Reviews

Elverhøj (The Elf Hill), originally composed and staged in 1828, is Denmark's signature theatrical drama, having never lost its initial popularity. The music by Kuhlau is broadly admired and considered thoroughly brilliant. The Danish lyrics by Heiberg are very poetic and beautiful.

To attempt a fully scored film adaptation, as was done in 1939, was a daring, ambitious and impressive undertaking. Part of the reason it doesn't entirely work is the limitations of the production values that were possible in 1939. The score is a bit shrill and fast, perhaps in an ill-advised bid to stay within the abominably short 90 minute run-time. The ballet girls who enact the elves sweep across the landscape in a transparent visual effects sequence that reminds me very much of the green CGI armies of the dead on LOTR: The Return of the King! Funny to consider how fake it looked both in 1939 and in 2003!

The characters and the acting never transcend caricature, and the "poetic" archaic speech patterns are somewhat fascinating, but perhaps more trouble than they're worth. But, we do get a glimpse of the grandeur inherent in the story and music, and to me it never got boring. The historical significance also counts for something. I will probably never realize my dream of seeing a big-budget new film adaptation of this drama, but in some way this film lets me continue that fantasy.

I need to study the original libretto more closely, but this film certainly left one or two plot-lines dangling, such as; what was the reaction of the Elf King? Why could Christian IV cross into the Elf King's realm with impunity? Seems like the whole elf dimension of the story was excised. Or maybe the budget just never allowed them to do the full story. Well, it was an interesting watch and I don't regret buying the DVD. If you're a huge fan of this drama and music, seeing it will be a relevant experience for you.

Shyamalan's movies are definitely hit and miss; some of them are not good. But I like a lot of the ones that others seem to hate. I Like Lady in the Water, I liked Old, and I like Trap. Super suspenseful and engaging all the way through. Easily the best work we ever saw from Josh Hartnett. A very lovely movie. What are these plot holes that people are talking about, but not describing? Opinions which can't qualify their hate just Do. Not. Matter. At. All. Most haters just want to sound cool because they think that's what happens when you blast a Shyamalan movie. Jeez. Grow up, yokels.

Good movie. See it without reading any reviews first and try forming your own opinion. And if you review it, give proper explanations of what you found good and bad. Please. It'll make reading your reaction so much more worthwhile.

I attended the premiere of author/director Alex Garland's latest film, CIVIL WAR. I have always had a strained relationship with his writing skills; I generally don't think he is very good (to put it mildly). So far, I have not given anything he has written or directed a higher rating than 6 stars out of 10 - some things significantly less. However, CIVIL WAR ends up at 8/10 - even though it still ends up being somewhat disappointing in a couple of ways.

Calling the film CIVIL WAR (in a US context) is a bit of a misnomer. The film is about a small team of war photographers who go on a risky road trip to Washington to "interview" the president, while a civil war is going on in the background. The film's focus is primarily on the ethics of war photography and the personal costs for the photographers. There is almost no political content in the film, so it is a quite different film than most people would probably expect.

The ongoing civil war in the film is completely unclear and undescribed. California and Texas are allied with each other - probably exclusively so that the film - kind of cowardly! - wouldn't favor either the predominantly Democratic Californians or the predominantly Republican Texans. The New People's Army (which appears on a promotional map graphic for the movie) is not mentioned in the film, and we don't hear who Florida is supposed to be siding with either. The photographers seem to be following soldier teams from several of the warring parties, which further adds to the confusion.

However, if you see the film as a film about war photographers and their traumatic experiences, then it is actually a good film. Plenty of action and shocking (and loud!) excitement - photographers can now rejoice that there is an action movie specifically aimed at them!

As I sat in the cinema at the end of the movie, I felt like it wouldn't have great re-watch value; that it was a movie I'd probably only see once. But I must admit that upon reflection and further analysis, I do want to watch it again. Some of those black and white photo shots are like forbidden porn - very cinematically sexy. I stress, "cinematically"!

I sat on row 7 in a large showroom; quite close to the screen. If I go again, I'll hang back to the furthest back-row (row 24) and get a bit of distance to the screen (and the loudness); a bit less in-my-face.

8/10.

