My Reviews of Scandinavian Films
So far I've got movies from Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
Some of these reviews are quite old, perhaps as much as 15-16 years, so I can't really vouch for them representing my current opinions on the movies in question.
Unfortunately, the films listed at the bottom don't have reviews, because I was too lazy to write up anything at the time. Now it's too late, because I recall very little of them - especially the crap ones.
Listed in no particular order, except that all the latest additions will be placed on top.
Some of these reviews are quite old, perhaps as much as 15-16 years, so I can't really vouch for them representing my current opinions on the movies in question.
Unfortunately, the films listed at the bottom don't have reviews, because I was too lazy to write up anything at the time. Now it's too late, because I recall very little of them - especially the crap ones.
Listed in no particular order, except that all the latest additions will be placed on top.
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- DirectorÓskar Thór AxelssonStarsJóhannes Haukur JóhannessonSara Dögg ÁsgeirsdóttirÁgústa Eva ErlendsdóttirA story about a young man and two women who move into a small abandoned town in Iceland to renovate an old house. Little do they know the town has a dark history.Better than Sigur Ross and Icelandic black metal.
4/10
Just like there are weeaboos, there should be a name for fans of Iceland. There is a certain small but loyal group of western hipsters who overrate everything that comes from Iceland.
My first Icelandic movie is a bit of a dud. Silver lining: they still make much better movies than Sigur Ros and their black metal buddies make music. For whatever it's worth. And there are some nice vistas.
Very drawn out ghost mystery with a plot resolution that's somewhat confusing and unsatisfying. So basically the doctor's kid disappears while playing hide-and-seek with an autistic child, and at that same time mysterious deaths start all over Iceland with all the victims having multiple crosses engraved on their bodies. Yet the authorities only start noticing a pattern after the 6th victim... Really, movie? Icelandic police is that incompetent? Yes, well, a low murder-rate in a highly civilized society will do that to a police force, make the cops dull-witted, unprepared and inefficient. Or even more dull-witted and inefficient, I mean.
Dumber still, the lost kid had a serious medical condition, yet he was allowed to play hide and bloody seek with an autistic kid without anyone watching over them. Really, Iceland? Is that common practice to let young children with medical issues run around the town unsupervised? No wonder their population never rises above 300,000.
Why did the kid's demise bring the ghost of the missing kid from 60 years earlier on a revenge spree? What had it been waiting for all that time? Another kid had to snuff it so that the ghost would finally take revenge? Fine logic.
The mystery moves at a snail's pace, and it isn't even gripping - as mysteries kinda should be. The film is a half-hour too long. It's only mildly interesting. Then comes the dumb semi-confusing "resolution" and that's it, folks! Now you can efff off to your dumb Sigur Ros CDs!
And what's with the bloody mobile phone having no signal? This isn't 2002. Gimme a break with that tired old plot-device. You can go to the center of the Amazon rain-forest these days and get a signal. The Moon? I wouldn't bet against it... - DirectorRoar UthaugStarsIngrid Bolsø BerdalRolf Kristian LarsenTomas Alf Larsen5 young Norwegians head up to the mountains to snowboard. One breaks his leg and it's getting dark soon, so they spend the night in a big, abandoned hotel, closed 30 years ago. They are not alone.Ugly cinematography, predictable, boring... What's there not to like.
3/10
Bloody hell, I've come across some ugly movies in recent years but rarely one as horrible-looking as this one. Some scenes are literally black and white. Even the landscape scenes look crap. How they managed to make Norway's wilderness look drab: that's an anti-art-form in itself. Even the snowy mountains seem to be drained of colour, even white looks less than white. Is this director proud of himself, for making beautiful Norway look like a dump?
Unfortunately, the DRABOMANIA (nihilistic ugliness inspired by Cultural Marxism) that Americans started off had spread to other regions too. One would have hoped that at least Norwegians would be smart enough not to fall for this ugly fad, but no: they made it even worse. Then again, Scandinavians took American-initiated political correctness to new extremes, i.e. They seem to have a habit of amplifying garbage trends from the States. Norwegians pretty much did the same with metal in the 90s: they took extreme metal and made it crap, made it "black". (They improved somewhat later though.)
Not that the abysmal photography could ruin much here. This is a stereotypical teen slasher with nothing new on offer. The first bit of violence occurs after 39 minutes, so horror fans need real patience. The film-makers pad the story with diligence, giving us uninteresting and completely unnecessary insight into character dynamics. As if we don't know they'll all be dead in hours, so why would I give three hoots that Brunette isn't keen on moving in with her boyfriend or that Blondie is a virgin who isn't sure when spreading her legs is warranted. Horror films need to have a quick start: CP does the opposite however. It wants you to chant Ommmm while the script seeks its killer.
Then he finally comes, but somehow the movie becomes more boring. Because what chance do these dumb young Socialist voters have against an all-powerful, invincible killer? Add to that the fact that every kid trips and falls on the floor (or snow) while running away, and you've really got a Tyson vs little girl kind of uneven situation. Not a fair fight at all.
And yet, Brunette gets to kill him, in a scene that defies all logic. Because... grrl power and stuff? Not that I was the least bit surprised: from the very first scene in the car it was obvious that Brunette was "the chosen one": in these dumb teen horrors there's always one such easily identifiable character who survives - if/when there are survivors.
Slasher films truly are the dumbest, most useless horror sub-genre, right after cannibal hillbillies and home invasion. Even pornography has more depth and content.
But at least CP teaches us how to fix a broken leg: just get some super-glue and a few pain-killers and the patient is right as rain! That was so dumb... Typical horror-film nonsense.
"It was my fault, I never should have left her."
Either that, or she should have given you some. The movie sends an important message to virgins: if you say no to your new boyfriend then a serial-killer might get you.
I now completely understand why this movie was so popular. It's crap. It's predictable, dumb and formulaic; but that's precisely what most horror fans want, just as they want their music to be predictable, dumb and formulaic, and their politicians, and everything else. High quality and intelligence are not in demand in this era.
Speaking of music, what a horrible soundtrack.
Not that CP is enormously dumb by slasher standards. Compared to most it's almost an intellectual exercise. Despite the fact that it's idiotic. - DirectorAntti-Jussi AnnilaStarsVille VirtanenTommi EronenViktor KlimenkoAs a 25-year war between Russia and Sweden concludes, two brothers who are part of an effort to outline new border accords become undone by their actions, and their mistreatment of a young woman during their journey.Interesting setting, but the movie is botched with a messy script.
5/10
Recently I've seen "Draug", a Swedish movie that has similarities with "Sauna": both are set in the distant past of their respective nations, both are unusual and relatively interesting, but both also have utterly hopeless conclusions and ridiculously underdeveloped stories.
The first 10 minutes are somewhat confusing, throwing scenes in non-chronological order, almost randomly. There is little regard for the viewer - a disregard that comes back in the last half-hour, and with a vengeance.
The movie is nevertheless fairly interesting during its first half (mainly due to its geographic and historic setting), until the story completely dissolves into mud during that last half-hour, with its absurdly inconclusive conclusion and a string of random events. The resolution offers practically nothing, no explanations, just random BS imagery. As if random "symbolism" can ever be a valid substitute for a lack of story - or in this case a lack of resolution.
Unfortunately, the film suffers from a debilitating but common affliction that's plagued numerous Old Continent movies, a disease as old as European cinema itself: the pathetic need to convey some "deep profound message" trumps the need to offer a coherent (and entertaining) story. Cinema as a way to project one's own superior morality and/or intellect - as opposed to using it to primarily entertain. (The notion that entertainment and artistry are mutually exclusive is one of the biggest fallacies in the history of all cinema, an idiocy that's given us a host of awful, overrated movies - but also "entertaining" commercial duds.) Europeans have always been rather pretentious (some countries are worse than others), with a kind of arrogant pseudo-intellectual attitude that you can always substitute a story with "ideas" and "profound insinuations". I.e. Fill-in-the-gaps-yourself cinema.
Yes, it's a hipster's delight, to some extent. Not a hipster movie per se, but many film-buffies infected with hipsterism praise it on the basis of its "thought-provoking" nature.
