Like Tears in Rain, on Viaplay

Rutger Hauer’s early lifestyle could fairly be described as Bohemian and he first came to international prominence in the sexually charged film Turkish Delight. Yet, he was happily married to the love of his life for forty years. One of his best friends was his brother-in-law and his other closest friends were the parents of his god-children. Fittingly, his new biographical documentary is a family affair, directed by his goddaughter. Obviously, Bladerunner will be discussed, but Sanna Fabery de Jonge devotes more time to the doting godfather she knew in Like Tears in Rain, which premieres Thursday on Viaplay.

Hauer extensively documented his personal life and film shoots as an amateur videographer, but a freak flood destroyed the bulk of his archive, robbing Fabery de Jonge of a wealth of primary sources. However, several boxes of video footage were discovered after his death, which, seen here for the first time, supply an intimate perspective on Hauer’s early life.

Young and dashing, Hauer essentially lived in a hovel and squandered his paychecks on things like motorcycles. Yet, he was charming. After buying the motorhome Fabery de Jonge’s parent put up for sale, Hauer became lifelong friends with the couple and godfather to their daughter and son. He first made friends with Ineke ten Cate’s brother, but they soon fell for each other hard. However, there was actually a first wife, with whom he had a daughter, both of whom go conspicuously unmentioned throughout Tears.

Still, Hauer’s loyalty to the people from this period of his life is quite touching. Indeed, Fabery de Jonge and ten Cate revealingly discuss how painful the Nighthawks shoot was, due to his brother-in-law’s illness. Ten Cate’s pilgrimage to the modern-day Roosevelt Island tram (the setting for his famous face-off with Stallone) was a nice touch.

From the Dutch perspective, there was one voice from Hauer’s past whose absence would be so glaring, it might have undermined the entire documentary, but Paul Verhoeven is indeed present. In fact, he rather forthrightly admits forcing Hauer to appear as yet another villain in the poorly received Flesh+Blood unfairly set back the actor’s career. It turns out their professional relationship even predates Turkish Delight, going back to the Medieval swashbuckling TV series Floris (which looks like a ton of campy fun, so a streamer like Viaplay ought to consider picking it up).

Invasion: The Netherlands vs. Venezuela (Under an Alias)

Curacao is only 35 miles from the terrorist-supporting, narcotics-running state of Venezuela, so its security is definitely a concern for the Dutch military. The ABC islands have their own independent governments, but they are considered “constituent countries” of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In this film, it is the rogue South American nation of Veragua that attacks, but it is transparently based on Maduro’s regime. It is too bad all that talk about “defending democracy” never applied to the Venezuelan election Biden traded massive sanction relief for, only to have Maduro brazenly steal it. We could have saved the Dutch Marines a lot of trouble. Instead, they will fight and die to save their countrymen in Bobby Boermans Invasion, which releases this Friday in theaters and on VOD.

It was a quiet day when Venezuela Veragua started shelling Curacao’s beaches. Unfortunately, Carl, the proprietor of a beachfront resort is injured while saving a young guest. His status greatly concerns his sons, Judsel, a sailor on a Dutch cutter of the shore of Veragua, and Andy, a Marine recruit who just washed out on his final training mission, due to his fear of heights. When the attack comes, Andy and his two, more successful trainees, Jack and Noa, are evac’ed to Judsel’s ship, for safe-keeping.

Commander Stan Bot is understanding up to a point, but frankly, the disruptive Andy is lucky he isn’t locked in the brig. Regardless, the real Marines, Noa and Jack, are sent on a rescue mission to extract the worthless, cowardly Dutch ambassador, Maurits Caan, to prevent the Maduro clone from using him as a bargaining chip.

Meanwhile, steely Major Jon Brouwer organizes the resistance on the Dutch military base, overrun by enemy forces. However, they already have their own bargaining chip in the base prison, Hector Lagarto, a high-ranking Veraguan official wanted by the U.S. government for drug trafficking.

It is laughably ironic that a movie that repeatedly depicts courage under fire is too chicken to actually call out Venezuela by name. Seriously, screenwriters Philip Delmaar, Errol Nayci, and Lucas de Waard really ought to try to grow spines. As a result, the slight fictional veneer robs the film of a sense of urgency. It is all just make believe, so why should anyone care?

Still, the bravery and selflessness of the Dutch Marines is inspiring stuff. Grizzled Raymond Thiry is a particular standout as tough old Maj. Brouwer. Indeed, the scenes of the Marines fighting their way across their breached base are the best of the film. Fedja van Huet also makes a strong impression (in ways favorable to the Dutch military) as the commanding and analytical CDR. Bot. Conversely, Gijs Scholten van Aschat is aptly slimy as the dishonorable Caan.

Moloch, on Shudder

Sometimes in the movies, archaeology is adventurous (like in Indiana Jones). In this case, it is creepy, even more so than the average mummy movie. When a bog body turns up in the northern rural Dutch countryside, it fascinates and alarms a young widow in Nico van den Brink’s Moloch, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

Betriek was already in a bit of a weird place, having just moved back in with her grouchy dad and her somewhat difficult mother. Plus, she still carries the childhood trauma stemming from the violent home invasion-murder of her grandmother. A few days ago, the local town “eccentric” discovered a bog body near their property. Then he turned up dead in another hole he dug, shortly thereafter.

The news of his death understandably unnerves Betriek, but she is still interested in the fossilized body—and maybe even more interested in Jonas, the Scandinavian archaeologist overseeing the excavation site. He is kind of interested too, which kind of works out, since he will have a lot of work to keep him there when several more bog bodies turn up. The only drawback is the way people start acting crazy, like Jonas’s formerly trusted colleague, Radu.