I am pretty stunned at all the positive reviews here. They must have been sent in by mindless action movie fans and not by people who like Star Trek. Because this ridiculous action fest is just dull in absolutely every way that matters to a Trek fan. The storyline is beyond imbecilic. Nothing interesting happens. And, no, Kirk riding a motocross cycle for a long stretch is not remotely interesting. This entire movie is just idiotic, and commits the cardinal sin of being super-mega-DULL and in every way unfunny and illogical. Is Spock even in it? Nothing he says or does in this movie is memorable in the slightest. Nothing makes sense. Every idea is just regurgitated from the two previous movies, in a Hollywood call-back fest. This is the third-worst Trek movie, after Final Frontier and Nemesis. It's just empty of any real substance. Terrible writing. Awful creative decisions, awful conception of what Trek should be.

Well, this movie was... not great, but a bit of a peculiar (using the word "funny" here would give a wrong impression, since the movie is not half as funny as it thinks it is) experience.

Historically, the Stockholm blood-bath was an infamous event where the Danish army and royalty executed a big group of Swedish aristocrats, so (the saying goes) the street were flowing with blood. Mostly, the legacy of this event has been that it is shameful for Denmark to have perpetrated it, and a good reason for Sweden to hate us (I am Danish, you see). However, seen in a modern and progressive light, was it all that bad to kill off a portion of the oppressive elite? Was it really such a slight to the common people of Sweden?

Anyway, when I went into this movie I hadn't read anything about it, other than that it had some Danish actors in it - so I suffered from the misimpression (is that a word?) that it was actually a Danish-produced movie! And since the Danes in it are presented as cartoonishly evil, I thought it was kind of a funny self-satire on the "Danish" film-makers' part. Even though I didn't like the immature vulgarities of it, I thought it was a redeeming feature of the movie. In my defense, I believed the movie to be Danish-produced because this exact style of humor is (sadly) extremely wide-spread in Danish movies.

But then, as the end credits rolled I realized it was a Swedish-produced movie - meaning that the oh-so-good Swedish characters and the oh-so-evil Danish characters were just the usual bunch of clichés found whenever some country makes a movie about their (past or present) enemies. No self-satire; just caricatured and unnuanced finger-pointing at the easy targets. [EDIT: It actually turns out that the movie is a Swedish/Danish co-production, so I guess the self-satire is there after all. Except that the screenwriters are Norwegian, which is kind of hilarious.]

To be honest, whether the movie were Danish or Swedish-produced doesn't change my rating of it. The attempted comedy fell flat in any case (you see, all the Swedish characters were dead serious), and the movie didn't know whether to be a comedy or a historical movie. It was also surprising to me that it was in English, since it concerns Danish and Swedish events, and starring (mostly) Nordic actors. The movie indeed feels made for international streaming; it has many of those hallmarks of sloppy, rushed and mediocre streaming service content.

There are two reasons I'm not rating this movie even lower. The first is the female actors, which were very good and admirable. It's a great shame that they are being disrespected by being forced to be part of a movie more dominated by immature and misogynist male "humor". The Freja character reminded enormously of Miranda Otto's character from Lord of the Rings (Eowyn? Was that her name?), and was a strong character, if perhaps not super-realistic in the historical setting.

The other redeeming feature of the movie is that it does start some thoughts about what happened in the in/famous event, and does make us check it out on Wikipedia, at least. As they say at the beginning of the movie, some of this actually happened.

Disagree with me if you want, but this movie was a complete and utter snore-fest. It had absolutely zero entertainment or engagement value. It was super-slow and undramatic to the point of being sleep-inducing. Sure, I got most of the little hints, but they were not interesting. A movie like this may have been edgy and thought-provoking if it had been made in the 1950s, '60s or '70s, but in recent decades? Big nope! This movie is the very definition of "too little, too late!" This director should wake up and realize that time is a'wasting! This kind of movie is not taking the audience's time seriously! And life is too short for this hooey!

I can give this movie only 3 stars out of 10 - and that's being generous.

