Kees Kasander Movies

A mother and daughter find themselves locked in an ugly battle over the same man in this drama from writer and director Andrea Arnold. Mia Williams (Katie Jarvis) is 15 years old and lives in a shabby apartment block with her mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), and younger sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths). Mia is a reckless and rebellious teenager who frequently argues with her mother and sister and has run afoul of the authorities at school, leading to her being suspended. With plenty of time on her hands, Mia spends her days drinking when she can find alcohol and partying in a empty flat near her apartment. Joanne is a single mother, and she's begun dating a new man, Connor (Michael Fassbender); when Joanne brings him home to meet the girls, Mia is immediately attracted to him, and it's soon clear Connor feels the same way about her. Mia attempts to seduce Connor to take him away from her mother, and when she succeeds, Joanne's greatest anger is not with the man who has slept with her underaged daughter, but the girl who is now a rival for the affections of her lover. Fish Tank was an official selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A troubled teenager embraces a dangerous subculture of hate in this hard-hitting Dutch drama. Frankie (Robert de Hoog) is 17 years old and growing up aimless in the late '70s. Frankie doesn't want to do much with his life besides listening to punk rock and getting high with his best friend, Jeffrey (Juliann Ubbergen), and while he has a close relationship with his mother, Anna (Sylvia Poorta), he clearly doesn't care for his dad, Simon (John Buijsman). When Anna is diagnosed with cancer, Frankie becomes distraught and is soon falling into delinquency. As Frankie develops a taste for violence and vandalism, he's welcomed into a gang of racist skinheads and begins joining them on their periodic raids. But while Frankie finds acceptance with his new friends, it drives him away from Jeffrey, who is black, and opens the wounds between himself and Simon, who is Jewish and spent part of his youth in a Nazi concentration camp. Skin was a rare theatrical film project for television director Hanro Smitsman. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A disgraced European football (read: soccer) player inadvertently winds up in the 13th Century after breaking into his mother's advanced physicals laboratory and using her experimental time machine to try and correct the mistake that got his team knocked clean out of the competition. It was the final minutes of a decisive game, and had Dolf (Joe Flynn) nailed the crucial goal, his team would have had a shot at the title. He only wanted to go back in time a couple of hours, but somehow he overshot his intended time by about eight centuries. Once there, Dolf comes into contact with the plucky Jenne, who's about to lead 8000 youngsters in the Children's Crusade. But while Dolf's 21st Century smarts quickly earn him the role of group leader, he will have to summon both strength and bravery in order to prevent the children from being enslaved by the 13th Century's most notorious tyrant. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A man who appraises art for a living investigates a band of talented but ruthless criminals in this international thriller. Patrick Donovan (Scot Williams) is an American art historian who travels to Venice at the request of Allart Van Beunigen (Rutger Hauer), the curator of one of the city's most prestigious museums, Galleria dell'Accademia. Van Beunigen wants Donovan to verify that several of his prize works are authentic and not forgeries, but one of them, Giorgione's "The Tempest," is stolen before he can give it an examination. With the city on a flood watch that could destroy the museum's priceless collection, Donovan is forced to play private eye in order to find the lost painting, and finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving expert art forgers and privileged collectors. Among the characters who cross Donovan's path during his search are Van Beunigen's beautiful daughter Chiara (Natalia Verbeke), her elderly paramour Paul Valenzin (Malcolm McDowell), Paul's sinister personal assistant Tedeschi (Gaetano Carotenuto), sexy hotel manager Dina (Valentina Cervi), multi-millionaire art enthusiast Taddeo Rossi (Paul Guilfoyle), and a police detective (Yura Marin) whose recent investigation ties Donovan to the work of a serial killer. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Marine biologist Dr. Roger Payne has dedicated four decades to studying whales and campaigning for their protection; his groundbreaking studies of whale songs and habitat pollution helped lay the foundation for the ocean conservation movement. This evocative documentary combines the natural history of whales with the story of Payne's life and career, and raises important questions about man's responsibility to the Earth and its creatures. ~ Carly Wray, Rovi