Yeah, about that... What EXACTLY is thought-provoking about the conclusion? As per usual, zero of the "reviewers" who gave it very high marks actually explain why and how this is an intellectual exercise. As usual, none of these wannabe intellectuals have a clue what the movie is ultimately about, but that never stops them from PRETENDING they understand it. This is why so many reviews are useless garbage because dishonest. (The exact % depends on the movie: the more pretentious and/or "arty" the higher the %.)
It's really quite simple: if you write a review claiming how amazingly intelligent a movie is, then please follow up that claim with how and why it's intelligent and brilliant, and in precise, clear language that we can all understand. Otherwise all you're doing is the quasi-intellectual-poseur movie-buff equivalent of virtue-signaling i.e. Intellect-signaling. People with serious self-esteem issues have a need to do this. Nobody else does. Apparently, there are numerous insecure nerds and nerdesses among film-buffies, because this "intellect-signaling" is as widespread as illegal pills in a braindead techno nightclub.
What exactly happens at the end? I couldn't tell you. I have no idea what had happened to the village earlier, why it happened, what happened to the monks, why the girl has a bloodied mouth, what happened to the geographer, and a host of other unanswered questions. The last 20-30 minutes is just one big laughable cop-out move from the writer: he set up the mystery, but failed to disentangle it. I've said it time and time again: setting up a mystery is easy, but resolving it is the tough part. It's what separates the hacks from the talent. This writer is inept, or at least lazy, at least in terms of writing mysteries. Maybe historical dramas are more up his alley.
Nor do I buy this far-fetched premise that the bald-headed thug, presented as a murderous psychopath early on, goes through some kind of "humanizing" process of "redemption". (This word excites hipsters.) His behaviour early in the movie and his behaviour just days later are not compatible. Nor do I even understand what HE understood about what "had to be done" vis-a-vis saving his brother, himself, or whatever.
The uber-mysterious sauna (somewhat reminiscent of the special room in "Stalker") is some kind of supernatural edifice that gives people an opportunity to absolve themselves of their sins. At least in theory i.e. That's what the movie told us. In practice, it's simply yet another house of horrors where people get possessed or butchered. The script makes no sense. The plot-holes and the logic-holes are numerous. - DirectorTommy WirkolaStarsJeppe Beck LaursenCharlotte FrognerJenny SkavlanA ski vacation turns horrific for a group of medical students, as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable menace: Nazi zombies.6/10
The decision to utilize cheerful classical music over the brutal murder of Sara (in the first scene of the movie) is moronic. "This scene has happy music on it, so you may start laughing, viewer." There's no chance the movie is going to get me to laugh at an unfunny, gag-devoid scene just because some confused, optimistic writer suggests it must be funny. One should place cheerful music over something violent only if that violent act is amusing, which clearly isn't the case. As a result, the opening scene has neither menace nor humour in it: the scene had been robbed of any horror potential by using cheerful music, so the director neither gets the cake nor eats it. Still, the scene isn't entirely pointless; it serves as a warning that the following events might just be quite stupid.
This genre-related confusion, exhibited straight away in the prologue, sets the tone for the rest of the movie. DS exists in that wishy-washy netherworld between all-out horror and a zombie comedy, which never works. The movie continually meanders between serious and goofy, and that's its main detriment. If only the film-makers had decided on what kind of film they wanted to make, this would have worked out much better.
As for the rest of the music, some of it is rather awful rock/metal: a dire reminder never to let your frontman sing in a Scandinavian language (unless it's being growled hence incomprehensible).
Many decisions, and much of the behaviour of the 7 humans make little or no sense. Because this isn't a straight-out comedy, I give myself the option to nitpick – an option I gladly choose. 1) A fairly solid-looking woman is attracted to the sloppy, fat guy. I don't care how high on dope she is, this is too ridiculous to be either realistic or funny. Tom Arnold is Adonis next to this guy. 2) Out of the blue, she volunteers to sit on his cock while he's taking a dump – in a freezing-cold outdoor toilet. Or are we to believe that Norwegians are so accustomed to snow that it's not much different than sand to them? Is winter merely a slightly less mild form of summer for them? She even takes her shirt off in what must be below zero. 3) The fat guy exhibits no concern whatsoever that the girl – five leagues above his who'd just volunteered to shag him - is missing. 4) The one guy who is too cowardly to shoot keeps wielding the only shotgun they have – and nobody complains to him about it, or tries to take the weapon away from him in order to finally give those bullets a purpose. 5) No man on the entire planet would hesitate to use a shotgun, no matter how mentally weak he is, when faced with a Nazi zombie. It's not as if anyone would have any moral qualms there, or might be considering negotiations followed by a peaceful settlement. 6) The man in question has been studying medicine for six years, and yet he is disgusted and scared by the sight of blood. Not funny, merely stupid. (Comedy has to be based in reality to at least some degree in order to be funny.) 7) They decide to split up, in spite of the fact that there is obviously more than one Nazi zombie lurking in the woods. Splitting up only makes them even more vulnerable individually. Again, not funny. Stupid. 8) The women leave the cabin without previously arming themselves with knives and the like. 9) The old "there is no phone signal here" cliché/excuse is made well before the humans are even attacked, and yet after setting their own cabin on fire a signal suddenly, miraculously comes into existence. Not funny, but definitely stupid. 10) The shotgun-carrying guy's girlfriend approaches him from BEHIND just as he is busy hacking and slicing up zombies. Would anyone in their right mind, or even half-right mind, enter the radius of a person who is waving around with a chainsaw and a large blade? Very obviously, highly predictably, and totally stupidly he unintentionally slices her. 11) Before being accidentally killed by her man, her solution to escaping a zombie at the edge of a cliff is to get an avalanche going. She and the zombie both fall from a very large height.
I could go on.
DS is not a bad film. It's very well shot, the action scenes are fun (when they're not excessively moronic), and not without some entertainment value, but Norwegians have a very long way to go until they've mastered the horror (comedy?) genre. Having one of the characters wear a "Braindead" T-shirt does not do the trick alone. (Peter Jackson could certainly give them a tip or two (or a dozen) on how to make a horror film that works as an all-out comedy.) Still, DS is a step in the right direction. Baby steps; success doesn't come straight away. Comedy-making isn't the same as crabbing. Next time they need to decide for one clear path, and then run with it. This schizophrenic approach can be quite annoying.
DS ends the same way it had begun, and the Nazis still control the mountain. So what has been accomplished? Is there any point to all of this? Is this ending just a reflection of the producer's desperate hope for potential sequels? If the point was to introduce zombie Nazis into the world of horror films, it's already been done, many times before. There had been Nazi zombies as far back as the 40s, then they became quite fashionable again in the 70s with films like "Shock Waves", "Zombie Lake", "The Treasure of the Zombie Dead", "Night of the Zombies", "Operation Nazi Zombies", and then again more recently with the "Outpost" movies. There are too many to mention. - DirectorTommy WirkolaStarsGeir Vegar HoelØrjan GamstMartin StarrStill on the run from a group of Nazi zombies, a man seeks the aid of a group of American zombie enthusiasts, and discovers new techniques for fighting the zombies.Invalids and kids getting butchered... So hilarious.
5/10
An improvement perhaps over solid but nothing-special original, yet the film still suffers from the headless-chicken syndrome of its predecessor: the director wanting to have his cake and eat it too. In other words, he wanted real chills AND laughs.
Well, you effing can't have both, knucklehead. You either do a comedy with a horror plot or you do a proper horror film with the occasional gag here and there (where appropriate).
As a result, the movie delivers neither laughs nor scares, but manages to remain somewhat interesting due to the slick production and the colourful plot.
Besides, what's so funny about invalids having their heads smashed and little children being run over by a tank? Wirkola needs to see a shrink; the same one that treats other filmic psychopaths such as Rob Zombie.
Speaking of which, the whole Zombie Squad shtick is painfully embarrassing. And why the hell do the Russian zombies lose to the Nazi zombies? Did this director even have History at school? - DirectorKarin EngmanKlas PerssonStarsElna KarlssonThomas HedengranRalf BeckIn the late viking age a missionary, travelling with a group of soldiers, vanishes somewhere in a vast border forest in the northern parts of Sweden. A rescue party is sent out to find them, but inside the dark woods there is something waiting for them. Something dark and ancient.Reviewers need to finally let go of the fear to admit that a movie confused them.