Thematically, Moloch is a lot like a lot of other films, but van den Brink’s command of atmosphere is first-rate. He skillfully teases out the intriguing backstory and steadily builds the tension and foreboding. He and co-screenwriter Daan Bakker totally tap into what makes folk horror popular.

Tailgate: Dutch Road Rage

Remember when your gruff driver’s ed. teacher told you to “drive defensively?” That was good advice. Dutch father Hans does not follow it, even though he has his whole family in the car. As a result, he inspires homicidal road rage from a serial killer in Lodewijk Crijns’ Tailgate, which releases theatrically and digitally tomorrow.

Hans is pretty frazzled by his nagging wife Diana and bratty young daughters Milou and Robine. He is also less than thrilled to be going to lunch with his scoldy mother and his mildly dementia-suffering father. Hans is spoiling or a fight, so when “Ed the Exterminator” takes exception to his tailgating at a rest stop, the frazzled father refuses to apologize or back down.

Unbeknownst to Hans, Ed is experienced at running people off the road and he is fully loaded with pesticide that is toxic to humans. The psychopath isn’t squeamish when it comes to menacing the kids along with the adults, but he rather annoyingly persists in lecturing them on their poor parenting (which admittedly seems to be somewhat valid), in between his acts of violence.

The prospect of watching an innocent family getting terrorized is not so appetizing, so Crijns tries to balance the heat with acid by making Hans abrasively obnoxious. Unfortunately, that just makes the film thoroughly unpleasant, in nearly every way.

Arguably, Jeroen Spitzenberger is quite effective as Hans, because he makes viewers want to kill him too. The same is true to a lesser degree for Anniek Pheifer as Diana. You would think the serial killer stalking them would stop the dysfunctional couple from bickering for ten seconds, but apparently not. On the other hand, Willem de Wolf is credibly hulking, but problematically nondescript as the killer.

The Columnist: Hunting Trolls IRL

Femke Boot aspires to be something like a Dutch Anna Quinlan. She dispenses soccer mom-feminism in her newspaper column and also happens to have a novel under-contract. Unfortunately, virulent internet trolls have gotten into her head, but she will violently raise the stakes in Ivo van Aart’s The Columnist, which releases today in virtual theaters and on VOD.

The comments Boot gets on social media are truly vicious, but she cannot help reading and internalizing them. Sometimes, she even gets death threats, but the cops will not do anything about them. It turns out one of the trolls is even her two-faced next-door neighbor. Eventually, the rage drives her to murder and before long she is a full-blown serial killer. As an added bonus, her killing spree cures her of her writer’s block. However, she had a signature right from the start: severing and keeping a middle finger from each of her victims.

That’s the thing—Boot gets really good at killing, really quickly. It almost makes you wonder who is really supposed to bear the brunt of the film’s satire. However, Daan Windhorst’s screenplay lacks the subversive subtlety of Stacy Title’s masterful The Last Supper. Instead, The Columnist largely comes across as a relatively game attempt to exploit well-founded social media anxiety for genre thrills.

My Rembrandt

It is sort of like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, with Really, Really Good Taste. There are not a lot of Rembrandt paintings in private hands, because they are rarely brought to market. It is harder still to “discover” a previously unattributed Rembrandt, but maybe not impossible. Viewers meet several private owners and prospective buyers in Oeke Hoogendijk’s My Rembrandt, which releases this Wednesday via Film Forum’s virtual cinema.

In Scotland, the 10^th Duke of Buccleuch owns a Rembrandt that is truly magnificent. He would never want to sell Old Woman Reading, and given his family’s extensive land holdings, they probably will never need to. On the other hand, thanks to France’s high rate of taxation, Baron Eric de Rothschild agrees to sell his twin portraits, Marten and Oopjen, igniting a politically fraught contest between the Rijksmuseum and the Louvre.

Meanwhile, Jan Six XI, whose father Jan Six X still proudly owns Rembrandt’s portrait of the original Jan Six, believes he has discovered a previously unattributed Rembrandt, which he purchased in Christie’s auction for a mere 100K Euros and change. Eijk and Rose-Marie de Mol Van Otterloo are seriously considering purchasing it, but questions about Six’s business dealings will cloud the sale. So far, philanthropist Thomas S. Kaplan has not had such problems acquiring his fifteen Rembrandt, each of which he maintains in public exhibition.

My Rembrandt starts out as a meditative film about what his paintings mean to the blessed few fortunate to own one, but it suddenly takes on unexpected intrigue when Six’s ex-partner starts making allegations in the media. There is also a great deal of bureaucratic infighting, when the French Minister of Culture bullies the Louvre into contesting the Rijksmuseum’s plan to acquire both Marten and Oopjen, free and clear. Hoogendijk’s last documentary was The New Rijksmuseum, an epic four-chronicle of the museum’s restoration, so it is not surprising her sympathies lie in Amsterdam. Frankly, it is hard to root for the French, when they seem more interested in political CYA-ing than the great art they suddenly decide must stay in France.

Vicious: Dutch Teen Horror

Every junior high student should be forced to watch slasher films, because bullies would be scared into nicer behavior. Carrie would be the classic case, but in scores of vintage 1980s horror movies, the killer is inevitably out to avenge a fatal case of bullying, as in the original Prom Night. Evidently, the new girl has a mysterious history of bullying that she could very well pay the ultimate price for—unless she is just escalating her tormenting ways in Dennis Bots’ Vicious, which is now available on VOD.

“What happens in the Ardennes, stays in the Ardennes,” Kim’s friends say. They think they’re joking. For some unfathomable reason, they have set off on a girl’s weekend at a classic “cabin in the woods” right when a blizzard is expected to dump on the mountains. Supposedly, it is their last chance to celebrate their friendship before finals, college, and real life happen, but the truth is they really far from being four Musketeers.

