Django Unchained

This film is totally insane, very bloody and way over the top. It's a Quentin Tarantino film so this was to be expected.

Bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (played by the always awesome Christoph Waltz) frees slave Django from a chain gang - in the most hilarious manner - to help him find identify three brothers he intends to kill for money. They draw a lot of attention because Django is on horseback and that is a very unusual sight in a land where slavery is the norm. Schultz and Django arrange to work together as bounty hunters through the winter and then go and free Django's wife Broomhilda von Shaft (yes, that is her name) from the clutches of Monsieur Candie (the farm is called "Candie Land").

That is basically the story.

Everything else is vintage Tarantino - violence, fountains of blood, extended shoot-outs, hilarious dialogue and cameos galore (including original Django Franco Nero).

As for the acting - Waltz is brilliant, as is Jamie Foxx. DiCaprio is as good as he's ever going to be in any given film (read: ok). My very favorite of them all, however, is Samuel L. Jackson as house slave Steven, who has made himself a comfortable living sucking up to his white owners and pretending to be a limping, hard-of-hearing imbecile, when really he is a conniving SOB.

8/10

The Twilight Zone

This is happening.

I will re-watch all the episodes of the original Twilight Zone - in no particular order. Watch this space.

Amour (Love)

Michael Haneke's films are never easy to watch. Whether they are about of couple of youngsters senselessly murdering an entire family on their summer vacation, violence committed by a group of children in a small pre-WWI German town or about a couple being stalked, this is not entertainment. There is, however, some morbid fascination in watching them.

His latest, Amour, is about old age. Anne and Georges, a couple of former music teachers, enjoy a relatively active and happy retirement, until Anne has a minor stroke, that leaves her in need of constant help. Georges is trying is best to care of his wife, helping her in and out of her wheel chair or the toilet, cutting her food for her and seeing to her well being as best he can.

Anne's health keeps deteriorating and after suffering a second stroke, more assistance is required. Now she needs to be fed and cleaned and can barely speak anymore. She had already mentioned to Georges that she is not happy with this way of living when she was still somewhat independent and now the only way she can express her total unhappiness with this kind of life is by keeping her mouth tightly shut when her husband is trying to feed her or give her water out of a sippy cup. Eventually, Georges cannot watch her suffer anymore.

Emmanuelle Riva is simply magnificent as the ailing Anne.

A brilliant and devastating film.

9/10

Forbrydelsen (The Killing) - Season 3

The Killing is back to the form of season 1. There is simply more room for emotional attachment when a family is involved.

Little Emilie is kidnapped and Sarah Lund, teamed up with a new colleague (again) and an old love from Special Branche, take over the case. It appears to be connected to the death of a girl a few years back. The old case was filed as a suicide, but as the kidnapping investigation progresses, and the law enforcement team get led around their noses by the kidnapper, it turns out that the girl was murdered.

The kidnapper of Emilie, daughter of the CEO of the powerful Zeeland Cooperation that has close ties to the Prime Minister (yes, of course, politicians are involved in all this again), is the murdered girl's father. Lund and her troop are forced to investigate on both fronts now and get to the original killer before the kidnapper does.

Privately, Lund is still living by herself and her relationship with her son Mark is more strained than it has ever been. When she sees her son while she is supposed to deliver money to the kidnapper she realizes that he is about to become a father. This shocks her for a moment and she misses the train she was told to get on by the kidnapper. So, all is not well.

After she ends up in bed with her partner from Special Branche, she gets cornered by his wife, which doesn't improve the situation.

In the end, they save the little girl in the nick of time. When Lund realizes who the original killer of the kidnapper's daughter was, she also understands that she has no hard evidence against him and he is unlikely to ever be prosecuted for his crime, at which point she does the worst possible thing she can possibly do. She shoots him.

The season ends with Lund on a plane fleeing to - one assumes - Finland. One also assumes that this might be the end of the series.

7/10

Silver Linings Playbook

Every year, relatively early, the buzz for the sometimes long off award season starts about a small movie (or, small compared to the other contenders). It gets heaps of accolades and everyone agrees that it is so good and deserving of a best picture nomination at every award ceremony, including the Oscars. And then when I watch it, it turns out to be merely ok.

