POLL Verhoeven

Fourth Man was a belter, Verhoeven does not make bad movies ever but I know people who I'm gonna ignore will disagree. I'm voting RoboCop here because I think it will be the movie he's most remembered for, because it spawned 14 million straight-to-video rip-offs and because it totally fleshes out all his hi-larious cynical old fuck capitalism fetishes with the best splatter to laughs ratio.

Also cankles kind of otm

or to expand, Blade Runner is aight but it's fucking shit at filming PKD whereas Total Recall is way closer to his spirit.

Black Book was a great movie and totally recommended to anyone who hasn't seen it, but Starship Troopers and Robocop are some obscenely classic re-re-re-watchable shit. Tough choice.

Fuck. And Total Recall. Still haven't seen Showgirls though. Sounds amazing.

"The Fourth Man" and "Soldier of Orange" are both absolutely perfect. The rest of his work? Not so much.

Okay, I'll give ya "Robocop" as well.

I always assumed he'd had some sort of frontal lobotomy between his Dutch films and his Hollywood films, as seemingly all thought, finesse and restraint went right out the window.

Hmmm, I wonder if comedy anarchist Verhoeven might be doing that deliberately or not?

I'm convinced the lobotomy is just "veneer". You could assume that Starship Troopers is just a silly movie he made and that the critique was unintentional. But he is aware of it. Sort of adopted the Hollywood fluo-silliness but simultaneously mocking American culture.

Yeah I dunno how anyone could watch those war propaganda "The More You Know" shorts/their Robocop predecessors and not see Verhoeven with hand outstretched and perpendicular to the face, thumb touching the nose.

I have a friend who honestly swears that "Showgirls" is actually an extended, malicious practical joke by Verhoeven on Elizabeth Berkley.

hahahahaha

there's a weird meta overlap in showgirls, where vacuous, ambitious elizabeth berkley's sex appeal is being exploited as a commodity in a movie about ambitious, vacuous girls whose sex appeal is exploited as a commodity

what's total recall missing in the PKD checklist?

its not that it misses anything so much as it ADDS a totally inappropriate level of violence and action movie silliness. The body count in PKD's stuff is usually pretty low, there's never any of this "let's run around shooting people" shit

That's because books aren't films, and films shouldn't try to be books.

Also I can imagine Verhoeven not giving much of a stuff about his source material.

I'll grant you that the bodycount oneliner action is more ahnold than PKD but:

“On Mars”, Quail said hoarsely, “I killed a man. After getting past fifteen bodyguards. Somearmed with sneaky-pete guns, the way you are.” He had been trained, by Interplan, over afive year period to be an assassin. A professional killer. He knew ways to take out armedadversaries ... such as these two officers; and the one with the ear-receiver knew it, too.If he moved swiftly enough—The gun fired. But he had already moved to one side, and at the same time he choppeddown the gun-carrying officer. In an instant he had possession of the gun and was coveringthe other, confused, officer"

owned

http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Portals/9/images/diversity/songbirds/quail.jpg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Starship Troopers? SCANDAL

Allow me to present a rebuttal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdZqKVcI9m8

Admittedly, Robocop was bogged down by an inexplicable amount of Boddicker-free filler, but I think it's a strong movie even with all that stuff about the metal policeman.

closeted gayz voyed for Casper whipping scene

(I abstained)

Verhoeven trivia:

In this Flesh + Blood scene, Jennifer Jason Leigh's maid is played by none other than BART SIMPSON.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad2LNbqgusI

for me it's black book and show girls in a tie
then robocop and starship trooper tied for second
then total recall
then all the rest

haven't seen fourth man or soldier of orange though

Showgirls 7
Black Book 6

You people are mad, or on drugs. Or both.

on mad drugs

top 4 movies OTM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3YIU64sy8A

HA HA HA, you think this is the real Quaid...? ... IT IS!

Didn't ever see the results but YAY Robocop/Total Recall split!

http://www.avclub.com/articles/for-his-next-awesomely-insane-thing-paul-verhoeven,46412/

I watched a bunch of trailers for his lesser known films (Rutger Hauer seems to be in most of them), Flesh+Blood appealed most. Katie Tippel looked intriguing too. Anyone seen the majority of these?

