In one of the series of vignettes that make up Roy Andersson’s ABOUT ENDLESSNESS, we find a city café where the patrons sit in carefully constructed isolation among one another, in the foreground, a dentist who we know from the previous vignette, is in a bad mood and plagued with problems. Snow falls. Christmas carols… Read More »
THE SUNLIT NIGHT
Thus begins her journey, artistic and literal, in this understated yet study of art and life that is sharp, uncompromising, and suffused with mordant humor amid the tragedies and quirks of la vie quotidienne.
DOWNSIZING
DOWNSIZING is a film that cries out to be admired. Pondered. Parsed. Philosophical propositions and social commentary flit by in a mad whirl of arch observation and deadpan dea as we are invited to consider a veritable cornucopia of topics, all eminently worthy of examination. The class struggle and the human propensity for prejudice; the… Read More »
IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE (Kraftidioten)
IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE is a bracingly original foray into very black humor. Set in the arctic-lite of rural Norway, it is a tale of relentless pursuit, clueless hubris, and the eccentricities that long winters provoke in the population. Writer Kim Fupz Aakeson and director Hans Petter Moland serve up this arch film about fathers and sons… Read More »
LOUDER THAN BOMBS
LOUDER THAN BOMBS begins with a perfect picture of family love. Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) is marveling at his newborn as his wife Amy, (Megan Ketch) looks on beaming. Jonah is beaming, too, and he is aghast that he has forgotten to bring his wife the food she had requested when she discovered that the hospital tray… Read More »
THE WAVE (Bølgen)
A refreshing Nordic reserve permeates the action/adventure in Norway’s Oscar™ contender, THE WAVE. While most films vying for the foreign language award are of the small, intimate, and character-driven variety, THE WAVE pulls out all the stops with a disaster epic that is edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. Even the usual clichés to be found in the genre… Read More »
EVERY THING WILL BE FINE
Tragedy is complicated. Guilt and anger, acceptance and forgiveness don’t fall into neat pigeonholes in Wim Wender’s EVERY THING WILL BE FINE, a title that is what everyone aspires to in this small but powerful tale of searching for redemption. The central character is Tomas (James Franco), a good writer with a middling career and… Read More »
ELLING
ELLING, this years Oscar nominee from Norway as best foreign film, is that perfect little gem of a film that draws you into a new way of seeing the world. Its eponymous protagonist is a prickly, obsessive middle-aged man suffering a slew of neuroses starting with anxiety and acrophobia and so on down the rest of… Read More »
TROLLHUNTER
With his faux-documentary, TROLLHUNTER, filmmaker Andre Ovredal has pulled of the difficult trick of adding fantastic elements to reality and make it seem perfectly reasonable. Certainly the evocative landscape of his native Norway, craggy mountains and hushed valleys shrouded in mist and snow, give credence to the idea that trolls really do roam among the… Read More »
TROLLHUNTER
With his faux-documentary, TROLLHUNTER, filmmaker Andre Ovredal has pulled of the difficult trick of adding fantastic elements to reality and make it seem perfectly reasonable. Certainly the evocative landscape of his native Norway, craggy mountains and hushed valleys shrouded in mist and snow, give credence to the idea that trolls really do roam among the… Read More »