Toon Agterberg Movies
- 1991
Personal issues centering around whether it is being loyal or duplicitous to admit or deny the multinational nature of one's origins dominate this slight drama. In the story, Anton has a German mother, the assistant to a Dutch stage magician. He was born in Germany during the Second World War but moved with his family to the Netherlands as a toddler. Work was hard to come by, and stage magicians were not in great demand, so times were hard. In fact, Anton's mother took him with her and returned to live with her mother in Germany. Sometime later, his father took him back to the Netherlands, on the pretext that it was just for a holiday visit, and insisted that he remain with him there, citing fears that his son would become a "Kraut." Anton grew up pretending to be all Dutch and later becomes involved in the television industry. He is married, with children. However, he has so deeply internalized his father's wish that he be 100% Dutch that it takes a visit back to Germany to see his mother for him to admit to his family that he is, in fact, half German. Ironically, a short time later, at a Netherlands vs. German team soccer match, he forgets himself sufficiently to join the crowd in jeering the German team. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1989
The title of this Dutch children's film translates to At Stalling Speed. A group of resourceful kids, left to their own devices, build a rocket. For a while, it looks as though they'll actually be able to take off! Harsh Reality rears its head when the kids come across a stash of stolen money. American audiences may find the film's 110 minutes too leisurely for so thin a story. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Toon Agterberg, Herman van Veen, (more)
- 1991
- PG13
Steve Soderbergh did a 180 degree turnaround from his debut film sex, lies, and videotape with Kafka, a stark art-film fable for literature majors. Jeremy Irons plays a fictional Franz Kafka, living in Prague in 1919. By day, Kafka works in a massive, impersonal insurance company. At night, he spends his time alone writing stories about men who turn into giant cockroaches. Although quiet and solitary, he becomes a suspect in a murder investigation conducted by Inspector Grubach (Armin Mueller-Stahl) when a friend of his turns up dead. Rather than being harassed by Grubach, Kafka decides to investigate his friend's murder on his own. Kafka speaks to his dead friend's girlfriend, Gabriela (Theresa Russell) and talks with gravestone carver Bizzlebek (Jeroen Krabbe). Kafka follows the clues to the Castle, a menacing tower that casts its shadow over the city and houses files on everything. He winds his way through the cellars and tunnels of the Castle, where he encounters the evil and insidious Dr. Murnau (Ian Holm), whom he hopes holds the solution to the murder. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeremy Irons, Theresa Russell, (more)
Spetters further elaborates on the themes of sexual obsession previously probed in director Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight (1973). Hans Van Tongeren, Toon Agterberg and Maarten Spanjer play, respectively, Reen, Eve and Hans, a closely-knit group of teenage motorcycle lovers who idolize local cycling champion Witkamp (played by Rutger Hauer, the star of Delight). Unfortunately, the adolescents' attempts to rebel take a dark and brutal turn when Van Tongeren is permanently injured in a road accident and Agterberg is gang raped by a group of homosexuals. While the other two young men lust after Fientje (Renee Soutendjik), a promiscuous hashhouse waitress, Agterberg responds to the rape by coming out and taking Fientje's gay brother as a lover. Verhoeven is artistically and sexually graphic in juxtaposing "cycle love" with the friends' carnal interrelations. The title of Spetters is an indigenous triple-entendre -- it refers to the Dutch vernacular for "grease spatterings" (both the oily renderings left behind by the motorcycles commandeered by the film's central characters and the grease slung by Soutendjik), is a slang term for male ejaculate, and was frequently used in the seventies and eighties to refer to people who are sexually appealing ("That girl is a spetter.")
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hans Van Tongeren, Renée Soutendijk, (more)
