Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

dbborroughs This is a very complicated movie, with implications that some people probably will not want to consider. If you can go with the premise and not have a cow at the implications, this is an excellent movie that raises some interesting questions about, God, the universe, relationships and a few more subjects.The overlying plot has God deciding he has had enough of mankind and that he wants the covenant he made with Moses back. To that end he has several angels manipulate events so that a child can be produced who will be able to find the tablets it was written on and return them to heaven. The main plot has to to with the relationship between Onno, Max and Ada, three friends who unwittingly end up the focal point of the divine plot. It would be futile to try to simply explain the plot further since the film is very novel like in its structure and its unfolding.This is a wonderful, heady film that makes you care deeply about all of the characters It also does what great films do, which is make you stop to think about what you believe, while telling you a damn good story. The more I think about it, the more I really like it.The performances, with one exception are first rate. I think this is probably the best thing that Stephen Fry has done to date. His Onno is a wonderful cad, who is also a loving father. A wonderful, Oscar worthy performance.The one exception are the young actors who portray Quentin. The performances are a bit uneven and don't make up a cohesive whole so that when we end up with the actor playing Quentin at 17, we don't particularly care for him much. You do warm to him, but it takes a while.(His part is also a bit odd which doesn't help.) I can't recommend this movie enough. Its a great great film that seems to have gotten lost on its way to a large part of the world. Its the cinematic equivalent of curling up with a really good novel. If you run across this film make an effort to go see, rent or tape it. You may not love it like me, but you certainly will be happy you saw it.

Diand The discovery of heaven is the magnum opus of Dutch writer Harry Mulisch, where science, religion and philosophy meet in a 900-page book full of autobiographical details, among which the persecution of Jews in WW2 and the roaring sixties. The story in a nutshell: Science and technology have on earth substituted the Ten Commandments of Moses, so a plan is conceived by God and his angels to bring the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments back from earth to heaven, as the contract between mankind and God is abandoned. Angels are given this task by God, and a child is born on earth to accomplish heaven's plan. The child is the result of a love triangle between astronomer Max Delius (the writer Mulisch), politician Onno Quist and a cellist Ada Brons. (One example of the level of detail in the book: A remarkable congruency is that Max's father, who betrayed his Jewish wife in WW2, has three important locations where his life played out and Auschwitz is the center of again a triangle) As the book states that coincidence does not exist and everything has a reason, all events happening are arranged by angels in heaven including the conception of the child, although Max Delius is on the brink of scientifically discovering heaven.In the script they made a good effort to condense the book to its bare essentials by selecting the most relevant parts for the movie. But there are (also in the book) irrelevant loose elements that seem redundant and distract from the core message: Vietnam demonstrations, the whole Cuba part, some characters and relations add little. And there are things from the book they could have used like all mothers having the same face after the tablets are placed. Stephen Fry's often failed attempts to be funny are out of place although the book contains some humor: The weapon course in Cuba and Onno's walking stick interpreted as a miracle when seen as Moses' stick. The ending is better in the book than in the movie, where it is somewhat banal.The pacing is unnecessarily slow despite the enormous amount of events happening in both the movie and the book. The story is told in a very predictable and straightforward way; the director Jeroen Krabbé is just not up to this job and has little imagination and visual style. Take the many direct references to religion and heaven and even the way heaven is represented. Or the clumsy way the deaths are foreshadowed with a short flash. I guess Peter Greenaway (planning to do a movie on Rembrandt) would have been a better choice as director, but this had to make some money being a lavish production for Dutch standards. The role of God and angels is comparable here to that of the writer of the book; in the movie to the role of the director (and even actor Krabbé as angel). Because the best movies are usually about other movies, the book and script lacks writers, photographers, painters or publishers to lift this to a meta-level. Here we have the relative mundane politicians and scientists.As science is about everything that can be potentially explained, religion is about everything that can not be explained rationally. The book and movie's statement that physics may one day take over religion, or make religion redundant, is fairly accurate as metaphysics is coming increasingly closer to a theory of everything. But as our knowledge increases, a warning is issued that it will not necessarily lead to a greater happiness or higher morality. The book and movie mixes small, uninteresting stories with larger-than-life stories in a strange and awkward way. It also messes things up inconsistently (e.g. in the book there is an image of concentration camps in space). Some of the book and movie consists of contrived, pseudo-intellectual nonsense, being deliberately pretentious lacking any mastery of the art form at hand (be it writing or film-making).

captainzoom666 I saw this one together with my father, he read the book, i didn't bother to read the 600 pages. I dont like Mullisch very much he does. The actors are so well chosen, the fit in just right. Quinten could really be their son etc. I cried, i laughed it was just great. Funny part is to see the places in a'dam and westerbork were i've been myself. First finnishing my book i'm reading now, then Mullisch and then prob. Lord of the Rings. I wouldn't say thjis was the best movie i ever seen, but it sure fits in between my other favourites like the godfather, apocalypse now etc. Maybe to much credit but i was wondering if that was because i'm dutch. But the movie has such an international caracter that i doubt it. Well that's it. let me know what you though of it. Bart

taxfree It's been a long time since I've been impressed by dutch movies. I think Jeroen Krabbe managed to create a pice of art by filming this movie, after the book of Harry Mulish. I have not read the book, but I am convinced mr. Mulish will be proud of the end result. Beforehand, I was a bit sceptical about Stephen Fry, but all prejudice was unjust: this is a perfect cast. Unfortunately Jeroen appeared in this movie as Gabriel, his dutch accent makes his english sound funny. Luckily he had just a few few lines. In the spirit of dutch movies a lot of naked people, but everything was filmed with class.In a tv interview, Jeroen recently told that people would talk to him on the streets, just to thank him for making this movie. If I would come across him in Amsterdam, I would do the same.A must-see!