5/10
Good soundtrack and visually very solid, but confusing. Especially the last third leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Instead of answers, or at least hints, there is vague imagery, "clues" of what happened in the past - as weak substitutes for an actual story. Certainly the characters didn't tell us much, only vague things here and there, i.e. mutually distant dots that we're somehow supposed to connect into a comprehensive story. We, however, are neither witches nor magicians.
All I understood is that the girl Nanna is the one that was supposedly killed by Hakon, and that she went back to her place of origin. What she knew, how much she "felt" she knew", whose side she was on, whether she became a ghost or had been one, what she has to do with the zombies, who the zombies are - none of these things are answerable. Whoever claims that they are needs to let go of their glue supplies.
Some of the action in that last section is unclear; who is doing where and what to whom. So the direction is a bit sloppy in that sense too. The "conclusion" is basically just a bunch of scenes strung together, not much better than randomly.
I suppose 99% of the audiences won't understand what the hell went on exactly, and I'm one of them. (The other 1% buy glue regularly.) Perhaps it's one of those "you need to be acquainted with the folklore" things, but there's no way in hell this, or any other, movie will get me to study Wikipedia pages on Scandinavian witches or whatever. Anyway, even a vast knowledge in Swedish folklore can't possibly explain some of the plot holes. But if the movie really was made solely for the 150 Swedes who know this stuff, then the movie needs to suffer the consequences of such misjudgment.
In fact, the pre-supernatural part of the movie was better, which is kind of unusual. It is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it was refreshing with its different setting and approach. As much as I'm not a big fan of "historical" films. The female lead is very average-looking and fairly boring. - DirectorTaneli MustonenStarsNelly Hirst-GeeMimosa WillamoMikael GabrielEvery camper's worst nightmare came true at Lake Bodom in 1960 when four teenagers were stabbed to death while sleeping in their tent.Whoever wrote this nonsense has apparently never met a teenage girl in his life.
2/10
The asinine major plot-twist that occurs half-way through the film is one of the dumbest in a teen horror, and that's saying something. The notion that two fairly normal teenage girls could be cold-blooded killers - butchers even - is so far-fetched that it could only play out this way on planet Zong, infamous for its vicious teeny-boppers: those lizard-like green girls listen to Bieber during the day then massacre innocent people at night, especially when picnicking at Lake Bodumb (their equivalent to Lake Bodom).
The percentage of psychopathy among women is notably lower than among men. (Among European men it's around 1%.) So the odds that two women of this ilk actually meet each other by accident (i.e. not in a prison, for example) is so minuscule as to be near-impossible. This is made more absurd with the fact that the blonde one suggested the murders while the brunette executed (one of) them, i.e. it wasn't just one domineering psychopath who was pushing the other one toward violence - which would have made more sense (i.e. less nonsense). What compounds this hogwash even further is their ability to hatch a plan as complex as this one and to execute it (well, at least the murdering) without a hitch - and at such short notice. Fairly idiotic fare for a movie trying pathetically to build itself on the shoulders of an infamous Finnish murder case, a REAL case. A case this movie has no actual relation to.
The least that this clueless writer could have done to alleviate some of this absurdity would have been to have the girls react with some degree of appropriate emotion right after the murders. Instead, they mostly behave as if they'd been murdering people for 100s of years! The brunette is behaving as if she'd just been to the cinema, and the blonde seems mopey and bored.
What the hell was the point of the missing car-keys? Ida dives to get them, and... she gets them. Why have that entire segment when it serves no purpose plot-wise? All that we find out is that Ida is a "great diver". Padding? Quite possibly.
The dumbest scene - aside from the "great reveal" - is the ludicrous conversation between Ida and Elias right before he gets killed. The blond kid just got butchered, in the middle of the night, in the forest, and yet Elias actually feels like striking up a conversation with Ida about some old incident involving nude photos of her. So he must be used to witnessing murder? That conversation should have taken place BEFORE the first murder. Bad Movie Writing 101. As it is, the writer is showing great incompetence in both structure and the building up of tension. When you disregard some basic rules of human psychology you inevitable sacrifice logic hence tension too. Because who's interested in a movie where people behave like aliens from planet Zong? Just give these people wings, five extra arms, and be done with it: make it a proper sci-fi film.
There is more. The girls planned this complicated double murder, the sort of intricate plan that couldn't be hatched at short notice, and yet THEY were the ones invited to the picnic - by their own victims! This is beyond far-fetched. It should be the other way round. Killers invite their victims to their own funeral, basic logic and common sense demand that. Nora says that part of the conspiracy was to "wait for an opportunity"; she could have waited for 50 years, in reality. This stinker has no logic, no sense; it's just an idiotic slasher film with asinine twists and absurd characters.
If the "whole school" saw Ida's nude photos - yet they never existed - then how can she possibly have been so convinced that they exist? Surely the words of Nora could not be enough. There would have to have been more people from the school telling her they saw the photos - or informing her that the photos don't exist. None of this adds up.
Just not to be outdone by all the moronic American thrillers who throw around plot-twists like free beer, the movie makes sure that the girls come across THE Lake Bodom killer. Or A Lake Bodom killer. It isn't clear which because the (real) killings occurred in 1960, and this particular killer doesn't appear to be anywhere near 70 or 80 years old. He is in his 40s, hence wasn't even born when the killings occur. Planet Zong logic.
Hence we add up with a typically "cute" modern-thriller finish in which different killers are pitted against each other. First the girls engage in a laughable brawl while their vehicle is still in motion. Then the Bodom killer appears, like some Jason Vorhees ghost clone, just happens to be standing on the road when the girls fight each other. The girls fly 100 meters through the air in the car, bouncing up and down the road, smashing into trees, somersaults included, yet does either get killed? Nah. Seriously injured? Not really. Because the inept writer still needs them. "The nonsense must go on", as the old thriller adage goes. As long as the movie hasn't reached the minimum feature-film length, the killer(s) must not snuff it. Otherwise what's a bad writer to do? Invent yet another anonymous killer? How is he going to get Nora to sprint like a deer if he has her injured by a spectacular bone-crushing car crash? Nora dashes out of that wreckage as if she'd just received Usain Bolt's special cocktail. No doubt, this movie should be used to test people's intelligence.
The only realistic thing here is that there is a fight that ensues between these narcissistic lesbians once Nora comes clean about her deception. Of course, even that scene had to be idiotic; they start fighting during the drive, after Nora smacks Ida right into her face with what seems to be a blunt object. Ida should have been instantly killed, or at least knocked out cold. Furthermore, the car stays on the road way too long considering that it's a) dark, b) the road is narrow and not straight, and b) the girls are at each other's throats.
Thrillers really need to start adopting and accepting the basic laws of physics, and to inject real human psychology into their characters, if they are to become great again. (Were they ever great? No. That was a little joke.) Instead, thrillers are getting exponentially dumber by the decade. Because most audiences allow them to.
The only thing that matches the writer's ineptness is the utter incompetence of the Finnish authorities in the way they handled the 1960 murders. As for the mysterious killer, there is very little doubt who he is. Read the Wikipedia page and it all becomes clear. - DirectorPål ØieStarsEllen Dorrit PetersenAnders BaasmoTomas NorströmFive contract workers have taken on the task of tracking a huge old sanatorium for hazardous waste before demolishing. They realize that the job is more than a search for asbestos and mercury. The enormous building has much darker secrets.A cautionary tale about what happens when you leave a blonde in charge of a business. Oink.
1/10
Ever since the appearance of mobile phones, horror-movie writers have had the headache of trying to neutralize the phone as a source of obvious and easy help for people threatened by psychopaths, demons or zombies. The by now pretty laughable "I have no signal" cop-out plot-device is the one most commonly used, so I will give this movie credit for at least trying something else, a new way to solve the fairly unsolvable phone dilemma.