Pippa is the newcomer to the group. She also happens to be a trampy mean girl, who is determined to undermine Kim’s friendship with Abby, so she can become her new bestie. Feline is biding her time to come out of the closet, while Abby obsesses over Casper, her new boyfriend, whose family cabin they are borrowing. As for Kim, she is the sensitive one—and the claustrophobic one. Basically, Abby and Feline walk on eggshells around her, whereas Pippa goes out of her way to play with Kim’s head. It all sounds like typical teen angst, especially when a group of boys come over for a night of drinking, but then strange things start happening.

However, it sure takes long enough. It feels like forever before Vicious finally get going. Frankly, the film’s origins as a teen novel written by Mel Wallis de Vries are always conspicuous, because the violence is never worthy of a R-rating and the suspense is not very intense. Maybe it works better on the printed page, but on film, it is pretty easy to guess what is coming down the pike. Even more problematic, the not so surprising twist will leave most genre fans feeling colder than the frosty winds blowing around the Ardennes.

It is a shame Vicious is so by-the-numbers predictable, because Olivia Lonsdale as a real kick as the nasty scheming Pippa. You would never want to know her socially, but it is rather fun to watch her sneer and connive. Romy Gevers is quite a neurotic worrywart as Kim, but she also has her more forceful moments. Unfortunately, Abbey Hoes is rather dull and staggeringly unintuitive as her near-namesake Abby.

The truth is Vicious’s title promises more than it delivers. This film is about on par with Ten: Murder Island, Lifetime’s riff on And Then There Were None. It is certainly watchable, but not particularly memorable. A time killer at best for fans of teen horror, Vicious is now available on select VOD platforms, including iTunes.

Panorama Europe ’18: The End of Fear

Barnett Newman is not the most famous American Abstract Expressionist, but his work was targeted in one of the most notorious cases of art vandalism. Essentially, his large color field painting Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III was twice a victim, once when it was slashed while on display in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and again when it was irrevocably butchered (or so experts say, on-camera) by the very man hired to restore it. The case of the much-abused canvas gets an ironic docu-essay treatment in Barbara Visser’s The End of Fear (trailer here), the opening night film of this year’s Panorama Europe at MoMI.

Newman’s work is a lot like Ellsworth Kelly, but there were many different subtle shades of red in the painting in question. Maybe that was rewarding to contemplate, or maybe it was just pretentious hype, but we will never know, because Daniel Goldreyer’s restoration completely ruined the effect. According to the film, he already had a somewhat questionable reputation for a similarly controversial Mondrian restoration, but the film declines to mention his mysterious involvement with a Roy Lichtenstein painting that went missing after the owner sent it to Goldreyer for a cleaning in 1970 and then suspiciously turned up at a Colombian gallery on consignment for his widow, several years after his death.

Unfortunately for the Stedelijk, Goldreyer bullied and fast-talked museum director Wim Beeren into approving his restoration, as we can hear from surviving phone messages. Alas, that left the Museum in a decidedly disadvantageous legal position.

There will be further ironies compounding in this bizarre tale, so it easily could have sustained a more conventional documentary. However, Visser adds various meta elements, including a contemporary painter recreating Who’s Afraid III from scratch, but nobody seems to understand the point to all that once its finished. Her talking head segments are also unusually thoughtful and reflective, which certainly not a bad thing.

Frankly, this is a terribly sad incident that impoverished human culture through the loss of the Newman painting and the city of Amsterdam, to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars misspent on a faulty restoration. As a work of cinema, it would have much more effective if it had just been a little more grounded, but it still shines a light on a fascinating historical episode. Recommended overall, The End of Fear screens Friday night (5/4) at MoMI, kicking off this year’s Panorama Europe.

The Windmill: This is Holland

Wind power will never be a practical alternative to fossil fuels, because it is intermittent. That means it doesn’t always blow. However, an old Dutch miller named Hendryk came up with a solution. He sold his soul to the devil to keep his big wheel turning. It turned out he was grinding up more than grain in there. Centuries later, the old Miller keeps coming back for more victims in Nick Jongerius’s The Windmill (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

An Australian teen is on the run from the law, so logically she comes to Holland. An American businessman trying to keep his hemophiliac teenage son away from his embittered ex-wife also chooses Holland for a sudden getaway vacation. They all wind-up in a motley tour group making the rounds of windmill country. Naturally, the bus breaks down, forcing them to spend the night in a mysterious windmill that is not on any of the tourist maps.

It turns out this old Hendryk’s abode. According to legends, the devil decided to give him a permanent roster spot after the peasants gave him the torch and pitchfork treatment. Clearly, he is still out there, hacking and slashing away. He could also be behind the guilt trip hallucinations everyone is having. Takashi the Japanese tourist might just have the game figured out, but the only one he can talk to is an AbFab-ish former model, who used to have a lot of work in Japan. Alas, she is not as focused as she should be.

The Windmill easily carries the best tag line of the year: “This isn’t Hell. This is Holland.” Jongerius and screenwriters Chris W. Mitchell and Suzy Quid even have a character say the line, making it totally legit. The backstory is also totally creepy and the underlying Macguffin is pretty compelling in an Old Testament kind of way. However, there is too much conventional slasher movie business that keeps Windmill firmly ensconced in meathead movie terrain.

Charlotte Beaumont (the older sister in Broadchurch) is not terrible as Australian Jennifer and Tanroh Ishida is quite good as the Japanese Takashi. Unfortunately, Patrick Baladi and Adam Thomas Wright are strictly groansville as the father and son. However, Bart Klever upstages everyone as Abe, the world’s worst tour guide.

If Jongerius had been more ambitious, The Windmill might have been a real genre standout. Instead, it is just a serviceable Halloween programming choice. Recommended for hardcore fans of Dick Maas’s Dutch horror films (Saint, etc.), The Windmill opens tomorrow (10/28) in LA, at the Arena Cinelounge.

Portrait of a Garden: Prune Hard with a Vengeance

You know the expression “like watching the grass grow?” In this case, it is fennel and Japanese wine berry, but it is still unfortunately apt. Admirers will call this Dutch doc meditative but the rest of us philistines will quickly grow restive watching the owner of an old restored fifteenth century “kitchen garden” and his master gardener methodically prune what seems like every blessed branch on the 3.7 acres. Presumably you have to be a dedicated gardener to appreciate the muted charms of Rosie Stapel’s Portrait of a Garden (trailer here), which opens today in New York at Film Forum.

Presumably Daan van der Have is going alright for himself, because maintaining his sprawling garden is quite an undertaking. Rather than flowers, he grows just about every consumable crop you can imagine. Fortunately, he hired Jan Freriks, one of the few remaining master gardeners fully versed in traditional techniques dating back to the gardens of Louis XIV, the Sun King. (No, he wasn’t there when they were first developed. Don’t be mean.) Together, they prune like nobody’s business and occasionally they discuss the weather or maybe pruning.

You could definitely call Portrait an observational documentary, but there really is not a lot to observe. We have been down this road many times with documentaries that quietly watch artists and craftsmen at work, but they usually give us more to engage with. For instance, photography publisher Gerhard Steidl emerges as a surprising passionate and rather witty figure in How to Make a Book with Steidl and Gottfried Helnwein has plenty to say about art and history in Lisa Kirk Colburn’s doc, but with Portrait, you’re largely on your own.

There are maybe some lessons to be learned about sustainable, locally grown produce or maybe just the value of working the soil and investing a little sweat equity in your property, but under Stapel’s approach, all take-aways will have to be absorbed through osmosis. A little context would definitely be helpful, especially with respect to who van der Have is and just how he can afford to put so much time and money into his garden.

Just so everyone understands, there is a lot of pruning in this film. Seriously, a lot. Maybe that works for you, maybe it doesn’t, but either way viewers should be forewarned. As cinema, it is just too slight and sparsely vegetated to recommend. For those who find PBS’s Victory Garden too fast-paced and hectic, Portrait of a Garden opens today (10/26) in New York, at Film Forum.

Schneider vs. Bax: Getting Bloody in the Dutch Wetlands

The Flemish Schneider and the Dutch Bax will fight a real Benelux grudge match, whether they want to or not. Instead of a steel cage, they will fight it out in the Dutch wetlands, using their weapon of choice: rifles with sniper-scopes. They are both hitman contracted by their agent to rub out each other in Alex van Warmerdam’s Schneider vs. Bax (trailer here), which releases today on DVD from Film Movement.

Schneider is a family man, with two adoring young daughters and a lovely wife who thinks he works as a troubleshooting engineer for a filling station company. The crusty booze and narcotics soused Bax is also sort of a family man, but his semi-estranged grown daughter Francesca bitterly resents him for being a chaotic, ineffectual parent. The hung-over Bax forgot Francesca will be visiting his ultra-white Ikea-looking cottage, so he will have to evict his young gothy lover tout suite. It also slipped his fog-encrusted mind that the shadowy Mertens would be luring his target right to his doorstep this very same morning.

Although his head is clear, Schneider is also having a hard morning. Since Martens neglected to tell him the surrounding marshes were protected, the visiting team hitman got spotted by a nature warden. That forces Schneider to return to his storage facility to change his disguise and vehicle. Things get even more complicated when a prostitute breaks in, hoping to hide from her abusive pimp.

Schneider vs. Bax is sort of like the art-house theater version of Mad Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy,” but van Warmerdam’s conception of slapstick humor truly has existential bite. The Dutch marshland is also wildly cinematic, adding something to S v. B akin to what the East Texas scrubland did for Blood Simple.

Thesp-helmer van Warmerdam is wonderfully cynical and dissolute as the world-weary Bax. In contrast, Tom Dewispelaere is rather rigid and aloof as the detail-oriented Schneider. They clearly have very different approaches to their job. Of course, nobody is really in the right here, but the survivor survives. Frankly, we are not intended to take a rooting interest. Instead, we should really just relax and enjoy as van Warmerdam rains down one-darned-thing-after-another on his morally compromised characters.

As soon as you get into the spirit of it, S v. B really is jolly fun. Van Warmerdam pulls off quite a feat of traffic direction, maintaining the almost farcical skulking in and out of bogs, around and under the cottage. The vibe approaches the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera, as reconceived by Quentin Tarantino. Highly recommended for fans of darkly comic capers, Schneider vs. Bax releases today (10/25) on DVD, from Film Movement.

Meat: The Dutch Cinematic Provocation Resurfaces

It is time to play “know your cuts of meat” or maybe rather “know your antisocial fetishes.” Either way, it will take place in a butcher’s shop. That usually means trouble in the movies and it is especially so in this Dutch establishment. Sex and death are both going on in the backroom during Victor Niuwenhuijs & Maaartje Seyferth’s Meat (not safe for anywhere trailer here), which releases today on VOD from Artsploitation.

Way back in 2010, Meat opened in Holland and scandalized the genre festival circuit. Then it effectively disappeared for North American audiences, because it really required an aesthetically fearless distributor like Artsploitation to get behind—so here it is now. We do not believe in trigger warnings, but pretty much all of them apply to Meat.

Roxy has a delightful part-time job in the boucherie getting sexually harassed by the unnamed butcher (at least he doesn’t look so bad compared to her abusive Turkish boyfriend, who has been stringing her along). The shop is relatively peaceful when the Butcher is making love to his prostitute wife in the meat locker, but the mood turns sour when she opens cavorts with her pimp. Despite his appalling behavior, Roxy is still down with Team Butcher, so she is quite distressed when the old man is apparently murdered.