I watched Falkehjerte to see if it would be appropriate for my 11-year-old niece. After a slightly dull start, the movie began drawing me into its airy and light-hearted narrative. The Falcon aspect is sort of just a frame for a story of how a different culture is more stimulating to this kind of nerdy girl than her home life, where both of her parents are too busy to take care of her. It's sort of a fantasy movie, a dreamlike journey of boarding a parked truck in Denmark to seek shelter for the rain, and then waking up the next morning in a coastal town in Italy. Here, Katja is caught up in the local kids' gangs (incl. Some young mafioso!), and grow to have a life of friendship with them, until she has to get home to her parents, who after all miss her. The movie is a meditation on dreaming of belonging, in more exciting surroundings than a mind-numbingly boring modern suburban one with parents that are far too busy to stop and smell the flowers. It's well-made in every way, and the only reason I'm not giving it a higher rating is because I'm not exactly the target audience.

Don't listen to the other review here, from 2007 - it's clearly written by the kind of person who only rates movies 1 or 10 and doesn't see the nuance in between.

Fairly well-produced movie, and nice performances. Kudos for featuring an almost exclusively female cast with my male self not even noticing until someone else's user review pointed it out after the fact! Clichéd but engaging movie.

Unfortunately, it made very little sense. My main objection while watching it was that Sam kept prioritizing her boyfriends over attending to Juliet at the party. How could she relive that day over and over without ever addressing the Juliet suicide until many weeks later?! It's seriously daft. My main objection after having finished the movie was: why was SAM the one who had to sacrifice herself? What did she have to pay for? It should have been Lindsey giving her life! And the whole wetting the bed thing was never brought up for Lindsey to deal with and apologize for. In fact, Lindsey should have been the main character. Someone messed up who finally realized she had to atone. But nah. Let's heap it all on poor, innocent Sam! So you just sit there at the end going WTF?? Not exactly a wholesome and well-rounded story.

Someone said recently that audiences were more appreciative of good movies 50 years ago, and (by implication) that current audiences don't know quality when they see it. Jesus H. Christ, when seeing the user reviews here that is really and starkly borne out!

This is a perfectly well-made and often chilling drama about toxic masculinity; a realistic portrayal of how things can veer off-track for anybody; a well-acted and believable depiction of culture shock and the psychological problems of isolation and weltschmerz.

Yet most of the reviewers here clearly weren't prepared for this type of movie, and clearly wanted something very different. Well, why did you watch this, you bleedin' nincompoops? Why didn't you turn it off after half an hour? Why did you even bother to write a review? That's on you, peeps. Get better at picking your content.

Kudos to the BBC for attempting an almost full-text version of Hamlet, but... it's a shame they don't follow through on it. There are various textual changes and additions which only serve to undermine the quality of the play. Stick to Shakespeare, for Pete's sake.

The production has good things (most notably the always professional Juliet Stephenson); a few scenes are well-done, and overall it's certainly watchable. But its greatest weakness is Andrew Scott. He is a very weird Hamlet. Hamlet must, generally, seem intelligent, assertive, confident, except in certain scenes - but Scott's way of playing him is flailing, chaotic, confused and strangely soft and quiet, which is not in character for Hamlet. The worst is all the soliloquies, which sound slow and clueless, spoken in an inconsequential low style that robs them of all sophistication and fascination. Scott doesn't seem to know what he is doing/saying. Which is disastrous; an actor should be able to at least pretend to know what his character is about. Maybe this is just Andrew Scott's acting style, but... it didn't work for me.

I'm surprised there seems to be nobody but me who consider this movie a totally top-notch, off-the-scale, sci-fi, comic book blow-out!! This is a big budget ultra-crazy action comedy which is EXACTLY like a proper James Bond movie is supposed to be (but never was!), and far, far better than the G. I. Joe comics ever were! This is one of the greatest action epics and brilliant blockbuster achievements of the 21st century so far, and apparently almost nobody can see it!! Insane!!

P. S. I know my tone can sound like I'm actually being ironic - But. I. Am. Not. Not one bit. I love this movie; it's a definite favorite. I was totally disappointed by its sequel, and I can't imagine any upcoming G. I. Joe movie will reach the same level of excellence. That mediocre Snake Eyes movie certainly failed hard to do so.

I'm pretty amazed to see so many down-putting reviews here, almost none of them above a 5. Wow. Several people say that this is trying to be a remake of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but it's not. It's more of a remake of The Jerk. Racial co-existence is a touchy subject, and I challenge anybody to do a better job of it than this movie - in this cultural climate. Be honest, that would be extremely hard.

