George Sluizer's Spoorloos

Dutch cinema is like most of European cinema a neglected chapter, unfortunately. Sluizer's Spoorloos (The Vanishing) is a fantastic film that successfully depicts emotionally frustration and the mind of a sociopath, which moreover in the context of the horror genre ends quite beautiful.

Thurston from Sonic Youth present the film like this:

"Totally unnerving psychodrama where a man’s girlfriend is abducted and, after searching for her for three years, he begins to receive messages from the abductor. And then it gets veeerrry weird. "

Veel plezier...

Sam Mendes and Alan Ball's American Beuty (1999) ---

”... because there is nothing worse in life than being ordinary…”

… claims Angela, one of American Beauty’s characters, which she couldn’t be more wrong about according to the theme of the film.

The ordinary contains a beauty that is extremely real, which a semi-psycho character in the film wants to express by filming everything from people’s (and his own) private life to flying plastic bags.

In the scene below he tries to express why he is doing all this videotaping for a girl (the daughter of the main character) he has fallen in love with – an ordinary girl that is dreaming about bigger bobbies.

Craig Lucas' Birds of America (2008)

Well! Birds of America is maybe not deeply original and particular new thinking, but it's good - charming, a little rebellious, and very reflective.

It's about a dysfunctional family, where the oldest brother is the main character. As the oldest brother he is clearly the most responsible, and the one who from confirmative perspective has the most ideal life.

His wife is quite good looking, he is a professor, and his big house is in a neighborhood, where people have similar jobs as him.

He has in other words achieved some very fundamental goals in his life, but deep inside he is not really happy.

What seems to worry him most is his family. The brother is mentally sick, and the sister is living like she is 20 even though she has turned 30. The relationship with his wife is also problematic, and he does not really swing with the neighbors and the colleagues - but luckily his fucked up siblings are on their way to save him from anything he needs to worry about.