To make matters even more surreal, the case is assigned to the soon to retire Inspector Mann, who might be the worst cop in Holland and also happens to be the spitting image of the Butcher. Naturally Roxie becomes the prime suspect, but Mann, Niuwenhuijs, and Seyferth are about as forthcoming on details of the crime as an Alain Robbe-Grillet novel.

By mixing the sordid exploitation of the most shocking grindhouse movies with the postmodern intellectualism of art house cinema at its most severe, Meat has something to alienate just about everyone. Yet, it has to be respected as a fearless work of auteurist cinema. Deliberately setting out to unnerve and discomfort viewers, Niuwenhuijs & Seyferth succeed smashingly. While The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover obviously provided inspiration, Meat’s excesses are all its own.

Regardless, Titus Muizelaar gives a remarkable dual performance as the Inspector and the Butcher, until they eventually blend back together—or whatever. Nellie Benner’s portrayal of Roxy is also jaw-droppingly fearless. We are talking about some truly raw and exposed work here from all parties.

Clearly, Niuwenhuijs & Seyferth are engaging with all connotations of the word meat, especially the carnal and carnivorous. It is does not always work. Frankly, Roxie’s compulsion to film all the outrages with her hand held camera was already a shopworn indie convention in the 1990s. Ultimately it just becomes too obscure for its own good down the stretch, but for the most part, there is merit and method to its madness. Recommended for the hardiest of cineastes who just want to see it for themselves, Meat is now available on VOD platforms, including Vimeo, from Artsploitation.

A Family Affair: Grandmother Dearest

Marianne Hertz might be the worst mother seen on film since Mommie Dearest, but at least Faye Dunway’s Joan Crawford was committed to parenthood on some level. Hertz apparently consigned her son Rob Fassaert to an orphanage for several years, like it was a couple hours of daycare. You could also call her a problematic grandmother for vastly different reasons as viewers will see in Tom Fassaert’s excruciatingly uncomfortable documentary, A Family Affair (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Do not confuse this film with the Brian Keith sitcom or the Sly Stone greatest hit. Fassaert’s Family Affair is the sort of doc that is so revealing, it goes past voyeurism to become a masochistic form of art cinema. When Rob Fassaert was three, he and his older brother Rene were given up for adoption. A few years later, Hertz reclaimed them, but she would be an unyieldingly cold and judgmental mother from that point on. As a child, the filmmaker assumed his father was an orphan, until his grandmother suddenly swept into their lives—and swept out just as quickly. Not surprisingly, his father still wrestles with issues of neglect and abandonment, while his uncle is a basically a shell of a man. Yet, he was intrigued enough to accept his grandmother’s unexpected invitation to her South African home.

At this point things really get awkward. As Fassaert struggles to interview Hertz for the project that will become A Family Affair, she professes a thoroughly creepy romantic interest in her grown grandson. It might be more a function of her extreme vanity or perhaps a desire to inflict further pain on her sons, but it is just gross.

Oh, but the Fassaert-Hertz family is just getting started. The documentarian grandson will briefly humanize his grandmother with revelations of her Jewish heritage and difficult experiences during WWII, but she undoes it all by really unveiling her dark side late in the third act. At one point, Hertz taunts Fassaert claiming he will never really know the truth about their family. Au contraire, madam. Most viewers will feel like they know more than enough straight dope on her family—too much, really.

This is not a fun film to watch. Frankly, it would be easier to understand Fassaert burning his footage rather than releasing this kind of dirty laundry into the world. Still, we have to give him credit for holding nothing back (as we can only assume). It is compelling as a train wreck, but any attempt to justify the gawking as an attempt to build awareness for issues of child neglect, mental health, or geriatric care are just reaching. Recommended for fans of extreme reality docs, A Family Affair opens this Friday (9/16) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

The Admiral: When the Dutch Outsailed England and Spain

It is the second most expensive Dutch film of all time, ranking just below Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book. It is hard to fathom how the budget for a WWII Dutch occupation drama could exceed a full scale Seventeenth Century naval epic. Maybe it was Verhoeven’s lattes. Regardless, the exploits of Michiel de Ruyter never look small or cheap on-screen in Roel Reiné’s The Admiral (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select cities.

In the Seventeenth Century, naval power was everything. Britain and Spain had it—and so did the Dutch, sort of. Despite the successes of the soon-to-be-late national hero, Admiral Maarten Tromp, the battered Dutch fleet is in need of an overhaul. Cantankerous Michiel de Ruyter is just the man to do it. He has the Orangist (Royalist) background that the rank-and-file seem to trust, but he has never been overtly political. After reluctantly accepting the position, de Ruyter rather surprises himself by throwing his lot in with the republicans and befriending their leader, Johan de Witt.

Holland was indeed a republic, predating the independent United States. In fact, it was quite a prosperous one, which made it a target multiple times over for the absolute monarchs of Spain and Britain. Of course, as Ben Franklin pointed out, having a republic is one thing. Keeping it is another. The Dutch would lose theirs for some time, but through no fault of de Ruyter. The titular admiral would even continue to serve under William III, who would do quite well for himself as part of the William and Mary tandem.

Reiné and screenwriter Lars Boom and Alex van Galen cogently condense quite a bit of Dutch political history into The Admiral, but the whole point of the film is the naval action. Reiné does not disappoint, bringing plenty of spectacle and bombast, but also clearly rendering the tactical maneuvering. Frankly, it is easier to follow what de Ruyter is planning than trying to make heads or tails of America’s Cup television coverage. Reiné can also stage quite an effective mob riot, which is nearly as cinematic, but less edifying.

