This movie does not take place in China, and it’s not at all about dogs. It’s about Arvid (Dejan Cukic) who has had a really weird day. He manages to knock out a robber at the bank where he works, only to come home to an empty apartment; his girlfriend has left him. A few hours later a woman rings his door and breaks down crying, telling him that the would-be robber was her boyfriend and the money was to be used for artificial insemination so they could have a child. After sending her off with his apologies, Arvid starts thinking and decides that HE has to do a robbery, since it’s his fault the first robbery failed. But Arvid doesn’t know anything about robberies, so he gets in touch with his estranged brother Harald (Kim Bodnia) and Harald is certainly no stranger to crime… And that’s when things start rolling! I know this isn’t the best movie ever made (far from it), but it has a distinct charm that cracks me up every time I see it. It’s also something as rare as a Danish action movie (and a comedy to boot)! Nothing is sacred as we follow the naive Arvid’s descent into the underworld where things quickly get out of hand and nothing, absolutely nothing, goes as planned!
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Original Title: I Kina spiser de hunde (1999)
Director: Lasse Spang Olsen
Filed under: Movie Reviews | Tagged: 1990's, 4 stars, action, comedy, Dejan Cukic, Denmark, Foreign, Kim Bodnia, Lasse Spang Olsen | Leave a Comment »
Long ago in a fantasy far far away… Young Eragon Skywalker is just helping out his uncle on the farm, when he learns that he’s the last Dragon Knight. After his uncle is slain by the Stormtroopers (led by the insidious Durza Vader) of the evil king Galbatorix, Eragon gets a mentor, Brom Kenobi, who helps him on his quest to join the Rebels. Along the way they free Princess Arya and Brom Kenobi is slain by Durza Vader, as he sacrifices himself so the others can escape. During that event a rogue joins them and they find the Rebel Base. Alas, they have inadvertently led the evil Stormtroopers to the Base, but the rogue and Eragon end up not only saving the base, but slaying the evil Durza Vader. Rejoice, as the saga continues in “Eragon Episode V: The Kingdom Strikes Back”. Hey, at least the costumes were pretty cool.
Matt Damon plays a (seemingly ageless) employee of the OSS (later CIA) in the early days of World War II and later the Cold War. We follow his professional as well as his private life, how he’s slowly estranged from his wife and child and in the end he is faced with the choice of The Agency or his family. There are several problems with this movie, however. First of all, the acting of nearly all the fine actors (de Niro, Hurt, Baldwin, Crudup) is pretty wooden, with the notable exceptions of Angelina Jolie and John Turturro. Second, we, the viewers, don’t really know what he’s doing for the CIA. We get some fragments of supposedly important phone calls, some hushed discussions in the office, all very coded and very subtle. So subtle, in fact, we never learn what it is Matt Damon actually does, other than some sort of counter-espionage and that he’s involved in several overthrows, or attempted overthrows, of foreign governments, but we don’t know how involved, nor how important he is. It’s really hard for us viewers to see what’s so compelling about his job, when we never learn anything about it, so when he’s faced with the choice between family and career, we don’t have any problem choosing, and we fail to empathize with his agony. He seems to be spending more time discussing the philosophy of espionage with his Russian counterpart (KGB? GRU? Who knows?) at secret meetings, than anything else. And this takes place over a period of twentysome years, or nearly three hours of real life. This is quite simply too little story told over too much time about a person who is just as gray a bureaucrat inside as he is on the surface.
I really liked Shaun of the Dead, but even though Hot Fuzz has some of the same qualities as Shaun, it doesn’t excite me nearly as much. Partly because some of the content in Hot Fuzz seems lifted from Shaun (aside from the obvious references), partly because the last half hour of the film is just too monotonous (yes, it is possible to have too much action in a movie). This does not make it a bad film, not at all, but it’s not a great film either. I enjoyed the back and forth banter between the two protagonists, but it drags on just a little too long, as does the movie as a whole. Some tighter editing would have made this a much more enjoyable film.
Do not watch Day Watch if you haven’t seen Night Watch first. It’s probably also a good idea to have seen it recently, since Day Watch offers absolutely no introduction and no explanation of prior events – it takes off at 90 mph and if you’re not strapped in, you’ll be left behind wondering what happened. Day Watch starts with Anton gruffly mentoring a talented rookie and they run into his son (who joined the Dark Side) as he has a run-in with the Rules of the Truce between Light and Dark. Anton is later charged with the murders of some Dark Side people (members of the Day Watch) and he has to work really hard to prove his innocence – and meanwhile his son is up to no good either. Everybody seems to be out to get Anton… The effects are good (better and grander than in the first installment), and I personally get a kick out of watching the grittiness that is modern Russia (although it is undoubtedly much more fun to watch than to live). Day Watch is, all in all, a more confusing film than Night Watch (since nothing’s explained) and we’re not given much time to re-acquaint ourselves with the different characters. So as a movie on its own it doesn’t work quite as well as the first one did. It’s a good movie, but not a great movie as Night Watch is.
Even after a couple of mediocre albums, Machine Head shows with Elegies that they’re still a really good live band. Captured in front of London fans (Machine Head is much bigger in Europe than in the US) they demonstrate how tight and fired-up they are, despite having gone through a number of lineup changes. A well-filmed, well-performed show. And while you rest your neck after the show, you can enjoy the extras on this disc, 3 music videos (“Imperium”; “The Blood, The Sweat, The Tears”; “Days Turn Blue To Gray”) each with their own little “Making of” featurette and a surprisingly honest half-hour retrospective about the thardship they faced before and during the recording of the album “Through The Ashes of Empires”. These extras make a good concert DVD even better.
Something as rare as a Norwegian comedy – and it’s actually funny. We meet Elling and Kjell Bjarne, two mentally ill people, as they’re thrust together in an Oslo apartment, reluctantly trying to live on their own, without constant supervision. Their supervisor suggests that they celebrate the new apartment by going out for dinner. The reclusive Elling responds by asking what better place to celebrate a new apartment than in that same new apartment, barely able to disguise his fear of new places and new people. Around this time in the movie I feared that this would be another Rain Man-type movie, but fortunately it isn’t! Elling is the (involuntarily funny) narrator and it’s his and Kjell Bjarne’s introduction to the real world that we follow. We’re actually left wondering (or at least I was) if the two characters are really mentally ill or if they’ve merely been so sheltered that they failed to develop common social skills. A nice heart-warming film, with only likeable characters.
A beautiful story told in three different intertwining layers. One layer is set in the year 2000 with a scientist (Hugh Jackman) trying to save his author wife (Rachel Weisz) from dying of cancer. The second layer is set in 1500 as we follow the (fictional, written by the dying author) search in South America for the Fountain of Life to save a dying queen and the third layer is set in 2500 A.D., as the (now immortal?) scientist flies his wife in a bubble through space to bring her to the dying star that was considered the Fountain of Life by a South American Tribe. The Fountain successfully manages to tell the story of a man who lives more in the search than in the present (whichever age that present may be), more concerned with making things all right, than being all right, more concerned with curing his wife, than being with her. The Fountain is not an immediately accessible movie (it jumps between the different layers without explaining anything), but if you give it some time it will richly reward you with beautiful imagery and a story that should be told more often in this busy day and age.
I usually enjoy computer animated films, irrespective of which company makes them. Perhaps it’s me and my lack of appreciation for the noble art of tap dancing, but Happy Feet doesn’t really move me. I caught myself agreeing with the majority of the penguins who thought singing was the proper way of expression, not dance. I really enjoyed the characters voiced by Robin Williams and the story as a whole is good, but I just don’t get the tap dancing, I just don’t get it.
Valiant disappointed me somewhat. My problem with the movie is that the makers violated the main rule for computer animated stories: You need a good story to back up the images. Valiant is from the beginning a story in which you just know that the undersized hero will save the day, with help from his rogue friend (oops, a touch of Star Wars here?). And sure enough, there isn’t a single surprise or plot-twist anywhere in this movie. The good voice-cast (Ewan McGregor, Ricky Gervais, Hugh Laurie) and the good imagery just can’t save this movie from being uninteresting for anyone over 14 years of age.