Spetters, Soldier of Orange, Fourth Man and Turkish Delight are all worth watching

Flesh & Blood is great, Michael Parkinson walked out of it in disgust

Didn't ever see the results but YAY Robocop/Total Recall split!

― boring movies are the most boring (Eric H.), Wednesday, September 2, 2009 4:01 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Widespread critical appreciation of both of these films make me feel like "taste" is not completely arbitrary, b/c I remember even as an 11/12-year-old watching them feeling like there was something special about them beyond the typical action flick.

http://variety.com/2016/film/global/first-look-paul-verhoevens-elle-trailer-isabelle-huppert-1201699088/

Could be trouble, but at this point I trust him.

oh! i get it! i'm dreaming! this is all part of the delightful vacation your company has sold me.

From the Guardian's Cannes coverage:

“We thought it would be an American movie,” says Verhoeven. “We basically translated the novel into English and I knew a very good American scriptwriter. We were basically replacing Paris with Chicago or Seattle. It was only when we got the reaction of female American stars that we started to realise this kind of story without a revenge was not for the American market.”

Cannot wait

There's a strange cheesiness to this guy's movies that's not like other cheesy movies. It's a kind of uncanny creepy cheese I can't stomach for long.

Poll closed forever ago, but Robocop by far.

seeing Elle next weekend

Might be good except looking at that interview Huppert lends a cred to what could be shabby material. Verhoeven needs something thrashy to make something great or really awful, but always compelling and which sticks.

Slant ranks 'em all

i saw Spetters last night for the first time, which was ooookay except for, say, the rather disturbing portrayal of a character coming out as gay after being gang-raped by some toughs in Rotterdam.

ditto Total Recall which rather massively dumbs down that Dick story, but features all kinds of crazy shit (telepathic Martian rebel leader hanging from a guy's torso, dwarf prostitute firing a machine gun, more punctured human heads than any 'R' movie ever).

oh yeah Elle is the best thing i've seen from this guy. it's quite funny and also a very tough watch.

ditto Total Recall which rather massively dumbs down that Dick story, but features all kinds of crazy shit (telepathic Martian rebel leader hanging from a guy's torso, dwarf prostitute firing a machine gun, more punctured human heads than any 'R' movie ever).

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius)

I like it but it might be the most violent film I've ever seen: human shields on elevators, pokers sticking out of eyeballs, arms crunched off, Schwarzenegger checking into a Hilton...

Flesh+Blood is ranked way too low in that list, and Basic Instinct way too high.

How long as that been in the works, a decade?

having seen Reservation Dogs before Benedetta, I kept thinking of her visions in terms of the visions in that show. which isn’t that far off, really

Benedetta is wonderful, and I highly recommend reading its source material, Immodest Acts, too. I love its really dry humour.

Not listed in the poll, but his experimental Dutch mini-feature TRICKED is definitely worth a watch.

Gave Showgirls a fresh rewatch thanks to the new 4K and it feels even more of an otherworldly miracle now, in the nu-puritanical ‘20s

Not one vote for Soldier of Orange? Surprising.

While he hasn’t found a sci-fi project that piqued his interest, Verhoeven has plenty to keep him busy. He is currently preparing to shoot a political thriller called “Young Sinner,” which would mark his fist American film since he released “Hollow Man” in 2000. Verhoeven said that the film, which sees him reteaming with “RoboCop” writer Ed Neumeier, could be ready to enter production as early as this year.

“I’m working with Ed Neumeier, who wrote RoboCop. You could say it’s a political thriller, if you want, situated in Washington,” he said of the project. “The last couple of years I’ve been working in France because I couldn’t find something interesting here at that time. But Ed came up with a really interesting proposal. For two years we have been working on the screenplay. It should be done in two months and then we can find out if someone can finance it.”

BTW, Verhoeven is 85!!!

That probably sneaks up on a lot of American viewers - he had a long and extensive filmmaking career before making Robocop.

Thankfully he makes a lot of appearances in NYC - highly recommended, but Lincoln Center usually records and uploads his talks so you can see them on their YouTube channel. A few recommended ones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6_0CwGuiMc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QotxGy4CKk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O5QZncVjuw

He's definitely a filmmaker who's grown on me in recent years. Starship Troopers alone seems very underrated and sadly a film that the country's lived down to thanks to the increasingly warped right wing.

(FWIW, I would've voted for Black Book)