However, that "something else" is even dumber than not having a signal for no reason: it's UNWILLINGNESS to call for help! Yes, my dear readers (all five of you), the movie's sanitary team has opportunities – time and time again – to call the cops, yet they don't. The first time, it's Frank refusing to "endanger the business" by calling the cops. "How are we going to get any work done with cops crawling all over the place?" he says moronically, baffling every sane and/or intelligent viewer. But it's not really fictional Frank's fault; it's the writer who underwent a cheap lobotomy, probably performed by the same Nazi surgeons from this movie, before he undertook the – for his lobotomized self - impossible task of writing an intelligent, original script.
But silly me. Why do I automatically assume that there was any intention to create something intelligent, let alone original? V2 is a collection of abandoned-building clichés we've all seen before, many times – and done much better than in this fairly lame Norwegian flick. Take any "old sanitarium in ruins" movie and in all likelihood it has all the same shticks as this one: abandoned gloomy rooms, mysterious basements, bizarre drawings on walls, little mutant children running through corridors, illegal human experiments, and other never-before-seen clichés.
Going back to the infamous mobile phones, the second chance that presents itself to call the cops results in yet another mystifyingly dumb decision not to. This time it's the blond boss who decides that calling the police when faced with intruders and weird, illegal goings-on in a huge abandoned building is not a good idea. Third occasion? She leaves a worker behind – all alone – and tells him to call the cops only if she doesn't come back in 20 minutes. Predictably, he is the next in line to get axed by the bad guys. Literally every horror-film fan (even the most gullible ones with Alzheimer's) can predict that that phone-call simply wasn't going to ever happen, much less after those 20 minutes were up. The entire movie is predictable.
Now, why would the boss of a CLEANING company want to "test the waters", and play detective rather than leave that to professionals? Because, somehow, the company she works for will crumble if she calls the cops: a logic all of its own, existing in a separate world from ours. To cut a long story a little shorter, we've got a team of utter imbeciles here. They get a plethora of hints that something extremely vile is going on, yet they continue. "Yeah, I mean sure, there are some kind of insane homeless serial killers lurking about, but let's try to finish our job here first, and THEN worry about them. Who knows, they might even not kill us all by the time we finish in 3 days." That's what this nonsense amounts to. And that's the main reason the film is idiotic. Suffice it to say, they find a half-dead man hanging on a ceiling – yet refuse to call the authorities for assistance. I was half-expecting them to get attacked by flying vampires and then say "no, flying vampires is really no reason to bother the police for".
There are so many stupid decisions made by these moronic characters, and unrealistic moments. At one point there are three of them huddled in the building – knowing full-well by that point they're in extreme danger – yet what is their course of action? Do they perhaps LEAVE the building, as any sensible person would? Not really. In fact, the blonde female boss decides to leave her wounded, shocked, bewildered, totally helpless female worker alone while she chases the fat blond guy – who quite sensibly decided to make a run for it (and then predictably got punished for his "cowardice" but getting his ass whooped). Predictably, the abandoned female worker gets snatched by one of the building's numerous medically-trained zombies.
The tendency for a group of in-danger humans to split up in individual campaigns in a maze-like object, rather than stay together, is one of the most annoying and least convincing horror-flick clichés of all times. I wish they'd finally write a script without that crap. But that's like expecting Sean Penn to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. - DirectorMikkel Brænne SandemoseStarsPål Sverre HagenNicolai Cleve BrochSofia HelinNorwegian archaeologist Sigurd Svendsen forms a small team and sets off to find the true meaning of the secret runes found carved in rock and accidentally awakens a giant monster.Kermit wrecks havoc while hobo Spiderwoman saves malekind.
3/10
Already the heroic-like Vikingy folksy music is not encouraging. Sounds like a cheesy power-metal album intro. It's the kind of music that announces a children's action movie, which this dull flick is to some extent.
Predictable from start to finish, a strictly formulaic movie.
The characters would all fail their IQ tests, coz none of them ever realize that the Kermit the Viking lizard is the reason Mother Monster is chasing the bunch in the first place. It gets dumber: the subject of Kermit-in-a-box is never brought up, but somehow the expedition leader turns out to know about it much later. Wouldn't the director have found it prudent to include a scene in which Sigbjorg is informed by the others that they're tagging along a baby monster? Wouldn't that be just a tad too important not to mention? A real little dinosaur dragon? But no, just as Sigfjord's stupid son didn't deem it necessary to report to his father that he found a huge round object which was obviously an egg. Nor was the young child supervised enough to not be on his own long enough to find something crucial and hide it away in his bag like the moron that he is. Clearly Sigbjork doesn't give a toss about his offspring, and frankly I can't blame him either. If anything, kids usually brag about the smallest thing they find, yet this kid kept his discovery a secret – just so the movie could have its stupid, predictable, cliché plot-device. As if we didn't know it's an egg. As if we couldn't figure out that it would hatch and wreck havoc.
The blond chick is very absurdly some kind of a vagabond action-woman, a sort of vapid, homeless version of Lara Croft and Batwoman. There are two young men in this adventure, and yet it's the blond hobo girly who saves the day on several occasions. Oh the feminists, they never rest on their non-laurels. Yes, we understand, Mr. and Mrs. Left-wing Filmmaker, women are just as physically competent as men – and that's probably why men and women compete separately in ALL sports, even in chess which isn't even a real sport. And why women play best-of-three sets in grand slam events – but ask for equal pay. So they must be mental equals to men also, right? If I could have a penny for every brilliant female scientist, I could buy a house – for an ant.
The stupidity of the expedition's members isn't insignificant. They fail to realize that the fat guide is a sleazy, suspicious character who very predictably screws them over and then even more predictably fails to escape but gets eaten by Kermit's maker. Then it takes them a whole half-hour of running away from the Findragon to realize that Kermit is the reason they are being pursued and that to appease the dragon all they need is to hand over the worm to it. - DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsLiv UllmannBibi AnderssonMax von SydowA recently divorced man meets an emotionally devastated widow and they begin a love affair.Yet another "inspired" Bergman relationship drama.
2/10
A writer lives on a remote island and occasionally shouts in the woods when he gets drunk. And he likes to talk to the camera, but as himself – Max von Sydow. He is friendly with an architect – with whose wife he, naturally, has sex. And let's not forget Ullmann, the widow. He likes her, too, and they hook up – much to his regret. She turns out to be even more mentally unstable than himself. In-between all the dull, pretentious dialog we have a couple of animals getting tortured and slaughtered.
Seriously now, if you like Bergman's static, depressive, and overly self-indulgent movies, watch this one, too, and have a ball. Afterward, you can take that whole bottle of sleeping pills you hide from your spouse/parents/whomever, or you can just lock the door of your bathroom and have a nice lie down in the bath-tub while you slit your wrists. I hear hanging is pretty good, too! I have seen 7 or 8 Bergman films so far, and I have yet to come across one that can is even close to being very good, nevermind great. They are usually mediocre or downright boring.
I know, I know, Those of you who love Bergman probably think that I don't possess the necessary intellectual capacity to comprehend his stellar films. I mean, they are all - common knowledge - simply BRILLIANT. So DEEP. So very DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND.
Believe me, there is nothing d"ifficult" about these films, and I am referring in particular to his relationship films of the "Passion of Anne" kind (or "Cries & Whispers" and "Autumn Sonata", for example). They are rather simple, in fact. Sure, they may be tough to understand by your average Steven Segall fan, but the fact that Bergman's films aren't idiotic doesn't mean they're good. They do not entertain. Heavy drama? Fine. But let's have grander themes than just relationships between a couple of depressed, troubled Swedes. All that these bergmannesque characters need is a nice trip to Hawaii - you know, somewhere warm and sunny – and they wouldn't be on the verge of suicide so much. I NEED SOMETHING GRANDER THAN WHO IS DEPRESSED AND WHY AND WHAT THE REAL ROOTS ARE TO THEIR ANXIETY, SELF-LOATHING, and other wonderful award-winning traits these people possess.
You want intelligent? Check out "Possible Worlds", "2001", "Picnic At Hanging Rock", "Solaris" (the 1973 film, not the shoddy Soderbergh version), or "Stalker". Don't bore me with "why does so and so not love his missus any more and why her childhood has scarred her and hence still influences the course of their marriage" type of piffle. YAWN. Bergman dramas are like daily TV soapers but with better acting, photography and dialog.
