western music. However, in Frans’ novels Kessels and he are fearless crime fighters: heroes even, but the world around them is unaware of it. Heroes who create a flurry of misunderstanding at every step. Frans accepts the assignment for Kessels and him to kidnap a philandering criminal in Hamburg and return him to his wife, because the caller is the younger brother of BB, or Brigitte, once the focus of little Frans’ prepubescent sexual dreams and awakening…
Read More »

Steve + Sky (2004) Felix van Groeningen, Titus De Voogdt, Delfine Bafort, Johan Heldenbergh, Romance, Drama, Comedy

Steve + Sky (2004)
Steve + Sky is a story about two struggling teenagers who are trying to find their own place in the world. He is a small-time crook recently released from prison and she is a prostitute craving some love and affection. They find each other in an obscure part of Gent. Jean-Claude is responsible for their meeting ; he is also an ex-inmate who has just traded the low-life crime scene for life as a pimp. Will their love survive?
Read More »

Little Tony / Kleine Teun (1998) Alex van Warmerdam, Annet Malherbe, Ariane Schluter, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Little Tony (1998)
Farmer Brand can’t read and he is quite happy with that. His wife, Keet, who has to read him all the subtitles on the television, isn’t. She decides to hire a teacher for him. This is a beautiful young woman, called Lena. Brand falls in love with her. To his puzzlement and dismay Keet encourages him, because as she says she doesn’t want a husband with another woman in his head. She wants their love to grow stale. She also wants Lena to give Brand and her a son. The love between Brand and Lena does not grow stale easily and after the birth of little Teun, their strange menage a trois comes to a dramatic conclusion.
Read More »

06 / 1-900 (1994) Theo van Gogh, Ariane Schluter, Ad van Kempen, Romance, Drama

06 (1994)
Sarah, 30, single, well educated, likes art, places a voice ad for phone sex, inviting replies from men under 35, sturdy and sensual. Wilbert, a chubby middle aged architect, leaves a message that he is Thomas, 32 and well formed. A week later, she phones. She likes his voice, he likes her laugh, so once a week she phones him (he’s not to know her last name, where she lives, or her number). Portraits emerge of humor and sadness. He presses for details of her life and tells her about his work; she wants these Thursday calls to be fantasy and release, separate from the rest of who she is. The film dramatizes these tensions of lies and truth, connection and distance.
Read More »

Johan (2005) Nicole van Kilsdonk, Michiel Huisman, Caro Lenssen, Johnny de Mol, Drama, Romance

Johan (2005)
Johan Dros is born as eleventh consecutive son of soccer-obsessed pa Rinus, who raises his boys mainly as the small island Texel’s team. Johan’s rare reprieves from training for a sport he doesn’t care for cease when ma dies. After captain brother Johhny sort of steals his local girl-friend Evy, Johan leaves for Amsterdam, where he becomes a hairdresser and would-be singer. Soccer, a vocal TV talent-hunt and Evy will bring them all together again, but also raise unprecedented strife in the Dros family.
Read More »

Soldaat van Oranje / Soldier of Orange (1977) Paul Verhoeven, Rutger Hauer, Jeroen Krabbé, Susan Penhaligon, Drama, Romance, Thriller

Soldier of Orange (1977)
Soldier of Orange (Dutch: Soldaat van Oranje) is a 1977 Dutch film directed by Paul Verhoeven and produced by Rob Houwer, starring Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbé. The film is set during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, and shows how individual students have different roles in the war. The story is based on the book Soldaat van Oranje by Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, who lived the story himself.
The film received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980. The film is considered to be one of the two best Dutch films made in the 20th century.
Read More »

The Forgotten Space (2010) Noël Burch, Allan Sekula, Documentary

The Forgotten Space (Noel Burch, Allan Sekula, 2010)
Details the catastrophic effects globalization has wrought on the ship, truck and train industries. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. At a moment when collective bargaining rights are under attack in the United States, and China continues to bow to foreign pressures to prevent such rights from being granted at all, this film asks: Is capitalism the Trojan horse that turns on its inventors?
Read More »

The Debut / Het Debuut (1977) Nouchka van Brakel, Marina de Graaf, Gerard Cox, Pleuni Touw, Romance

0031bbb9
A 14 year old girl and a 41 year old friend of her father’s fall in love, and soon their relationship grows into a sexual one as well. For some time all is happy, but then the tension grows too much, because of the secrecy and frustration of being the lover of a married man, and because she feels he starts to treat her too much like a child instead of a lover.
Read More »

Brozer / Frailer (2014) Mijke de Jong, Marnie Blok, Lieneke le Roux, Leonoor Pauw, Drama

Brozer AKA Frailer (2014)
Frailer tells the story of an actress playing a part that reflects her real life story. Whilst playing a woman dying of cancer, Muis her doctor tells her she has not much more time left. She will die soon. The film follows the transition of her and her film sisters, shifting from their characters to who they really are, actresses dealing with their friend upcoming death. We watch Leonoor become physically frailer but mentally stronger as she is slowly accepting her faith. Whilst ending the film, she leaves her film sisters, her real life husband and children but also the viewer, behind forever.
Read More »

Jongens / Boys (2014) Mischa Kamp, Gijs Blom, Ko Zandvliet, Jonas Smulders, Drama, Romance

Jongens AKA Boys (2014)
BOYS tells the story of Sieger, a sporty, rather quiet 15-year-old boy who discovers love during the summer holidays. Sieger is training in the new athletics team for the national relay championships and meets the intriguing and unpredictable Marc. The friendship that develops seems nothing out of the ordinary, but Sieger secretly harbours stronger feelings for Marc. He engages in a lonely struggle with himself when it emerges that Marc is also in love with him. With his best friend Stef, Sieger discovers a motocross track outside the village. Events soon take on a momentum of their own as Sieger quickly becomes involved with Jessica. At last, he counts for something in the eyes of his tough older brother Eddy, who is secretly using the track to tear around on a moped. Sieger keeps quiet about this to his father, who often clashes with the rebellious Eddy since their mother’s death. Sieger tries to make peace between the two, but his mind is elsewhere, as he finds it increasingly …
Read More »