Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf)

I have only recently started watching the brilliant works of Ingmar Bergman. Hour of the Wolf is only his third film I have watched, the others being The Seventh Seal and Through a Glass Darkly.

All three feature the wonderful Max von Sydow, who has worked with Bergman many times. In Hour of the Wolf he portrays the painter Johan Borg. Together with his pregnant wife Alma (played by Liv Ullmann) he spends the summer on a remote island. Over the course of the story he encounters several strange people that either contribute to his descent into madness or are a side effect of it. I assume it is the first, as Alma meets several of them at a dinner party.

This is defined as being drama and horror, the horror stemming from the feeling of claustrophobia the film conveys and Johan's nightmarish vision. The (English) title refers to the time just before dawn, during which many births and deaths occur (according to Johan).

The film is excellent, although for me it does not quite reach the brilliance of The Seventh Seal. My discovery of Ingmar Bergman will definitely not stop here.

7/10

Game Change

Game Change had a good night at yesterday's Emmys. I watched it the day before, only very marginally aware of the nominations it received (well deserved every one).

A lot has been said and written about Julianne Moores impeccable portrayal of Sarah Palin. From what we have all seen of the on-screen persona of Mrs. Palin it seems pretty obvious that she was nothing short of brilliant.

Woody Harrelson, as the male lead, is equally great, as is - in true HBO manner - the entire cast of this play-by-play of John McCain's presidential campaign. Ed Harris is the unsung hero as a merely supporting John McCain, whose makeup is just as great as Julianne Moore's. 

The really disturbing part - if true - is the staff's decision to have Palin 'act' in her interviews and the debate, because it is easier to have her learn a couple of pages of script than make her understand the basics of the political issues. It is truely scary to think that someone this incapable got within a few electoral votes of the White House.

8/10

The Lorax

I love Dr. Seuss' books. Wholeheartedly. Most of the film versions, animated or not, I enjoyed a lot (Horton Hears a Who FTW).

Unfortunately, this one falls flat.

Considering this is intended for a very young audience, the story of big business and its exploitation of nature may not go beyond a simplistic human (in the film version) = bad, Lorax (and the trees he represents) = good.

Also, too many musical numbers for my taste.

4/10

Coraline

Coraline Jones is annoyed with her parents and their lack of attention. The both just hover over their computers writing about gardening rather than do some. So when one night she discovers a door into another world where her parents appear to be just what one would wish for, she has no quarrels about going back the next night.

Everything is different there - her mother cooks (imagine!), her father plays the piano and tends to a wonderous garden and her annoying neighbor boy can't talk. Fun!

Of course, something about all this is not right. For starters, everyone has buttons instead of eyes. Soon enough. Caroline realizes that they want her eyes as well and replace them with buttons.

Eventually, Caroline gets lost between her two worlds and must find her real parents again and escape. Interestingly weird.

Fun fact: when the false mother turns into her real self she looks just like Terri Hatcher, who voices the mothers.

4/10

The Visitor

The Visitor is the story of widowed university professor Walter, who has essentially been doing next to nothing in the past few years and just stalling. He has to appear at a conference to speak, an engagement he tries to wiggle his way out of but can't.

He travels from his Connecticut house to an apartment he has in New York just to find a couple, Tarek and Zainab, living in his place. They found it via one mysterious Ivan and had no idea they had been living there illegally.

As they are in dire need of housing, walter let's them stay and eventually befriends Tarek, who starts teaching Walter how to play the African drum. While out and about one day they have some trouble getting their drums through the subway turnstiles, Tarek gets falsely accused of dodging the fare and gets taken into custody.

It is only then that Walter realizes that the young couple are illegals and he tries to help as best he can to get Tarek legal representation and possibly getting him a staying permit. While Tarek is incarcerated and living in constant fear of deportation, Walter becomes very close with Tarek's mother Mouna.

The film shows the harshness of the system, but manages to do so without blaming the people working in it - like the prison guards really only doing their jobs, however frustrating it may be for Walter or anyone else that is desperate for some information on the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Despite the moments of hope and happiness, the story is a sad and desperate one. Richard Jenkins is brilliant and rightly earned the acclaim he received, including a nomination for Best Actor at the Academy Awards (losing to a wonderful Sean Penn in Milk). Another plus - nice shots of New York.

Recommendation.

9/10

Chernobyl Diaries

This film is crap. So much of it does not make sense.

I get why one would get a kick out of going to the site of the Chernobyl disaster. I wouldn't but I do get it. There is probably some excitement to going there illegally with a freelance tour guide called Yuri.

However, why this Yuri character would run off in the dark because people are bothered by a sound that may or may not be a baby is not as cut and dried to me. Especially, why he would speed off in some random direction is beyond me.

Even more baffling is one of the Americans going after him for no apparent reason, and unarmed.

What follows is a lot of running to and fro and getting hunted by wild dogs, that turn out to not be the actual menace hiding at the site.

No, when radioactivity comes into play, cue the mutants. Human mutants, that is. There are also the experiment-happy doctors to 'treat' them. And they wonder why the survivors of the Chernobyl disaster would be upset by the film. Seriously? You portray them as fucking mutants. Of course they are upset.

Then we never even get a good look at the mutants because everything is all dark and quickly cut and obscure.

But the most irritating thing is the ending. The military comes in and shoots one of the two survivors but takes the other one to their hospital to - wait for it - feed her to the mutants. What? You couldn't just have shot her, as well? Or offer both up as food?

Makes. No. Sense.

On the plus side, this features the cute guy from $#*! My Dad Says.

1/10 (and I'm being generous here)

Srpski film (A Serbian Film)

This is as sick as you have heard it is.

An aging porn star gets offered some serious cash to participate in an 'art film' without knowing any details beforehand. It features hardcore sex, initially, and gets worse as the filming progresses - torture, real murder, necrophelia, 'Newborn Porn' (which is as horrifying as it sounds) etc.

The reason I think this film is so hard to handle is that we all suspect than none of it is as far fetched as we would like it to be.

7/10