Sweden's best exports remain ABBA, their tennis players, and "Muppet Show's" Swedish Chef. I don't think that Bergman's contribution amounts to much – unless you'd take seriously what a plethora of pretentious film critics say about him.
Did I mention that Swedish is a beautiful, melodious language that is like a mermaid's song to my ears?
If you are unhappy with with this movie, which you must be, perhaps I will eventually post a link here for you to watch my version of the movie, my own subtitles... - DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsHarriet AnderssonLiv UllmannKari SylwanWhen a woman dying of cancer in early twentieth-century Sweden is visited by her two sisters, long-repressed feelings between the siblings rise to the surface.Bergman's most cheerful work is a powerful exercise in redness.
2/10
If you think the previous Bergmans were drenched in depression and hatred of life, you will be surprised by the cheerful nature of this very red film.
This wonderfully red movie is about a woman who is dying (surprisingly, not from a suicide attempt) and her sisters and their husbands. There is wretchedness, there is depression, there is crying and whispering (here the movie delivers on its promise), there is a woman masturbating(?) with a piece of broken glass (very, very ARTISTIC scene), there is a fat maid day-dreaming of zombie-like resurrection, and last but not least - yes – there is a suicide attempt, as well.
Only one suicide attempt? Well, yes. You see, Ingmar was in one of his better moods when he wrote the script for this reddish film. Apart from the wounded stomach of the self-stabber, the mental agony pervading the minds of every character, the cut-up vagina (that broken-glass business), and the physical pain of the dying woman - there isn't much misery in "Cries & Whispers". It is an uplifting film about the human spirit. Oh, yes: and the "human condition". Gotta use that term. Always impresses the reader. Yes, the "human condition". Deep stuff. Whenever a drama is made by a European director – and it happens to be about the "human condition" – you just KNOW it HAS to be good. Because, after all, we are all human, and we all have conditions. Right? Is that how it works? Sorry, I'm not "deep" and "intelligent" enough to understand the full extent of the complexity that is to be found in a Bergman drama. Will someone explain "human condition" to me? I am so confused by these profound ideas My tiny mind cannot possibly comprehend the full extent of what Ingmar tries to convey in his red/brown movies. "Cries & Whispers" is so much more than just what appears at the surface. A bunch of dull women shouting at each other? No, it's more than that. It's more Please explain, someone!
How best to describe this powerful drama, this ultimate statement about the "human condition" and all that it entails? Red. Well, red-brown. That is how I see this film. It is reddish and it is brownish. In other words, no green or blue. I am informed by Roger Ebert, a famous gourmet and film-critic, that Bergman sees "the inside of the human soul as a membranous red". Well, "Fffffffascinating!...", as Basil Fawlty would say.
So the inside of the human soul is red. We've established that much. Now, what is the inside of Bergman's fans' heads? I'll tell you what: the insides of his fans' heads are full of baloney which they read from various pretentious critics, that glorify Bergman's rather mediocre movies. This, in turn, puts some viewers under pressure to appreciate Bergman's crap more than they normally would. After all, film critics know what they are talking about, right? They finished their movie schools, right? The truth is that even many film critics are under pressure to love Bergman. How can you do that job and not like Bergman? I mean, come on! We can't take you seriously unless you consider him a genius!
Back to the movie. There are some truly touching scenes when the fat servant girl takes her breasts out and slaps them on the dying woman's face. Did she do this to comfort her? To please her latent homosexual urges? To please Bergman's urges? Or perhaps she did this so that the movie can have its obligatory "ARTISTIC NUDE SCENE". After all, what pretentious European drama can be the movie monolith that it is if it doesn't have at least one scene of nudity mixed with perversion, all nicely camouflaged as "a message"; whatever meaning those brilliant movie critics attach to it. And where there is "a message" there must be ART, right?
However, there is ONE thing that redeems this movie: the tuneful, beautiful Swedish language. Its soft sounds bang ever-so-gently against my ear-drums, making me beg for deafness in all its silent glory.
If you are unhappy with this movie as it is, which you must be, download these clips, improved versions:
https://mega.nz/file/7CxWnCqb#5eUkUmY12n9BnwEyh49wjV6V0US36o2JJMrStANJ46g
https://mega.nz/file/2PhRCCpJ#Ehs-4RcCReTUBjAI6woFfSP5uoph4frGSgldgJDkSz4
https://mega.nz/file/GGwlwAyR#JA67HSokxkoX-WKlaqB-coxGLzBbpQSRTaQDG9KY9ac - DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsIngrid BergmanLiv UllmannLena NymanA devoted wife is visited by her mother, a successful concert pianist who had little time for her when she was young.If you like endless monologues, you've found your movie.
2/10
Fans of "Police Academy 6", stay away. This is far too intelligent for you.
Fans of Kubrick's films, stay away. This is not intelligent enough for you.
Fans of TV soap operas, you should give this one a try.
This time, Bergman's script is nothing less than exhilarating. The story is absolutely amazing.
Ingrid visits her daughter Liv. They talk. Liv's cripple sister, Lena, appears. Ingrid talks to Lena. Ingrid talks to herself. Liv talks to her husband. They talk to Ingrid. Liv plays the piano. Ingrid plays the piano. Liv and Ingrid talk. And they talk. Flashbacks. After a while they talk more. Flashbacks. And guess what? They talk again. And again. Flashbacks. Lena screams. Liv narrates, thinking about suicide. Ingrid on a train, happy to finally leave the movie. Liv narrates more. Guess how the movie ends? Liv talks. To the camera, this time. She has bored Ingrid so much that the cameraman was the only person left to talk to at the end.
If your idea of fun is to watch a mother and a daughter "confront their inner demons and their troubled past" (as some critics would probably put it), then you'll enjoy this piece of crap. A soap opera, nothing more, but with better dialog. Except that this time around the acting is worse than usual. Liv is unconvincing; screaming and tamper-tantrums do not necessarily good acting make. Ingrid is a little better, but she completely destroys the illusion she creates of being a good actress when we hear her speaking English in 3-4 scenes. It is when we hear English spoken here that we get a glimpse into how much worse Bergman films would sound if they were in a language we could understand. As it is, Bergman, quite wisely, hides behind Swedish (he could have easily made more English-speaking movies). When we hear Ingrid in Swedish we don't notice how silly some of the dialog really is. I mean, it's still silly, but not as silly as when you can actually understand it directly.
This oppressive, overwrought drama has all the Bergman traits: flashbacks, marathon dialogs, marathon monologues, reddish/brown colours that dominate, unresolved issues between family members, shouting, misery, wretchedness – and even a crippled person this time. I've always considered it a very cheap dramatic shtick to put a crippled person into the story, sort of under the motto "if I can't get 'em to cry with the other stuff, surely a cripple will get the tears rolling". Check out the truly pathetic scene when Lena is crawling on the floor, shouting "Mama!". I mean, it's so damn manipulative that it can only work with uncritical or inexperienced viewers.
Plot-wise, Bergman really lays on the misery. Not only is Liv scarred for life by her mother's cold behaviour, but she also has a cripple sister. And her health has been worsening steadily for years. And Liv thinks about suicide. And she and her husband couldn't have children for a long time. And if you think that was enough for Bergman, you're wrong: you see, Liv eventually gave birth to a son, but alas, he's dead. And he was just a child, of course, when he died. Of course. So basically, the only disaster Bergman didn't include was the sky falling on everyone's collective heads.
I found it rather pretentious (you can't have a(n honest) Bergman review without this word) how Bergman keeps throwing in all those names of classical composers, and their works. It's sort of his way of saying, "see? I listen to classical music, and these are my favourite pieces of it". As if anyone cares what he listens to. You're an educated, cultured ex-Nazi, we get it.
There is an endless scene with Liv and Ingrid that lasts about 20 minutes (if I'm not mistaken). If you survive that, you can watch any of his other movies. (Except "The Silence"; that will test even the most boredom-immune viewer.)
The melodious, soft-as-a-bird's-beak Swedish language lends audio beauty to this visual feast. The sound coming out of these actors' mouths are like music to my ears...