Frank Lammers does not exactly cut a dashing figure but he is apparently a good likeness of the de Ruyter statues you can find in nearly every Dutch public park. He plays the admiral accordingly, with plenty of prickliness and salty gravitas. You can understand why men would sail into cannon fire for him. Similarly, Barry Atsma is charismatically fiery as the cunning but principled de Witt. The reliably villainous Charles Dance really pulls out all the sinister stops as the hedonistic, Machiavellian Charles II. However, Egbert-Jan Weber’s underwhelming William III never grows in stature, even when he starts to assert his power.

The bottom line for The Admiral is the naval action, which looks great. With its three specially constructed masted vessels, The Admiral is a good example of how to augment practical effects with CGI. Recommended for fans of seafaring action (consider it the Dutch equivalent of the Korean smash hit, The Admiral: Roaring Currents), Reiné’s The Admiral opens this Friday (3/11) in Los Angeles, at the Arena Cinema.

Tricked: Paul Verhoeven Harnesses the Dutch Internet

Perhaps Paul Verhoeven should have used this crowd-sourcing technique for Hollow Man. It is far from fool-proof, but at least he could have avoided its creepy rapiness. Instead, Verhoeven employed the distributed networking model for his hyped-up follow-up to his triumphant Dutch homecoming film Black Book. He started with four scripted minutes, relying on the internet to provide the rest of Tricked (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

In four minutes, Kim van Kooten establishes the eight main characters. The rest was crowd-sourced or “user-generated.” It sounds pretty straight forward, but Verhoeven and his cast talk about it in agonizing detail in the “making of” epk-ish film that screens ahead of the fifty-five minute Tricked. From all their talk of breakthroughs and innovations, you would think they were filming the first soundie. Perhaps the only surprising revelation is the relatively high quality of submissions. Verhoeven expected to lean on a handful of super-users, but he had binders full of contributions that were under consideration.

So it took hundreds of Dutch viewers to tell the tale of Remco, the philandering head of an architectural firm, who is under pressure from his two partners to sell out to the Chinese. At the worst possible time, Nadja, his former office hook-up returns from abroad with a massive baby bump. That gives his wife Ineke all kinds of attitude, but his current mistress Merel takes it more in stride. Since she is besties with Remco’s boozy party-girl daughter Lieke, she is not about to get all dramatic and call attention to their affair.

The fact that Tricked is a bit of a tonal mishmash really isn’t Verhoeven’s fault, since he really had no idea where it was headed. Likewise, the cast is also understandably tentative in the early going. Having no idea if their characters are ultimately sympathetic or detestable, they had to keep their options open. Frankly, the fact that it flows together as smoothly as it does is quite impressive. In fact, plenty of credit is due to Verhoeven and editor Job Ter Burg.

Veteran Dutch actor Peter Blok is appealingly roguish as Remco and Gaite Jensen is quite dynamic and engaging as the surprisingly proactive Merel. However, seven hundred Dutchmen should really have their heads examined for making Remco’s slacker son Tobias into a supposedly endearing antisocial pervert. Robert de Hoog does his best under the circumstances, but his scenes courting Merel are face-palm worthy.

Given the nature of the project, most of the blame for what does not work can also be distributed among hundreds of contributors. The one glaring exception is Fons Merkies’ ghastly score. Verhoeven and his cast put in a lot of work to make this gimmick look like legitimate cinema, but the carnival-style music makes you expect to see twenty or thirty clowns come piling out of a compact car.

Essentially, Tricked started out as an earnest attempt at sexual intrigue, but became a parody of sudsy melodramas. The important thing is it manages to be watchable in a less trainwreckish kind of way than some of Verhoeven’s notorious films (Showgirls anyone?). Recommended for the curious, Tricked opens today (2/26) in New York at the Cinema Village and also launches day-and-date on Fandor, but without the relentlessly self-congratulatory behind-the-scenes video, therefore making it the preferred viewing alternative.

Sundance ’16: Little Gangster

Rik Boskamp is probably lucky his father doesn’t make him wear wooden shoes. The widower has changed nothing in their home since the death of Boskamp’s mother, including the rotary phone and the top-loading VCR. However, it is Paul Boskamp’s meek submissiveness that directly leads to the bullying his son endures at school. However, when his father is promoted to a different branch office, the younger Boskamp takes advantage of the opportunity to create a new, mobbed-up persona in Arne Toonen’s Little Gangster (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Actually, Paul Boskamp did not want to accept the transfer in the first place, forcing his son to resort to a little forgery. It is probably good training for his reinvented identity, Rikki Boscampi, mobster’s son. After throwing out the nebbish clothes his father prefers, “Rikki” forces them to don their old, retro 1970s threads, which give off the desired gangster aura. A couple tweaks here and there convinces his new school mates he is the real deal. Naturally, he starts patronizing the local Italian market run by the sultry Gina. Boscampi would be delighted to fix her up with his father, but that might be asking too much. Unfortunately, he will have more pressing problems when a bullying father-and-son tandem from before also relocate to their new neighborhood.

It is hard to believe Little Gangster comes from the director of the Tarantino-esque drug dealer movie Black Out, but here it is. Toonen certainly keeps thing lively. Thor Braun is okay as the scheming Boskampi, while Henry van Loon deftly walks a fine line, making his father a put-upon doormat, but not cringingly so. Meral Polat also gives the film periodic energy boosts as Gina. Unfortunately, none of the other kids really register as anything but bullies or victims.

