Heinlein’s militaristic novel did what most sci-fi books do, they talk about the future while commenting on the present. Heinlein saw the rise and fall of major military powers in World War II, creating his support for nuclear weapon testing and the novel to espouse those views. ... Read More »
“I’m going to get you the best meal in town!” Cut to Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley), exotic dancer, eating a hamburger. This is Verhoeven’s satirical artistry, a quality of his film that critics either misunderstood or had no taste for when it was first released. One would expec... Read More »
Sometime in the future, at least the future from 1987’s perspective, children will be glued to their TV sets by the adventures of T.J. Lazer, a space cowboy armed with a laser pistol and a devil-may-care attitude. It’s the sort of sci-fi hokum that entertains young boys and adult... Read More »
A spider traverses a neglected crucifix to find its struggling prey in one of life's little forgotten melodramas, carried out on a shelf of religious artifacts in the bedroom of a tormented writer, creating pithy symbolic imagery from the mundane and opening Paul Verhoeven's enig... Read More »
Spetters is Paul Verhoven’s fifth feature length film and his penultimate release in his native Netherlands. It’s controversial representation of youth culture and sexuality angered many audiences when it was first released in 1980 and still manages to shock today. The story ... Read More »
The flag of the Netherlands and orchestral war music kicks off Paul Verhoeven’s two and a half hour war epic, Soldier of Orange, an unconventional story that shows us that wars aren’t always won and lost on conventional battlefields and that nationalistic pride can manifest itsel... Read More »
Katie Tippel is one of Paul Verhoeven’s early Dutch films that is rarely seen nowadays. The only copy I was able to find was streaming on Amazon and was a poorly dubbed, pan and scan digitized VHS print. Maybe it was the quality of the print, I don’t know, but the film just didn’... Read More »
The wistful bleating of a saxophone sets a nighttime scene of loneliness and lost love. We are in a dangerous land of blood and night as we are presented with an unflinching look into depravity and ultraviolence that would permeate Paul Verhoeven’s career as Rutger Hauer has sad... Read More »
A plane lands in Amsterdam International Airport and a man urgently rushes off of the plane on some unknown mission. He takes pensive glances of the concrete landscape before getting into a cab to embark on his mission of seemingly tantamount importance. Spy music plays as his ta... Read More »
