Summertime movie madness
THE LURING DARKNESS OF THE CINEMA
THE LION KING
SO LONG, MY SON
DONNIE DARKO
DIEGO MARADONA
DIRECTOR: JON FAVREAU RELEASE: 17/7
DIRECTOR: WANG XIAOSHUAI, STARRING: WANG JING-CHUN, YONG MEI, QI XI RELEASE: 24/7
DIRECTOR: RICHARD KELLY, STARRING: JAKE GYLLENHAAL, JENA MALONE RELEASE: 24/7
DIRECTOR: ASIF KAPADIA RELEASE: 31/7
“That’s what’s so illogical, you know, about being a Smurf. What’s the point of living…if you don’t have a dick?” Donnie Darko wonders in the cult classic of the same name. The schizophrenic teenager – a breakthrough role for the young Jake Gyllenhaal – gets told by a giant rabbit that the end of the world is nigh, he tries to understand how people might travel through time via wormholes, and he hates teachers who simplistically divide the world into good and evil. The cinematic release in 2001 was no triumph. It took a long time for a group of people to realize that Richard Kelly’s film debut was almost as atmospheric, beautiful, and mysterious as David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Kelly’s later films were not a success and he went off the radar. Hopefully the re-release of Donnie Darko will catapult his talent back out of anonymity.
Apart from the Vesuvius, nothing set Naples alight like Diego Maradona. He may be something of a joke now, but in the 1980s, he was the best footballer in the world. When he made Naples the champions against Juventus, AC Milan, and all the other rich clubs from the north of Italy, the Neapolitans elevated the kid from the slums of Buenos Aires to the status of demigod. But the city where even the devil would need bodyguards also orchestrated his downfall. How? To find out, you have to go and see the new film by Asif Kapadia, the man who made two memorable cinematic documentaries – Amy and Senna – about icons who died too soon. Interest in football is not a requirement for this film, which shows how Diego Maradona became less and less Diego and more and more Maradona. It is thus more akin to a Greek tragedy than a sports documentary.
It was no great surprise when the Brussels International Film Festival awarded this Chinese family epic the Grand Prix. In February, the actors had already won several prizes at the Berlin International Film Festival and director Wang Xiaoshuai had already demonstrated his skill in the film Beijing Bicycle. Over the space of three hours, his social-critical, social-realist, but above all very moving film shows us how radically China has changed over the past thirty years and how profoundly politics can indeed affect a human life. The prohibition to have more than one child and an unspeakably difficult tragedy ruin the lives of the initially very happily married couple Yaojun and Liyun. The past and the bijschrijft present are interwoven, highlighting all the more how cyclical life can sometimes be.
The children that The Lion King lured to the cinema back in the day now have children of their own. To keep the circle of life turning, Disney invested a small fortune in remaking its great animated classic of the 1990s. CGI is now so advanced that it has become possible to make Simba, Scar, Nala, Timon, and Pumbaa look like a real lion cub, scarred lion, lioness, meerkat, and warthog, and to make them talk, act, and react as though they were characters in a Shakespearean masterpiece. If you don’t believe it’s possible, just watch the trailer and you will immediately see how majestic the savannah looks. Who will be most impressed, today’s children or those of yesteryear?
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