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Dr_Lighthouse
Reviews
Chorus Angelorum (1985)
Absurdistan
Absurde short film about a man stealing from churches. No idea how a well-respected actor as Bob Van der Veken got talked into this . Really, really bad film.
Smidje Smee (1942)
Wartime cartoon
Adaptation of the original Flemish folk tale. Quite remarkable since this was made during WW2. Drawings look very Disney-esk. Cartoonist Bob de Moor also worked for Studio Hergé and contributed on a number of Tintin albums.
T Kan verkeren (1993)
Fifteen minutes of boredom
Wow. The only positive thing to say about this pic is that it only lasts 15 minutes. A wafer-thin plot, combined with absolute beginners acting results in the most boring film I've seen in years.
De Collega's 2.0 (2018)
How to dilute water?
The original "De Collega's" was a popular TV-series on Flemish television in the late seventies, early eighties. Like so many other shows, the format was on tv for too long, and the scripts were stretched and diluted up to a point where the was nothing left but water.
This film, "De Collega's 2.0" is an attempt to rejuvenate the old series, some four decades later, but it fails miserably.
The "acting" - I find it really necessary to use the brackets - is at an all time low, even for Belgian , i.e. Flemish standards.
The script too is absolutely below par. The only way to describe it, is to compare it with an attempt to dilute... water.
In the six decades that I am on this planet, I have seen some bad movies; but this one is exceptionally bad.
The director must have been so proud, to offer cameos to a couple of actor from the original series, but it boomeranged right back into his face: it never adds any value to this hopeless flick.
If you haven't seen it: praise yourself lucky, you just saved 90 precious minutes of your life.
The ABC Murders (2018)
Eh bien, mes enfants, ceci n'est pas une Agatha Christie
Where does one begin, to review this kind of fecal product?
In order to present an objective review, I forced myself to watch all three episodes, which, I have to admit was hard to do. Being 60+ I have had the joy and pleasure to read many works by Dame Agatha Christie and watch many renowned actors play the role of my favourite (fictitious) countryman on screen... and I have never, ever watched anything as atrocious as this.
Poirot is suffering from wartime flashbacks all through the series. The main suspect is into sado-masochism, Chief Inspector Japp had to die, and Arthur Hastings was forgotten. The producers of this travesty managed to sneak-in some sexual acts and even Nazism got a brief cameo.
If this version of "The A.B.C. Murders" was intended to offend a wide audience, director Alex Gabassi has certainly succeeded.
The Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte made a painting of a pipe and called it "Ceci n' est pas une pipe" (this is not a pipe). The English title of this work is "The Treachery of Images". Well this version of "The ABC Murders" is certainly a treachery of Agatha Christie.
Maigret: Maigret's Dead Man (2016)
Credit to Atkinson
Who would have thought that Rowan Atkinson could play a role as difficult as "Maigret"? Not only is this on the other end of the spectrum, light-years away from "Johnny English" and "Mr. Bean", Commissaire Maigret (in this series ranked as "chief-inspector") was splendidly portrayed by the late Bruno Cremer in no less than 54 (!) episodes, which made it twice as difficult for Atkinson to become the new Jules.
Having read most of my countryman Georges Simenon's books, I have an image of Jules Maigret as a thinker, not a talker. Rowan Atkinson portrays this in a very convincing way. Perhaps a little more pipe- training could come in handy, but other than that it's a realistic Maigret.
The use of Hungary as film location for 1950's Paris is a good choice: the dirty houses and alleys realistically picture the era of a coal-heated metropolis. Dirty cars complete the image, and even the camera-work reminds of the film-noir of the 1940's and '50's.
The only flaws in this and the previous episode, are goofs that could have been avoided easily: the car's headlights should have been yellow, not white (compulsory in France from the mid 1930's until 1993), in lit areas French cars used to drive with the positioning lights on - dip and high beam were only used on dark country roads, not in town. Another goof are the press cameras flash bulbs: until the late 1960's, before the age of electronics, flash bulbs were made of magnesium filaments, and had to be replaced after every shot. It was impossible to flash, flash, flash in a few seconds, like ALL the cameras in this series do. Shame on you, researchers!
I really enjoyed Rowan Atkinson as a mature Jules Maigret, however... on the sly I was hoping for a suspect called... Bob. ;-)