If you are unhappy with with this movie, which you must be, perhaps I will eventually post a link here for you to watch my version of the movie, my own subtitles... - DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsIngrid ThulinGunnar BjörnstrandGunnel LindblomA small-town priest struggles with his faith.This comment is strictly for "non-serious" viewers.
6/10
One IMDb comment says that WL is only for "serious viewers". Do I smell an inferiority complex again, lurking behind the words of yet another small-minded person who gets all excited when he finally understands something that is actually quite banal in a supposedly artistic movie?
Just how "serious" does one have to be to fulfill the lofty conditions for managing to comprehend and enjoy Bergman's "Grand Visions"? Get over yourselves...
I was surprised to find the movie mildly interesting. Normally I am both bored and annoyed by Bergman's endlessly repetitious themes: misery, regret, relationships gone bad, depression, and suicide. Sure, all these hallmarks of the "great Bergman" are here, especially suicide and the thoughts of it, but this time our favourite Swedish ex-Nazi, father of nine, and pompous film-maker delves into religion, which is the only reason I found some interest here.
The first ten minutes must be like Umberto Eco's book intros: i.e. designed to turn off readers (in this case viewers). (With the difference that Eco then rewards the patient reader...) We are shown a drawn-out sermon that lacks any valuable information about the characters or any kind of visual goodies to latch on to. It is merely grim and dull: like so many Bergman dramas. After this ultra-pointless sermon ends, we finally get to hear some dialogue (and typical Bergmanian monologue), which is for the most part well-written. The movie is also well-acted, no complaints there.
The problem with the movie is that the priest's inner conflict about whether there is a God or not eventually drifts and meshes with your typical human-couple relationship crap, when the priest starts berating his girlfriend for being such a nuisance in his tortured existence. (She is a much younger woman that is in love with him (yet another male fantasy here in action, I suspect)). This is one of the main reasons I find his movies so dull (Bergman's, not the priest's): so much focus on what has gone wrong in male-female and female-female relationships. WHO CARES?? Aren't there better subjects to go into? Bergman writes his movies like a woman. It's all about people and their frustrations, and that sort of trite "human condition" stuff gets quickly tiresome. There is little or no depth in that. Those are the same kind of themes that you find in your typical dumb TV soap, only better written by Bergman. A truly great director like Kubrick explores all sorts of subjects, doesn't stick to one and the same thing with the manic obsession of a celebrity stalker. In fact, Kubrick just in his last 5-6 movies has covered far more ground than Bergman in all his nearly 50 movies.
Take suicide, for example. It's impossible to watch a Bergman movie without someone musing about suicide or committing it, and no later than within the first third of the movie. The aura of self-imposed death is always in the air, which not only makes his movies somewhat predictable, but too repetitious. Btw, I find it highly ironic that a man who was this obsessed with whether life's worth living or not lived to be 89! He must have used his suicidal characters to live out his own fantasies of finally toping himself, which he never did because in reality he was probably too much in love with all the fame and adoration his suicidal dramas brought him to actually kill himself. (Hm... I sense another irony here...)
Bergman's hapless priest drives Sydow to suicide - or at least accelerates that inevitable(?) outcome - and then we fail to see any real regret or sadness about it. Even Sydow's widow - with 3 kids and pregnant - doesn't react with sufficient shock. Is everyone emotionally dead here? Or is that merely the way people are in Scandinavia? The movie had a good middle, but after Sydow kills himself there was little to get excited about. No-one to relate to, plus the religious theme takes a backseat for a while. - DirectorAnders NilssonStarsOldoz JavidiBahar ParsMina AzarianA gripping and intense thriller about honour, loyalty, and the courage to fight for what you believe.Begrman would NOT have been proud.
8/10
I never thought I'd live to see the day: a Swedish movie that doesn't indulge in depression, doom, gloom, gray scenery, people committing suicide left and right. No vein-cutting, no noose-tightening, no gun-loading in a barely-lit Malmo room, no Bergmanesque self-hatred and despondency. No Liv Ullman crying her eyes out as she begs her husband not to elope with his mistress to a lone island, no Max von Sydow clumsily impersonating a self-loathing womanizer, and no pointless fill-in-the-meaning-yourself scenes full of yawn-worthy gobbledygook..
Yes, NMF has an interesting story. It is exciting, well-acted, briskly paced, hence thoroughly enjoyable.
The most effective of the three stories is "Leyla". In particular Oldoz Javidi, who plays the title character, is the standout in the movie. The only complaint I have about her is her name which is absolutely impossible to remember! (Try it: have fun - and good luck with it!) After a few failed attempts I finally had to paste her name into this text because I kept forgetting it.
The only flaw in the story itself is the cowardice exhibited by the filmmakers in not making the family be Moslems. (Do Christians indulge in "honour killings" of their daughters?... Not that I'm trying to make saints out of Christians either, mind you.) The writers didn't even have the guts to let them speak their own language, which would have been far more logical than always speaking Swedish, considering that most(?) of the family members didn't even own Swedish passports, hence couldn't have been 3rd- or 4th-generation immigrants. It is not even clear which country they're from. Were the filmmakers afraid of ending up like the Dutch documentary maker Van Gogh? If that's all the courage Europeans currently possess, then au revoir Western civilization...
Strangely enough, the mob revenge tale is the weakest of the three, perhaps because that particular subject had been flogged to death in countless TV crime shows and action flicks. - DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsBibi AnderssonLiv UllmannMargaretha KrookA nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personae are melding together.More fodder for desperate film students...
5/10
A 5 out of 10 means this is by far the best Bergman film I've seen so far (I've seen about 10). There is an effective music score - for a change - and a scene or two were eerie. It is certainly a first for me, to experience an emotion other than boredom while watching Bergman's typically downbeat material.
The movie starts off pretentiously enough with a collage of almost random images, including a glimpse of an erect penis. This was 1966, but I guess in Sweden even then the sight of an erect penis was probably normal for most adults, and maybe even kids. What was the point of the penis? Perhaps to wake up the viewer who, expecting yet another dull mess from Bergman, might already fall into deep slumber a mere minute into the movie? Maybe the penis symbolizes Bergman's own wish to have sex with both of the movie's actresses (well, he DID have 9 children from 5 wives...). Apart from the, I'm quite quite sure, very ARTISTIC penis (i.e. no regular penis, but a Bergman penis - which counts for so so so much more in the cinema heaven), we are also shown a tarantula in this silly first "scene", plus the squeezing of blood from a sheep. Bergman seems to have an almost pagan/Satanic obsession with hurting animals which he indulged the most in "Passion of Anne". Hence I'm surprised that we weren't shown the probably edited out sequence when the tarantula gets squashed by a very excited Bergman. "Cut! Okay, now I SQUASH this damn bug!" Bloodlust.
Oh, yeah: and a hammer gets nailed in a hand. More senseless violence. Ts, ts...
Sure, the movie is about depression, sadness, missed opportunities, regrets, errors of the past - and other such "deep" Bergmanian themes - but at least there is nothing about suicide this time around. Right...? Wrong! 19 minutes into the movie, just as I was thinking "well, at least no-one has tried to top themselves yet", there it was: suicide was mentioned. For an entire 19 minutes I thought Bergman had gone crazy and forgotten about his favourite theme! At the end of the movie, sure enough, one of the two females, Bibi, tries to kill herself by biting into her own vein. (How poetic.) Guess how Liv reacts to this? She starts sucking her blood. (Read this sentence as Bela Lugosi would.) What was the point of that? Was Liv trying to save her life, or does the scene symbolize (there's that word again...) Liv's selfish misusing of Bibi for her own strange, insane purposes? Who cares... The whole thing isn't "deep" enough by a long shot.
But let's go back to the basic plot. Liv is a tortured genius star actress (is there such a thing? apparently Bergman thinks so) who for absolutely no reason decides not to speak anymore. The tests show that she is not insane, and perfectly healthy in every way. Bibi plays a talkative, star-struck nurse who takes care of her. This set-up is every woman's dream, when one thinks about it: "I talk, while you listen". And that's exactly what happens; Bibi finds herself in a sort of female heaven, being able to talk uninterrupted - for hours - while her monologue companion listens attentively. Bibi spills out her guts to Liv, her innermost fears and secrets, until one day Bibi finds a letter in which Liv betrays her by writing to the doctor about Bibi's orgy episode.