A year ago, that film was The Descendants, the year before it was The Kids Are All Right, before that it was Up in the Air. Ever since the academy descided to throw more films into the best picture circus, as a rule this  film would end up in it. 2012, that film is Silver Linings Playbook.

It is advertised as a comedy/drama/romance. Somehow I totally missed the comedy part. Nothing about it is in any way comedic. Ok, there is some drama and a really weird romance between the bi-polar Bradley Cooper and the widowed Jennifer Lawrence.

Ah yes, Jennifer Lawrence, every critic's new darling. I like her fine, but I have seen her in three films so far, and she has played the same role in every single one of them - hard shelled, mouthy young woman. This worked great in Winter's Bone and it is perfect for The Hunger Games. In Silver Linings Playbook her character is bordering on annoying.

Jackie Weaver is decent in this, Robert DeNiro is his usual great self, Bradley Cooper is surprisingly good (I'm usually not a fan).

This is not as good as they say.

1/10

Forbrydelsen (The Killing) - Season 2

After stellar first season, Forbrydelsen would obviously have a hard time matching the high expectations (my high expectations, that is). So it is not as good as the first one. However, it is still much better than most other  crime shows on offer.

The milieu we are in this time around is military. Murders occur that turn out to be connected to a frequently referred to 'incident' in Afghanistan. The group of Danish soldiers involved in said incident, along with a lawyer representing them, are killed one by one. There is a story of a mysterious officer calling himself 'Perk' that was part of the issue. The claim is that civilians have been killed by the Danish soldiers. The group leader, Roben, insists that the culprit is this Perk, but his even being there (and his mere existence) has been denied by special forces. And once again, politicians are also involved in what starts to appear like a cover-up the longer the investigation lasts.

Sarah Lund, who has been recalled from her boring assignment in Sweden to assist with the investigation, goes again off into her own direction and more than once she is wrong in trusting her instincts, but through her irrational methods uncovers details that prove to be vital.

In season one, as the investigation moved along and new details about suspects emerged, we moved from one possible murderer to the next (and we did it with Lund-esque conviction). Back then it was always clear (to me, anyway) that it must have been someone we encountered early on (because that is how these shows work). The same applies for season two, only here - when the culprit took shape - I did not see it coming. Like, at all.

The show picked up speed around mid-season. At first, I had some difficulty staying with it because it lacked the grieving family that you could feel for enough and will the investigation to move forward. Most of the people in this are unsympathetic. The only one that had an air of likability was the newly installed justice minister. He, however, did through his principles overboard in the end to play at being politician for the sake of it.

Solid.

6/10

Life of Pi

If any of the films recently released (and recently nominated for a heap of Academy Awards) deserves the description beautiful, this is the one.

Life of Pi tells the story of young Pi Patel, who leaves Pondicherry, India, together with his family and an entire zoo for Vancouver, Canada. When the freighter sinks in the vastness of the Pacific, Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with an injured zebra, a hyena, an orang utan and Richard Parker, a Bengal tiger.

The situation is as bad as it sounds and the boy immediately has to start his fight for survival - not only surviving the sea, but also the two carnivorous animals on board. The zebra is the first to go. Easy target that it is, the hyena sets upon it almost immediately. Next is the orang utan. The most furious kill, however, is of the hyena itself. Richard Parker finally makes an appearance jumping out from below the tarp cover to end the hyena's reign of terror - and making everyone in the cinema jump out of their seats. The rest of the story is of Pi and Richard Parker having to find some sort of arrangement in order for both of them to survive - the tiger needing the boys help to get food and water, the boy kept alert at all times by the tiger's presence.

The ocean setting is a feast for the eyes, thanks to the magic of the cinematography department and the technicians bringing the tiger to life. I wasn't that taken with the visuals of a film since Hero.

I read a few reviews that complained about the ending (the tiger's departure, the second - less adventurous but more credible - story version) but having read the book, I didn't really have to bother with that. If anyone wants to take issue, they have to take it with the book and/or its writer, Yann Martel. It has been too long since I read it for me to say that this or that detail was different. Overall the story was as I remember from the original text.

I recommend both, book and film.

9/10