Pants in Motion

I caught up on a couple of DVDs this week, films that I have been meaning to watch for freaking years, but never got around to.

First off was Ronin on Tuesday night. Without the car chases, it’s a 7, but the chases alone make it an 8. So kinetic, so real. No CGI, so you feel the weight of the cars. De Niro wears a face of pure strain behind the wheel, which is certainly the most realistic depiction of somebody struggling to control a ton of wayward metal. I’ve ripped the DVD to listen to the commentary, which is apparently all about the making of the chase sequences.

Last night I watched the original Dutch version of The Vanishing (Spoorloos) from 1988. The blurb suggested that the secret of the missing girlfriend was ‘more chilling than I could imagine’, but it turned out that my guess was far worse. Chaining somebody up and slowly – over the course of many months – feeding on their body parts in front of them would be a launching point for me. If you can’t think of something worse than that, go back to the drawing board. Still a great film, though.