The orgy in question is a little Scandinavian porn yarn Bibi relates to Liv earlier on. It's about how Bibi had sex with two male strangers, while frolicking on a beach (naked, of course: we're in Sweden) with her equally horny female friend, who masturbated after Bibi's first sexual partner came inside her. No joke. This is what Bergman actually gives us as "food for thought". (But it turns out to be merely food for fat Ebert; more on that later.) Naturally, there were far less explicit ways to portray the core of Bibi's character, but Bergman chose a mere silly porn story - the kind you find in any sex-shop or XXX channel - which made me grin rather than anything else.
It is interesting to mention at this point that Roger Ebert, that ballooned-up intellectual movie gourmet (he eats movie reels which is why he loves films), says in his review that the sex story is one of the most "erotic sequences in movie history". Naturally, if the same story was told, word-for-word, in a Bruce Willis action film then Ebert would have thought it tasteless and dumb.
"Persona" is supposed to be about how those two women eventually switch identities. Frankly, I don't see it. Liv is still silent, not uttering a word, so how has she become like Bibi? Bibi's defining characteristic is that she's a blabber-mouth: she literally does not stop talking. Likewise, I don't really see any evidence that Bibi has become like Liv: after all, Bibi still talks a lot, and besides, we are given very little insight into Liv's mind, so it's hard to know what she was really like hence if Bibi became like her or not. The only major insight we get is that long monologue about Liv's rejected child. In fact, this monologue is then REPEATED straight away, almost word-for-word, in what must be one of the most pointless scenes in a Bergman film (and that's saying a lot).
I was annoyed by how Bergman tries to present thespians, namely as exalted thinkers, suffering artists - and he really ought to know better. Hitchcock knew they were just meat puppets, so why doesn't Bergman?
The political clips are irrelevant and predictable. The burning monk scene: why?? PRETENTIOUS. As for the Nazi reel: that's rich coming from a man who himself had ties to the Nazis at one point... Go look it up.
Plenty of senseless dialogue in the last scenes. - DirectorPetri KotwicaStarsOuti MäenpääMartti SuosaloRia KatajaUpon discovering that her husband is having an affair, a Helsinki gynecologist attempts to gather more knowledge about her rival and, in the process, becomes hopelessly entangled in the other woman's life.Musta yää watch this film? Yää don't have to, but yää could do considerably worse.
7/10
Forget the much-hyped Bermuda Triangle - a Finnish love triangle is where all the danger lurks nowadays.
First of all, if you're love-sick and slightly drunk, and you're in the middle of a Finnish Summer (meaning around -30 C) you'd better stay away from the wheel. And if you feel that jää musta drive drunk, make sure you don't crash into a tree, because taking a stroll through the countryside in a Finish night is not an option.
It seemed for a moment that one of the triangle's members might lose their life in the tritest of movie clichés - a car accident - but fortunately the writer opts for a cleverer solution.
What at first smells like a typical, dull relationship drama quickly develops into an entertaining guessing game: what the hell will happen next? "Musta yää" is often unpredictable, has a healthy number of plot-twists, and is always on the verge of becoming a thriller (but fortunately doesn't).
Toward the end, it almost seems as if all the participants of the love triangle will snuff it. However, "only" one-third lose their life. And because a baby is born at the end, we still end up with a trio...
The events tend to unfold a little on the far-fetched side toward the end, but never to the point of blatant hitchcockian or dePalmian insulting of the viewer's intelligence. - DirectorJens LienStarsTrond FausaPetronella BarkerPer SchaanningIn a strange city where every person seems content beyond reason a new man arrives in town and stirs up trouble by asking too many questions.Consumers who love anti-consumerist messages.
6/10
Nerdy movie buffs without girlfriends inevitably cheer the movie's anti-consumerism message. Most die-hard film-fans get all of their education about history, society and politics from movies – which are largely left-wing – so obviously they will happily acknowledge any movie that has even the remotest anti-capitalist message because their own views are being constantly shaped by the world of filmic make-believe rather than the real world in which they hardly ever actively participate. Whether this movie falls into the left-wing category or not isn't entirely clear, but one of its themes - the yuppies' obsession with furniture - certainly falls into that category, evoking "Fight Club" for example. If an excessive fetish for IKEA products is the worst left-wing film-makers can say about capitalist society, then capitalism must be working marvelously.
Of course, what do die-hard movie fans do all year? Well, they watch movies! 3-4 films per day, every day of the week, ever week of the month, every month of the year. Very few of them work in office building or have well-paying jobs like the Bothersome Man here, and those that do - unlike Bothersome Man - can't find a date to save their lives. These people are society's misfits, losers unable to find their place in the "post-industrial consumer society" or whatever other pretentiously hateful label they'd stick on modern society which they blame for all of their own shortcomings and failings. Capitalism: the convenient scapegoat for every "blameless" misfit and failure incapable of self-criticism.
But come on, all ye whiny misfits, keep this one thing in mind: our mostly dirt-poor ancestors struggled just to make ends meet, and the average human life-span had been around 30 until just a few centuries ago; medicine practically didn't even exist as a proper science until the last century, dentists worked without anesthesia, streets stunk of horse-manure, there was no toilet-paper, military service was usually compulsory, and personal freedoms were greatly limited by the combined tag-team efforts of the Church and the monarchy. There was no porn, no tennis, no internet, no chocolate latte – and very ironically no movies either. So let's not get carried away with this need to criticize progress, going so far even as to decry it as a regression of sorts, just because a few yuppies have plastic smiles and obsess over having a large house with a swimming pool.
I guarantee ALL of you one thing: if a time-machine were to transport any of you spoiled moaners back into the 18th century (let alone much earlier!) after only about a week you'd be screaming your head off to go back to the cozy safety of 21st-century "decadent consumerism". Trust me on this one. People are first-and-foremost clueless hypocrites.
I hope the movie's makers didn't have this idiotic left-wing message to make, because it would certainly reflect poorly on their intellects. Hopefully, TBM is just a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Twilight-Zone-ish look at the possibility of an imperfect afterlife in which food doesn't taste of anything, in which alcohol can't get you drunk, where sex is devoid of passion, and where people are frustratingly superficial and even zombie-like. Then again, does one need a "consumer society" to find superficial people? They're nearly everywhere you go, including non-consumer (i.e. starving) societies, which is why TBM's world is not totally unlike our own, but definitely quite different.
Still, there are no children. That's hardly a bad thing, huh?
The ending predictably takes the easy way out, not explaining much. I am not complaining though; semi-mysterious/vague movie conclusions offer a riddle for the mind, even if TBM's equation gives you far too many unknowns to know where to even start. Hence almost any theory concerning Hell, Heaven, or Purgatory is as good as the next one. One thing is clear: the Bothersome Man, in his desperate quest for tastes and smells, had stumbled onto a direct path to our world. Or did he? Perhaps he was in an overrated Heaven and found out that life on planet Earth was still better, or maybe he was in a sort of diluted Hell and discovered a forbidden entrance into Heaven. Whichever. Now I sound just like all the others reviewing the film.
The first half-hour was quite dull. Grieg's music wasn't quite suitable because it's far too dramatic for this cheeky horror film. - DirectorPål SletauneTony SpataroStarsKristoffer JonerCecilie A. MosliJulia SchachtJohn has just been left by his girlfriend Ingrid. That day he allows himself to be seduced into a mystical and scary world, where it is impossible to separate truth from the liesSome people found the violence arousing. Plenty of psychopathic Johns milling around in the misfity world of film-buffy nerds.
7/10
People who pay attention to detail will have figured out fairly early that the two women don't exist, i.e. that all the events shown in the other apartment are merely John's hallucinations. Once I figured this out, which was about half-way through the movie (a little too early), the only question remained why he is hallucinating, and why this strange world is so violent and sex-obsessed. The answer is two-fold: 1) he is a schizophrenic with sado-sexual tendencies, and 2) he killed his ex-girlfriend and then her new beau. The delirium is a result of shock after committing the murders.
