Other Movies
Other reviews:
Movie Reviews
King Arthur
So I saw King Arthur shortly before creating this site. The review given by Stephanie Zacharek was spot-on. FIND A GOOD DIALOGUE WRITER AND PAY HER! I rolled my eyes at some of the lines, especially at the beginning, but my initial resistance faded (I did choose the movie, after all) and soon enough I was absorbed. Yes, there are continuity errors and there are historical errors aplenty - even one in costuming that was missed by the IMDB contributors. Guinevere's dress may have been an early style, but not early enough. I ought to know more specifics, but I once did a huge paper on Elizabethan fashion and customs so I've seen costuming throughout the ages. I was a closeted mediavaphile for a long time, not realizing how popular it was. I didn't read Tolkein or play Dungeons and Dragons; I went to the library and read fairy tales. I read every copy of the King Arthur story I could get my hands on - and by this route, discovered the story of Tristan and Iseult. I read pretty much every version of that, too, though I drew the line at Tristram Shandy as his name was the only thing in common.
Shake It All About
You put your left foot in
You put your left foot out
You put your left foot in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey-pokey…
And thank god that does not sum up the movie, because it is a wretched song to get stuck in your head for any old reason (now, if someone could address a certain other song's presence in my head going on every day for three weeks now, I'd really appreciate closure on the matter). It isn't such a bad title for a film of its subject, there have been worse cross-language literary substitutions for film titles (BTW, I have no clue what this German or Flemish poster calls it). Of course, En Kort En Lang is the original movie title and not having a clue what it really means I can only guess "right side left side" or "on the right and left" or "one side to the other" or "AC/DC," "Swing Both Ways" or "I'm Bisexual and I Don't Know What to Do!" which essentially sums up Jacob's dilemma.
Flickering Lights
The lovely title of this film comes from Emily Dickenson's poem Flickering Lanterns. Stefan is reading a copy of poems by "Mily Dickenson" (the "E" missing from the torn-up cover) , and begins to cry because of the beauty of one of them. Arne the tough guy (a real twat, actually) calls him a fag, but the other two gangsters, Torkild and Peter, jump to his defense. After some bickering about and what else to call the restaurant they're hiding out in, they decide to name it Flickering Lights (Blinkede Lygter). How they came to hide out in an abandoned restaurant in the countryside and how it changes them is the rest of the story.
At the beginning of the film, you see a quaint half-timbered (link that!) farm house with smoke coming out its chimney and the Swiss flag flapping in the breeze.
—Wait. Swiss?
—Yeah. That's the Swiss flag.
—That's not the Swiss flag. You should know.
—Yes it is!
—You've only been going out with a girl with a Danish nose, you said so yourself, for four years now, and more, you've been on the sailboat with the same flag up with the Canadian one, and now it's Swiss?
—C'est le drapeau de Danmark, cela la? Oh.
Did you know the Danish flag is the oldest one in the world? Legend has it that it dropped out of the sky during a battle and a voice said to pick it up so they did, and then the Danes rallied and won it, when they had nearly lost.
And back to the review. Except one complaint that the disk manufacturer screwed up and the video was slightly (maybe 10%) horizontally compressed. And the DVD menu is annoying with the loop it plays.
I Am Dina
This was a very strange movie, beautifully filmed on fjord in Norway, about an elemental force of a woman who had no scruples and a hell of a lot of power. Oh, and she sees ghosts, and sees herself as sort of an angel of death. Whoever wrote the screenplay or the book was evidently influenced by Henrik Ibsen (now there was a real feminist!). This film was definitely not boring but I still don't know what I've got to take away from it.
I don't know what Mads did for his role but he looks positively gaunt and dour. His eyes are sunken and his lips non-existent. Yet though his face looked skeletal, I can't say for sure whether he famished himself for the part. Whether he did or not he probably didn't have a happy time filming because his was a truly miserable character: no less selfish than Dina with half the smarts or charisma and in direct opposition to her. Niels ends up making it to America, but in the Dostoevsky way.