Screenwriter Lotte Tabbers’ adaptation of Marjon Hoffman’s YA novel manages to have it both ways, advising “to thine own self be true,” while more-or-less rewarding Rikki Boscampi’s initiative. Of course, ten year-olds are not overly fond of bitterly tragic endings, so there are only so many lessons he can safely learn the hard way. Despite the subtitles, Gangster is easily accessible and highly digestible. Breezily entertaining for kids and somewhat amusing for adults, Little Gangster screens again tomorrow (1/30) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

NYICFF ’15: Secrets of War

You’re supposed to make mistakes when you’re a kid. That’s all part of the growing up process. Unfortunately, there is a much smaller margin for error when an oppressive foreign power occupies your country during a time of war. That is the environment two Dutch twelve year-olds face in Dennis Bots’ Secrets of War (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

Initially, Tuur Ramakers and Lambert Nijskens are inseparable friends, but their families have already aligned on different sides of the war. Lambert’s politically ambitious father has become the town’s leading National Socialist collaborator. As a result, Tuur’s parents have largely cut their social ties with the Nijskenses. They might also be taking an even a more active role in the resistance, but they have shielded Tuur from any compromising knowledge. Naturally, he picks up on this and resents it. Nevertheless, young Ramakers and Nijskens largely carry on as they always did, thanks in part to the latter’s reluctance to join the Hitler Youth. However, everything changes when Maartje Holtermans arrives at school.

Supposedly, Holtermans is visiting her aunt and uncle from the north, as kids would do during the war. They live in a rather provincial town after all, but they are far from immune from air raids. Nevertheless, there is obviously more to Holtermans’ story than she lets on (but the audience should tweak to it right away). Of course, Ramakers and Nijskens are slower on the up-take, because they are kids. Regrettably, this will have dire consequences when three becomes a crowd. As feelings develop between the more sophisticated Holtermans and the bad boy Ramakers, the resentful Nijskens will do something impulsively rash.

Sure, most festival goers will have seen a fair number of thematically similar films—Martin Koolhaven’s occupation-set coming-of-age story Winter in Wartime being a particularly relevant comparative. However, Secrets is surprisingly smart and subtle showing how typically overheated adolescent drama could take on wider tragic implications. Things get dark and desperate, but in grimly logical rather than contrived ways.

The trio of young primaries are also quite polished and work remarkably well in-tandem. Maas Bronkhuyzen oozes mischievous charisma as Ramakers and Pippa Allen’s Holtermans could pass for a pre-teen Natalie Portman. Poor Joes Brauers is stuck with most of the film’s ignoble work, but he still manages to convey all of Nijskens’ humanizing insecurities and jealousies. Although far from a driving element, the white-haired local vicar is also refreshingly portrayed as a (much harassed) man of principle.

Karin van Holst Pellekaan’s adaptation of Jacques Vriens’ YA novel forthrightly addresses the realities of the Holocaust, but it stops short of showing viewers the actual horrors. Arguably, it could serve as an effective introduction to the National Socialist genocide without overwhelming young viewers. It definitely reflects a twelve year-old’s perspective, but that makes it quite touching for adult viewers. Recommended with a good deal of enthusiasm, Secrets of War screens tomorrow (3/7) at the IFC Center and Sunday (3/15) at the SVA Theatre, as part of this year’s NYICFF.

App: This is Why Flip Phones are Coming Back

If you work for Sony, you probably don’t need a Dutch genre filmmaker to tell you how scary the internet can be just now. However, if you are a selfie taking, social network junkie who can hardly put down their smart phones, perhaps you could use another cautionary tale. Arriving at a zeitgeisty moment, while Sony and JLaw are still reeling from their respective hackings, a college student will indeed struggle with digital technology at it most pernicious in Bobby Boermans’ App (trailer here) which launches today on DVD from RAM Releasing.

Initially, technology is not all bad for Anna Rijnders. After all, an experimental implant is keeping her extreme sports dunderhead of a brother alive (hello, foreshadowing). Then the morning after a party at her ex-boyfriend’s Rijnders wakes up with a hangover and a nasty piece of scumware installed on her phone. It is called IRIS and it has an attitude. While it feeds her a few answers during philosophy class, it also has a wicked sense of initiative. For instance, recording and posting naked videos is one of its favorite tricks. It also makes calls at inopportune moments. As we can tell from the prelude, it has already driven victims to suicide.

Just buy a new phone, right? Rijnders tries that. It only makes IRIS angry. Frankly, much of the app’s reign of terror defies logical explanations, but at least it convincingly shores up Rijnders’ actions and motivations. It is sort of like the old cult favorite Electric Dreams, depicting the technology of the day running impossibly amok, but if you buy into it, the films chug along pretty smoothly.

In the case of App, Boermans and screenwriter Robert Arthur Jansen tap into a real and growing paranoia over handheld gadgets and accidental over-shares. Much has been made of its “second screen” component, allowing viewers to simultaneously see supplemental scenes and stills via the real life IRIS app.  Fortunately, the film holds up just fine on one screen, because voluntarily downloading IRIS just seems like bad karma.

Without question, App benefits from its lead performance. Hannah Hoekstra (recently seen in the pretty good Irish horror film The Canal) is no stupid teenager or mindless scream queen. She has a smart, dynamic presence that never taxes the audience’s patience. Obviously, she is not making movies because she is plain, but she feels relatively real and down-to-earth as Rijnders. While she interacts with dozens of supporting cast members, Hoekstra is the only one getting appreciable character development time, but she carries the film rather well.

When was the last time digital and wireless technology were a force for good in a film? Maybe You’ve Got Mail? While there seems to be something problematic about that, this is probably not the right time to argue the point, given the recent cyber-terror attacks. As a result, this should be App’s time to shine. In fact, it is a good film to catch up with on DVD. It is occasionally preposterous, but always solidly entertaining. Recommended for international thriller fans, App is now available for one and two screen home viewing, from Film Movement’s RAM Releasing.

