Interesteg What makes it different from others?

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

rooprect Eldorado starts out as a quirky, low key comedy along the lines of Jim Jarmusch (Night on Earth, Down by Law). Perhaps slow and uneventful by some people's tastes, but pretty humorous if you let the absurdity soak in. The story is about a couple of unlikely travel buddies who embark on a cross-Belgian roadtrip, alternately showcasing the gorgeous countryside and the bizarre characters they encounter.But as you can guess by my title, for me and I believe for most American audiences, the film was upstaged by an unsettling sideplot about a dog being brutally killed. After watching the movie, I immediately googled the director trying to figure out why he would include this terrible juxtaposition in an otherwise playful film. You're not going to like what I learned.According to an interview, this director's hallmark is to use a dog in his films. In this case he decided to use a dead dog. It was not intended as a major plot point but merely to express the contradictions in humans. In the scene, one character says and does something absolutely vile, but (as the director says in the interview) we are supposed to excuse him because he later shows that he is just human because he had a dog once.Um. No. Perhaps blame it on a trans-Atlantic difference in how we love our dogs, but most civilized Americans will not, under any circumstances, excuse or condone the idea of a dog being tied up, thrown over a bridge, and left to die whimpering.That's what my title refers to. Immediately I was so sickened by that scene and the characters' blasé reactions, that I lost all respect and empathy for the lot of them. Ultimately, after watching an 85 minute film, I was left wondering why I should care about anyone in the story. Of course this was not the director's intent; I suppose we were supposed to take the jarring scene more in stride. If you're a dog lover, or even a casual fan of animals, I guarantee you'll be very put off by the unnecessary brutality of that scene. I sure hope they didn't use a real dog (though it looked like they did).

derekrankine A middle-aged man returns to his home in rural Belgium to find that it has been broken into, with a stranger hiding under his bed. He initially threatens the intruder, who refuses to come out, with violence and calling the police. When the stranger eventually emerges, he is found to be a scared young man purportedly seeking to return to his parents after overcoming a heroin addiction. His parents live on the other side of the country, and the older man offers to give him a lift. The ensuing road movie begins conventionally, with gradual bonding and chance meetings with various eccentrics as the Belgian landscape offers some choice cinematography opportunities. Although these initial encounters are mildly engaging and occasionally humorous, three incidents in the latter half challenge the low-key nature of the preceding action. This change of direction lends the film a more serious weight and a dark, meaty substance in place of a morality tale.An impressive piece of work, especially given the short running time (around 80 minutes). The older man is played by Bouli Lanners, who also writes and directs.

alanf999 I could call the movie a disappointment except that after about 20 minutes I didn't have high hopes for it. I could see that it was following the basic arc of "Midnight Cowboy" or "Central Station": one lonely, marginalized character tries to take advantage of another, then they end up forced to depend on each other on a quixotic quest through a desolate landscape toward an illusory goal of warmth and safety. But "Midnight Cowboy" was a great film, and "Central Station" was worthwhile. There is almost nothing of lasting interest in this movie either inside or outside the two characters. (The scenes at Didier's parents' house are an exception.) There are not only one, but two conversations that are literally of the "Yes. No. Yes. No" form, which are not particularly amusing, suggesting instead that the writer had nothing much to say. The random wackiness that he occasionally attempts to pump into the action is a poor substitute because there is no follow-through. Yvan gets his hair taped to the ceiling of his car to keep himself awake, but later he crashes, without any even cursory shot to show us whether the tape gave way, his hair was pulled out, or he fell asleep still attached to that ceiling. And though the car goes off the road and drives through trees, it reveals itself as magically unharmed when a nudist appears from nowhere to tow it and give them directions, then disappears from the action. A dog is dropped from a bridge, crushing the roof of a car, but the ceiling is intact when we see it immediately thereafter.This lack of consistency and consequence compromises the character development that is supposed to occur as well. Yvan, who is supposed to be demonstrating a growing feeling of responsibility to assuage his guilt for not being present for his family in the past, abandons his plan to take the suffering dog to a veterinarian. (Why? How expensive could it be to have a dog put to sleep by even a private vet, let alone a shelter, and has Yvan ever shied away from expense in the past?) Instead, he indulges Elie/Didier in his plan to ostensibly buy heroin to euthanize the dog, though he suspects correctly that the money will not go to that end. In the meantime, the dog whimpers, uncomforted and unseen, in the back of the car, until it finally dies. That, thankfully, is also the point at which the movie expires.

theogey After some disappointing films during a french film festival in my city this film was a complete change. Just a few characters are needed to transport couple of message to the audience. There are a lot of funny though short dialogs. The landscape they re riding through is really lovely and the scenes are not exaggeratively long. The soundtrack just fits perfect especially since Devendra Banhart provides the song for the most sad scene of the film, Yvan helps Ellie to dig the garden of Ellies mom, who hasn't seen him for ages. You really get moved to tears in this very moment. Well, although Yvan is sure that Ellie is a drug addict, he helps him. At the end it becomes true but there is no explicit message the film sends to the viewer, you can judge on your own, no moral oppression thus.