I am actually not a fan of Jonah Hill; his style of comedy is far too vulgar for me, but while this movie started out not being very good, I felt it got funnier and funnier as it progressed, and I liked the climax, which was more than just your usual "cold feet at the last minute" thing; it was actually saying something about how families really matter to two people's relationship, as well as about the cultural conflicts in the world today.

Sure, the movie also had clichés and stupid things; that's why it only gets as high as a 7. But I do feel it deserves a 7.

I don't get the thing with the red hoodie, though. Is it offensive to wear a red hoodie among black people? Guess I'll have to google it.

This movie is another example of how IMDb ratings can't be trusted (this currently has a 5.8/10). It is fantastic! Low-key, but with absolutely marvelous performances from the four leads. Strong and engaging story, based on real events; appealing characters; just a great and captivating story. I particularly loved the way the movie showed the impact of the events on Benji as much as on her mother. Great screenplay, wonderfully realized. I will definitely look for the other work of this director.

Guy Pearce didn't have to BE Harry Houdini; he just had to be a charismatic version of himself, and that he was. This is what a good actor can do and should be appreciated for.

I have to laugh about many of the reviews here. But let me clarify my own impression of the movie before explaining why.

I thought it was dull as dishwater. The audience is a fly on the wall in the lives of some completely ordinary, everyday people. Who do normal things we've all seen before; things that in many ways are clichés. I generally prefer genre movies, sci-fi and that sort of thing, and rarely watch social-realism or straight drama, because it doesn't do anything for me. Realism is not progressive; almost all other genres actually are. They show you something new and extraordinary; something that forces you to think outside the establishment box.

Anyway, I wanted to see this movie because of the title, which is quite dramatic. What deranged acts might the worst person in the world think of?! But to me, off-hand, the title is a joke. Based off a throw-away comment by the Eivind character. It's interesting and surprising to me that many audiences apparently deeply dislike Julie, and consider her to be the person referred to in the title. To me, she was a perfectly normal person, like the others a product of postmodern bourgeois society: confused and rootless, but also free and playful, intoxicated with the privilege of a thousand different possible life choices. Where others apparently see her as intensely selfish, I see her as trying to find herself; to be her own person, not just defined by her men or her society. The movie doesn't judge her. But clearly, many in the audience do! Maybe this movie is really about making the viewers examine their own morals and mores?

So, frankly, people - you should consider whether the title of the movie actually refers to the over-judgmental members of the audience! Women who find Julie selfish, I would think, are women who are very traditional and give enormously of themselves to their life partner(s), having internalized the idea that this is the normal and proper thing. You know, commitment!! And in many cases it is - but not in all cases. Can a woman not be allowed some autonomy just because she isn't as traditional as you?! I find that reaction quite shocking. As in shockingly conservative and judgmental. Maybe the intention of this movie is to make the audience take a long hard look at themselves?

Yikes! Well. When I discovered that there was a kind of French parallel to "Life of Brian" (and quite big-budget!), I wildly wanted to see it and ordered the Blu-ray straightaway (it has English subtitles). One of the many things that work against this movie (at least for those of us who aren't French) is its title, which is long, very hard to remember, and just as hard to spell.

Another thing is that this is not a religious satire at all, but just a comedy spoof of the old "Cleopatra" movie, mixed in with a lot of elements from Asterix. Quite possibly, this is funny for a French audience, but to anyone else, its extreme Frenchness works against it. Back in Roman days (or was it the Renaissance?), gay themes were ridiculed as "Greek love", but today, based on this and other movies, gay themes are very, very French. After seeing this, I suddenly understand all the references to French gayness in the Blackadder New Year's Special: Back and Forth. This cringiness is another reason that this movie has been buried by the collective memory of the international community, although it has to be said that it could get a renaissance in the post-metoo world. But to heteros, this is not the kind of movie you show to your male friends!

The sad fact of the matter is that, while it held my attention, this movie just wasn't very funny. I laughed maybe two or three times in it. And I watch a lot of foreign movies and am very open to them. So in that sense it was a disappointment, but, on the other hand, it is very bizarre and relatively big-budget, and as such I was fascinated by the fact that it exists in the world. It was thought-provoking in terms of cinematic history, and in terms of cinematic weirdness.