Pusher
I saw Pusher in November 2004. It had a strange quality, kind of verité. And through this kind of filming, you observe what the hell is going on (this phrase is sometimes a question, but more often an accusation), and remain sympathetically detached. Kind of an "I told you so" story. Mads' role, Tonny, basically is a skinhead in a shell suit with too many bad tattoos and not quite enough brain cells. He's not unlikeable, in fact, the only character who is unlikeable is the lead character, Frank, who basically fucks everybody up, most especially himself (though if there was a competition on who Frank fucked up most, Tonny gave Frank a run for the money). But Frank isn't in Pusher II, coming out next year probably, and it's all about Tonny. I wonder what they're gonna do. I'm glad the character Milo is in it, because Milo had the most interesting character aside from, arguably, Frank's girlfriend.
Now, there was one thing that made me shake my head, if it's based on reality. Frank is running from the cops, literally, and he ends up in a lake, and he loses his bag of heroin, which scatteres in the wind and water. And yet the cops have nothing to charge him with? They saw him with the bag, the bag could be collected, residue could be collected from Frank himself and the water he's hauled out of, WTF, Denmark? Is Denmark the "oh no, it's a common criminal, let's shrivel up and die?" kind of place that Quebec is? If so, no wonder they say Quebec is very European. I do like the style of Danish policemen that were depicted in Pusher, though; one of them, if I recall correctly, was kinda sexy.
This film is worth viewing. In preparation for seeing Pusher II and III, which are out right now (see the blog about this), I hope to see it again to review it in greater detail.
I saw this film in 2005 and began, but didn't complete, my comments on it. So I handed it over to our first guest reviewer, Tracy:
The thing with this movie is that it has it comedic moments, not something you’d expect given its title – the psychiatric scenes where they have to hold a ball to speak are quite funny. This is made more so by Wilbur’s complete disregard for the rules, the other patients obvious animosity towards him (making you wonder what he did that have made them dislike him so much, though by the end of the film I was with them), and also Moira (Julia Davis) as the lovesick psychiatric nurse who is badly crushing on Wilbur.
Adam's Apples
I saw this film in June 2006 at my cousin's house in Ringkobing, Denmark. Gitte's son Mattias, a typically sullen teenager, cheered up when he found out I know something about the kinds of films he likes. We all watched it on DVD together. This section is in progress.
The Green Butchers
I saw this film in June 2006 at my cousin's house in Århus, Denmark. This was a bizarre movie, surprisingly shot on video and not film. This section is in progress.
Prag
Prag was posted here on on random news/Mads Blog. Click here for an outside review of the film.
The entire movie, or almost, is extreme close-ups, focusing on the sculpture of the human face - and the human spirit. It was also fully engrossing, and hard to watch, especially if you've been in a relationship with an introvert, as Mads' character is to the extreme. Stina (I want to say Stahlo but it's Simon Stahlo and he's a director, so it goes to show I'm learning the business) Stengade was so good, so in control and present, and perfectly out of control when it called for it. There was a scene that rendered me a puddle, and it will for you, too.
After the Wedding (Efter Bryllupet)
After the Wedding was not so much reviewed as discussed here on on random news/Mads Blog, and I'm looking forward to seeing a review of it elsewhere. What I've said so far is:
The movie starts with little fanfare or showiness. The story just begins. And it's remarkably tender, the relationship Jacob has with one of his orphans in particular. Pramod came into the orphanage when he was a baby, and now he's 8. And he is furious that Jacob is leaving to go to Denmark to get funding, saying he'll never come back (he does, that's all I'm saying).
The drama of the relationships that come out of the past and smack Jacob hard in the future - they're hard enough to smack Jacob into the background, actually, because they are bigger than he is, and the wonder of it is, Jacob has the courage to realize and humility to submit to it. Now that's a man. And it was very, very satisfying to see.