The biggest clue is in the first scene of the movie, when his ex tells John that she brought along her new boyfriend for protection. The second clue is the girls' over-the-top bizarre behavior. The clues eventually start multiplying at a greater speed, including the never-ending, enormous flat with strange corridors, and the totally unrealistic behavior of the ex's new boyfriend.
The conclusion is interesting and good. However, I have one major problem with the wrap-up: the identity of the two women remains unresolved. He's got a picture of Kim on his wall. Who is she? This should have been explained. The identity of the other woman, Anne, is even less clear. I dislike the idea that John's hallucinations have two very real people (the two people he had just murdered), a woman he knows but whose identity the viewer never finds out, and a woman he'd invented out of the blue. While this kind of hodge-podge of real/unreal characters isn't at all impossible (anything is possible in a schizo's mind), it does leave you with a sense of loose ends.
I would have preferred if the scene in which he sees Kim's photo was cut out of the movie. That would have made things neater: only the people he killed were a reality, whereas all the others are merely figments of his imagination. He does mention his sister at one point; is the writer implying that the violent fist-laden sexual fantasy was with her? Perusing through some of the other reviews here, I came across a "top reviewer" who actually admitted to being titillated/stimulated by the sexual violence – which only supports my claim that most film buffs are confused misfits. Many less favourable reviews compare "Naboer" to "The Lost Highway" or "The Spider". Lynch's TLH is a paper-tiger balloon filled with nothing; a piece of crap that hasn't an iota of logic or sense, with nothing tying into anything else. It's just a collection of mood pieces that are somehow supposed to convey a "story" or some pretentious point/message. As for "Spider", it was the beginning of Cronenberg's fall from grace; a dull, slow-moving drama that has very little going for it, and every movie he's made since has been awful. So even if "Naboer" borrowed a thing here and there, it is a much better movie than either of those. - DirectorAndré ØvredalStarsOtto JespersenRobert StoltenbergKnut NærumA group of students investigates a series of mysterious bear killings, but learns that there are much more dangerous things going on. They start to follow a mysterious hunter, learning that he is actually a troll hunter.7/10
It's a tongue-in-cheek kind of horror comedy, not an all-out zany horror comedy, nor is it truly comedic half the time. So if you're watching this for laughs keep that in mind: the humour is mostly subtle (a troll farting into the protagonists is an exception rather than the rule, ditto a dumb-looking troll feeling up a bridge from underneath). It's not a parody, as it gets sometimes mistakenly labeled, because what would it be a parody of? Horror films about trolls? You know any? It certainly isn't a parody of the LOTR trilogy coz there isn't a single reference to the book/movie and no relevant similarities.
And that brings me to why this is one of the most original horror films - let alone found-footage films - in recent years. Monster films tend to be awfully generic hence boring, yet this Norwegian flick manages to circumvent the cliches, and it achieves this mostly by "biologizing" the trolls; what I mean is the script gives them a place in the natural order of the flora and fauna we know, rather than treat them as mystical creatures transported magically from Mordor or whatever: they have red blood cells, they fart, they eat, they reproduce, they get pregnant, they have territories - and they're even pegged as mammals. In other words, they're treated much as Sasquatch or the Yeti, not as aliens or witches.
Another really refreshing thing about TH is that the monsters - for once - aren't clever. Far from it. Horror movies far too often tend to exaggerate the intelligence of monsters, which can get rather tiresome and repetitive from film to film, not to mention illogical. Not here. These trolls are basically imbeciles, which makes them so much more fun and interesting. Great physical power - yet no brains: just as Tolkien describes them. That in itself lends itself to comedy, the sort of thing that writes itself.
Some viewers are a little disappointed that there aren't more trolls in the film. Firstly, they make four separate appearances which isn't little, and they're properly shown, not blurry-shown quasi-shown like in most other found-in-sewage films. Secondly, we don't wait for an hour to see the first one - the way some other found-footage films do with their zombies/monsters/whatever. Thirdly, it's not just their physical presence that makes the film interesting but also that which is said about them by the trollhunter when they're only being discussed. There's even a slight NatGeo feel about the film, which is so much better than just having monsters who go "ggrgrgrgh" and we know nothing about them except that they kill and get angry.
Sure there's some silly, illogical stuff. The most glaring goof is the Norwegian government's role in all this. For one thing, they want to keep trolls secret. Why? Wouldn't they be a major tourist attraction? Certainly even rich Norway wouldn't mind a few dollars more into its piggy-bank. Even sillier, Norway manages to keep them a secret. How the hell do you keep such huge creatures secret? It's not as if Norway is the size of Africa with a population of 100 people. The fact that Norway has 1000s of metal bands means that at least one metalhead would have had to have seen a troll - especially those damn silly black metal Viking-wannabes roaming the forests, scouting locations for the latest corpse-paint video about Satanic rituals involving sheep and other defenseless animals. Or how about the fact that even small, secretive, intelligent creatures would struggle to remain undiscovered by humans - let alone huge, lumbering, dumb trolls who basically smash up everything in their path. Then again, the movie itself makes a comment to the effect of "how come nobody notices them", plus it's a sort-of comedy so it's OK. They needed the conspiracy plot-device to have the premise, so it's forgivable. Although, the implication that the government kills off the film-crew is a bit much, reeks too much of left-wing paranoia - a huge cliche in horror and thriller flicks.
I am not quite sure though what that whole Christian-smelling troll shtick was about. Were they making fun of Christians or non-Christians? Why would trolls smell out Christians? OK, that's me nit-picking a bit.
This director decided not to continue making good movies but sold out, and has since been making junk only, with shit actors. - DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsErland JosephsonIngrid ThulinLena OlinAs an aging playwright interacts with the young lead in his play after everybody's gone home, he reminisces about her mother, whom he maintained a sexual relationship with before she died.4/10
This is like a filmed theater piece, rather dull and with Lena Olin - which is NOT intended as a compliment.
Way to many years have passed, I only recall being annoyed and bored. - DirectorAnders BankeStarsPetra NielsenCarl-Åke ErikssonGrete HavnesköldVampires terrorize a city in Norrbotten.7/10
I wonder if my review got lost or I never did it in the first place. Sometimes I omit to post them, then they get lost...
I recall that this was quite a decent horror comedy. - DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsMax von SydowLiv UllmannGertrud FridhWhile vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.3/10
I am not even sure I completed this crap, that's how much I liked it.
I tried doing a "subtitled version" of it, as I had done with another three Bergman films, but the b&w ugliness made it too tedious, not fun. The movie is very mockable and mockworthy, but I struggle to spend that kind of time and energy on ugly movies. - DirectorAndrei TarkovskyStarsErland JosephsonSusan FleetwoodAllan EdwallAt the dawn of World War III, a man searches for a way to restore peace to the world and finds he must give something in return.6/10
Since Tarkovsky directed it (and presumably wrote it), it may pass off as a Russian film.
But that's irrelevant. What is annoying is that I never wrote a review for it. - DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsMax von SydowGunnar BjörnstrandBengt EkerotA knight returning to Sweden after the Crusades seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague.3/10
I couldn't believe just how mediocre this is, I didn't expect a masterpiece (I mean, come on: it's just Bergman) but I did hope it'd be at least somewhat interesting.
Didn't write a review, which is a shame because I'd like to know exactly why I disliked it. - DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsMax von SydowBirgitta ValbergGunnel LindblomIn 14th-century Sweden, an innocent yet pampered teenage girl and her family's pregnant and jealous servant set out from their farm to deliver candles to church, but only one returns from events that transpire in the woods along the way.1/10
Did I ever review this or not? Must have been years ago.
I am just not sure.
Either way, it was as dumb as "Last House On the Left" (which took the premise) in many places, but not quite as horrible.
This movie made me question Bergman's intelligence.
I know, hipsters would say "well, that's ironic coz YOU'RE the idiot here!!!"
But to that I'd say, "calm down, my poor little defenseless hipsters, it's just one opinion, nobody's gonna take away your bergmanny toys from ya".
What an awful piece of trash.
Yes, hipsters, trash.