In August of 1972, John Wojtowicz entered a Chase bank in Brooklyn with another, younger man, a near stranger he'd met in a bar, Sal Naturile. The two tried to rob the bank, but things went awry, and a 14-hour standoff with the police ensued. Over the course of this ordeal, Wojtowicz made it known that he was robbing the bank to get money for his male lover's sex change operation. The story caught the attention of screenwriter Frank Pierson, who pitched it to director Sidney Lumet with Al Pacino playing the lead. The Hollywood version, of course, turned out to be Dog Day Afternoon, the classic 1970s crime film. But what happened to the real Wojtowicz? Dutch filmmaker Walter Stokman explores the events depicted in the film, and their long-term effects on the people involved, in his documentary, Based on a True Story. Stokman visits the crime scene. The bank is no longer there, but Wojtowicz lives nearby. Stokman interviews former bank employees (one of whom wrote and recorded a song about her experience), cops, and FBI agents, along with Wojtowicz's ex-wife, Carmen Bifulco, Pierson, and Lumet. He pieces together a portrait of Wojtowicz and his sad love affair with transsexual Liz Eden. But he has trouble getting Wojtowicz himself on film. In phone recordings, the ex-con makes escalating demands for money and control of the documentary, and threatens Stokman with both withdrawal of his participation and physical harm. At one point, Wojtowicz tells the filmmaker, "The documentary is not yours. The documentary is mine." Based on a True Story was shown at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Iconoclastic director Peter Greenaway begins his most ambitious project to date with this feature, the first in a proposed series of films, television programs, and multimedia projects that examine the contents of 92 suitcases, each revealed by title character Tulse Henry Purcel Luper. Broken into three sections spanning 1928 to 1940, The Tulse Luper Suitcases: Part One follows our young hero from age 10, when he is reprimanded by his father for scrawling some graffiti on a wall in his desolate South Wales neighborhood. Years later, Tulse (JJ Field) is a desert explorer who winds up being further punished by the aptly-named dominatrix Passion Hockmeister (Caroline Dhavernas). Finally, in the film's last section, Tulse is in Antwerp at the start of World War II, where he ends up being imprisoned by Nazis. Told in a fractured, non-narrative style, The Tulse Luper Suitcases also incorporates many inter-titles, superimposed images, an ever-present narrator presented in a picture-within-picture format, intentionally fake-looking sets, and many, many references to other Greenaway films and characters. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

Filmmaker Larry Clark reunites with Kids screenwriter Harmony Korine, with some additional directorial assistance from cinematographer Ed Lachman, for this look at a group of troubled teens and their guardians living in Southern California. The film opens at a skate park, where a troubled character takes his own life; it then proceeds to chronicle the somewhat-interrelated lives of his classmates. The audience is introduced to Tate (James Ransome), a young man living in relative misery with his board-game-playing grandparents. Also tormented by his living situation is Claude (Stephen Jasso), a quiet, shy teen constantly henpecked by his brutish father (Wade Andrew Williams). Meanwhile, the vapid Shawn (James Bullard) occasionally trades verbal spars with his mother, in between leaving the house for sex sessions with his girlfriend's mom. Finally there is Peaches (Tiffany Limos), living alone with her devoutly religious father as she covertly experiments with her boyfriend (Mike Apaletegui). Though Ken Park played at such festivals as Toronto and Telluride in the fall of 2002, it would languish on the shelf for months and months afterward, as its explicit content made finding a U.S. distributor near-impossible. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

Controversial director Peter Greenaway returns to the screen after the critical drubbing he received after 8 1/2 Women (1999). A staging of an opera he wrote in 1994, this work covers the lives and mysterious deaths of ten composers (both real and fictional) from Anton Weber in 1945 to John Lennon in 1980. The opera focuses on fictitious composer number six, Juan Manuel de Rosa. Reconstructing his life leading up to the composer's death in the Uruguayan desert in 1952, the film primarily takes place in a slaughterhouse where Rosa lived and worked. Married to the slaughterhouse owner's daughter Esmeralda, the couple at first makes love constantly, until Rosa becomes transfixed by a horse. In spite of Esmeralda's weird attempts to render herself equine, Rosa's sexual obsession remains unmoved. Typical of the director, the film incorporates a number of baroque devices including screen insets, scrolling text, and naked dancers in grease paint. This film was screened at the 1999 Venice Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Peter Greenaway directed this elliptical and visually intricate tale of the far side of erotic and intellectual attraction. As a girl, Nagiko would receive a special gift each year from her father: a calligrapher (Ken Ogata) who would carefully paint a poem on her face, as her aunt (Hideko Yoshida) read aloud from The Pillow Book, a classic Japanese text on the art of love. As Nagiko (Vivian Wu) reached adulthood, her father insisted on putting a stop to this ritual, and he persuaded her to marry the nephew of his publisher (Ken Mitsuishi). But Nagiko is not satisfied with her husband, and after finding success as a model, she seeks a lover who will indulge her fondness for literature by writing verse on her naked body. In time, she finds happiness with a British expatriate named Jerome (Ewan McGregor), who persuades her to use his body as paper for her poetry, but the interference of her father's publisher (Yoshi Oida) gives their relationship a tragic turn. Greenaway deliberately mistranslated some of the French and Japanese dialogue for The Pillow Book, hoping that the occasionally fractured language would give the film a "Tower of Babel" quality. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and his legacy have achieved sacred-cow iconic status throughout much of the modern world. This short 52-minute video not only illuminates less-well known aspects of the great biologist's life and career, but also serves to return him to a more human dimension. The filmmakers accomplish this through a dozen and a half short, ironic vignettes, all taking place in the great man's office/study; each vignette is introduced with titles in quaint Victorian English. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi