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Reviews
Meet Joe Black (1998)
Why always vulgarise the end?
I thought I would give this film many points, but... - Oh, no buts for the length. A good story should be allowed to use the time needed. 4/5 of the time I enjoyed this wonderful film; fascinating idea with good acting (by all three of them in the lead).
'It must be based on a play', I thought, 'but somebody must have changed the end of it'.
How sad, they destroyed it by making a Hollywood ending! From something worth thinking about they turned it into a fairy tale. Why can't some people ever keep their fingers off the endings?
The 13th Warrior (1999)
A Lord of the Ring kind of tale with historical background
A nice surprise to find a story we all heard of in school so well done on the screen!
In school we read about the Arab who encountered Vikings far away from their homeland, and the film follows his description thoroughly (beautiful but dirty people). After that the film is fantasy, despite some mythological base.
Clothing and settings are more of the modern Icelandic Viking film style than of the old Hollywood one, which is very good (although houses and clothes are a bit fanciful, but at least there are no Viking helmets with horns). They have tried to make Viking behaviour believable and have managed all right there, if you have read Nordic sagas.
In our country we prefer to hear people talk the language they are supposed to speak on the screen, but in a Hollywood production like this we can here at least hear Nordic languages spoken for a time.
I particularly like the way the film showed how the Arab (Banderas) learns the Nordic language.
As a whole: an alright adventure story with a good ancient atmosphere.
Käre John (1964)
Love story of all times, dramaturgy before its time
"Käre John" had its premiere when I was a school boy. I remember much talk about its nude scenes. Sweden was renowned for that kind in those days. That made me never want to see the film. I'm glad I didn't, not even when I was 15 and could. I'm glad because I was too unexperienced to understand the love story. To-day the film would be allowed to all ages here (but is - of course - of no interest to too young ones), the nude scenes are nothing but perfectly natural settings.
I'm surprised over how modern the whole film seems: the actors act naturally - not theatrically (and very good), the script is just as good. Most notable is the odd jumping to and fro in the chronology of the story. That must have been much before the time the film was set in, 1964.
In short: a good depiction of a simple story we all can recognize ourselves in.
Heaven's Gate (1980)
Unamerican style drama on American historical drama
I liked Heaven's Gate a lot, much more than The Deer Hunter, which tried to paint over the recent US defeat in Vietnam. Heaven's Gate raised much more self-critically a part of US history unknown to at least us Swedes. And the way it was edited, it was all but Hollywood-like. In fact, it was made somewhat in Russian film style with its often long scenes that were let to speak for themselves.
I heard about the film in a film review on the radio. They said, that the version of the first run was ununderstandable and chaotic. The new, one hour longer version, was not only understandable but also a fine movie.
I can only agree. I recommend it not as a Western but as a drama, then one would have the right anticipation of it.
A detail: some critics here on the net meant that the plot was ununderstandable partly because the immigrants speak Russian. This cannot be applied on showings in my country, as foreign films here are subtitled. As far as I remember, even the Russian dialogue was translated.
Italiani brava gente (1964)
Best film about - and against - war ever
Saw it as a teenager and still remember lots of "action" that ALWAYS ended badly for the good ones. Full of unbelievable incidents, which give the spectator hope - but end in sudden catastrophe or in other sad ways.
Have never before or later seen a film, that so much could make a young, male spectator realize, that war is no fun.
Festen (1998)
Bra film, men...
Ridiculous to use shaky hand-camera, that makes the spectator get a pain in the head. Every amateur uses more stable things. This is von Trier fancy trend.