The New Rijksmuseum: Ten Years without the Night Watch

Its restoration ran about five years late and millions of Euros over budget.  For roughly ten years, the Rijksmuseum and its Vermeers and Rembrandts were closed to the public, frustrating art lovers and hardly doing any favors for Dutch tourism.  Blame the Dutch Cyclists Union.  In order to save their members a small detour, they successfully blocked the museum’s initial renovation plans with the local authorities, handing the institution the first of its many costly setbacks.  Oeke Hoogendijk witnesses them all and documented them in the observational epic The New Rijksmuseum (trailer here), which has its world theatrical premiere this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Nobody thought the process would take as long as it did, especially Hoogendijk.  Eventually, she distilled two hundred seventy five hours of film into two hundred twenty eight minutes of film, which Film Forum will screen as two distinct parts.   Essentially, the two parts are evenly divided by the stewardships of two very different general-directors.  As part one opens, Ronald de Leeuw has boundless optimism for the Rijksmuseum’s recreation, considering the objections of the Cyclists Union baseless and parochial.  He was right on the merits, but wildly naïve on the political realities.

For years, 13,000 cyclists had availed themselves of the bike thoroughfare running beneath the museum and they had no intention of stopping, regardless of the Rijksmuseum’s plans.  Ironically, Spanish architects Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz had won the Rijksmuseum commission precisely because of their design for a grand entrance that would sacrifice the bike path.  Suddenly, they were forced to revise their plans, jettisoning the very elements they were chosen for. It will be the first of many absurdist developments. It would also send a signal to contractors and bureaucrats that perhaps the Rijksmuseum was not the invulnerable titan they might have assumed.

Tiring of wrestling with nuisance complaints, endless red tape, and budget-busting contractor estimates, de Leeuw eventually bails.  He is replaced by the more vigorous and political astute Wim Pijbes.  However, Pijbes cannot resist taking another run at the original Cruz y Ortiz entrance scheme, causing quite a stir amongst the bureaucratic class.

Stylistically, New Rijksmuseum is sort of like a Wiseman documentary in which a plot unexpectedly breaks out. Hoogendijk follows a strict Direct Cinema approach, avoiding on-camera interaction with any of her subjects. Yet, there is real drama unfolding, with the museum’s very fate at stake. When a polished professional like Pijbes goes off on an extended on-camera rant, you know it is a bad sign.

Yet, Hoogendijk also captures the idealism of the curatorial staff, dedicating considerable time to their painstaking restoration work (on individual pieces in their respective collections) and their hopeful exhibition plans.  Perhaps the most inspired subplot follows the acquisition of two striking Japanese Temple Guard statues that will remain unseen for years, with commentary from Menno Fitski, the Asian Pavilion curator, who has exactly the sort of enthusiasm you would want from a museum curator.

Indeed, it is the staff’s spirit and dedication in the face of crushing delays that makes the film rather inspiring.  Wisely, Hoogendijk holds the Rijksmuseum’s signature piece in reserve for the climatic conclusion, but its intrinsic value as an institution is expressed in nearly every frame.  Indeed, it is worth protecting from the Vandals, like the Cyclists Union’s Marolein de Lange, who literally sneers at the word “culture.”  Recommended for all art and architecture lovers, The New Rijksmuseum opens this Wednesday (12/18) in New York at Film Forum.  While the screenings will be in two parts, there is two-for-one admission to both parts, with the flexibility to choose same-day or later screenings of the second installment.

BFF ’13: Black Out

Those idiots from the Hangover franchise have nothing on Jos Vreeswijk, who is about to wake up next to a dead body, a smoking gun, and no memory of the last twenty four hours.  He has one day to get it all sorted if he wants to make it to the church in time for his wedding in Arne Toonen’s Black Out (trailer here), which screens during the 2013 Brooklyn Film Festival.

Vreeswijk was once a criminal, but he went straight.  It seemed to take, up until the point he woke up with a corpse in his bed.  His fiancée Caroline knows he has a shady past, but she accepts him nonetheless.  His prospective father-in-law is less understanding, but he seems to be up to his eyeballs in the mess enveloping Vreeswijk.  Evidently, it involves twenty kilos of cocaine two rival gang lords think he owes them.  To get back to the straight-and-narrow, Vreeswijk will have to boost somebody else’s coke.  There seems to be plenty around, but holding onto it is a trickier proposition.

Black Out is a darkly comic, slightly cartoony criminal caper which hums along quite energetically.  You have your ballet dancers-turned Russian mobsters, psycho baby doll enforcers, malevolent grandpas, and out of their depth dog groomers all getting in on the action.  Yet, it is the steely Robert Conrad-esque Raymond Thirry who anchors the bedlam quite effectively as the reformed everyman, Vreeswijk.  Despite all the betrayal and confusion exploding around him, he is always manly and never whiny.

Likewise, Kim van Kooten is pleasantly down to earth and pragmatic as the innocent Caroline.  All the crazy acting out is left to the rest of the cast, who gorge on scenery like a Bonanza buffet.  Arguably, the subtlest, most intriguing supporting character is Renee Fokker’s Inez, the “Connoisseur of Coke” and formerly Vreeswijk’s close associate.

Tonnen is obviously influenced by Tarantino and the recent bumper crop of Scandinavian noirs, but even if he never reinvents the wheel, he keeps things punchy and pacey.  Violence and eccentricity are liberally mixed together, but Black Out still feels fresh thanks to Thirry’s grounded center.  A slickly entertaining one-darned-thing-after-another gangster romance-beatdown, Black Out is recommended pretty enthusiastically for genre fans when it screens this coming Sunday (6/2) and Monday (6/3) at Windmill Studios, as part of the 2013 Brooklyn Film Festival.