Browse by Catagory:
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Strings
Release Date: 2005-08-16
Sales rank: 36473
Anders Rønnow Klarlund's stunning new film imagines a mythical kingdom populated entirely by stringed puppets. The Emperor of Hebalon dies a dramatic death, taking a terrible secret to the grave with him. His young son, Hal Tara, is set to take over the throne, however, his uncle leads him to believe his father was murdered by the Zeriths, their sworn enemy. Forced to set out to avenge his father's death, Hal is unaware of the perils he is facing, both inside his kingdom and out. As he faces new challenges on this journey, he ends up discovering the truth about his own people - and where he least expects it - he finds true love. A dramatic tale of adventure, bondage and liberation; of love and war, destiny and vitality, identity and common humanity, Strings is a magical blend of themes that range from Shakespeare to Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings. |
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Elling
Release Date: 2002-11-19
Sales rank: 17300
This Norwegian comedy (nominated for an Academy Award®) concerns two men being released from a state home. Until the death of his mother, Elling rarely left the apartment where they lived; Kjell has lived in institutions most of his life and is obsessed with sex, as any virgin in his 30s might be. Thanks to a new social program, the two roommates are given an apartment in Oslo--if they can manage to live independently. At first simply answering the phone or buying groceries is a struggle, but as they taste freedom, their lives become an exciting adventure. In a Hollywood movie, these two would be cute goofballs; what makes Elling so very engaging is how genuinely awkward and uncomfortable Elling and Kjell are. Their difficulties in the world are treated with respect and realism, which makes their progress bracing and their success delightful. A charming film. --Bret Fetzer |
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Kitchen Stories
Release Date: 2004-12-14
Sales rank: 31668
A Swedish researcher strikes up an unlikely friendship with a cranky Norwegian farmer in this "quirky thoughtful and bittersweet" (Boxoffice) comedy that captured audiences' hearts around the world. Both "warm" (Newsday) and witty Kitchen Stories is "a deadpan thoroughly delightful comedy that cooks up tasty laughs" (New York Post)!It's thei1950s and a Swedish efficiency expert under strict orders not to interact with his subject is sent to improve a Norwegian farmer's culinary efforts. But the sly old farmer much prefers to amuse himself by impeding the timid researcher's work! Soon in the struggle between neutral observation and the need for human interaction the kitchen becomes a battleground!System Requirements: Running Time 95 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre:Â DRAMA Rating:Â PG UPC:Â 027616919571 Manufacturer No:Â 1007910 |
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101 Reykjavík
Release Date: 2003-04-15
Sales rank: 24484
Sexy Spaniard Victoria Abril heats up the wintry city of ReykjavÃk in 101 ReykjavÃk. Icelandic slacker Hlynur (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) lives on welfare with his mother, leading a depressed and aimless existence. His mother invites her flamenco teacher, Lola (Abril), to live with them; while his mother is away for New Year's Eve, Hlynur and Lola have a drunken fling. But upon her return, Hlynur's mother tells him that she and Lola are lesbian lovers--and it soon comes out that she and Lola are going to have a baby together. 101 ReykjavÃk seems to be the contemporary Icelandic version of American movies of the 1970s like Five Easy Pieces, in which antiheroic characters struggle to make sense of a world that doesn't seem to have any place for them. The movie is a bit unfocused, but its urban malaise feels genuine, if not particularly new. Abril is delightful, as always. --Bret Fetzer |
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Autumn Sonata - Criterion Collection
Release Date: 2000-01-18
Sales rank: 45050
A stunning union of two of Sweden's national treasures, Autumn Sonata pairs Ingmar Bergman with Ingrid Bergman for their only joint effort. Ingrid plays a mother who, after forsaking her family for a music career, attempts a reconciliation with her oldest daughter (Liv Ullmann) through a night of painful revelation. Sven Nykvist contributes glorious Eastmancolor cinematography to this quietly beautiful story of forgiveness. Criterion is proud to present Autumn Sonata in a gorgeous digital transfer. Bergman (Ingrid) meets Bergman (Ingmar) in this fine but not outstanding story from 1978 of a concert pianist who meets up with her estranged daughter (Liv Ullmann) for the first time in seven years, and spends an evening confronting unresolved ill feelings from the past. Ingmar's been down this road plenty of times and in better films (Cries and Whispers); but even as a minor work, this is a powerful piece with two top actresses of their day. This was Ingrid Bergman's last film. --Tom Keogh |
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Insomnia - Criterion Collection
Release Date: 1999-07-13
Sales rank: 25925
Disgraced Swedish detective Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård) travels to northern Norway to solve a brutal murder in Insomnia. Unable to sleep through the night of the midnight sun, Engström quickly loses his grip on the case and his mind. Erik Skjoldbjærg's debut feature is a deft amalgam of psychological thriller, morality play, and police procedural. Criterion presents the DVD premiere of Insomnia in a new widescreen transfer. This 1997 film from Norway and neophyte director Erik Skjoldbjærg delivers the goods with unsettling effectiveness. It's an intense, smart, and taut thriller if only because what it eerily implies is creepier than the film's reality. Opening with a churning, chilling murder of a young woman, Insomnia invites the viewer--as well as its protagonist, celebrated Oslo homicide cop Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård)--into the mind and thoughts of a killer by making Engström fatally flawed himself. While in pursuit of the murderer, Engström makes a mistake; he accidentally shoots his partner and friend and covers up his deed in a panic. But he overlooks a minor detail: the real killer has seen him commit the crime. What ensues is a layered, complex, and unnerving descent into chaos, brought on by the inability to sleep in this land of the midnight sun. Engström suffers from insomnia, which warps his logic and resolve, and before long he's totally unraveled and unsure of his every move. But not before a twisty transference and countertransference occurs between cop and killer. The two play a game of high-stakes one-upmanship that surprises in the end. Insomnia is fresh and psychologically bent, full of Scandinavian despair and dark humor, and it boasts a film noir pulse beneath its blinding light. --Paula Nechak |
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Aberdeen
Release Date: 2002-04-23
Sales rank: 48362
An achingly beautiful film, Aberdeen has an outrageously sentimental premise: Kaisa (Lena Headey) is asked by her fatally ill mother (Charlotte Rampling) to bring her estranged father Tomas (Stellan Skarsgård,) to visit before her mother dies. Kaisa finds Tomas--a jobless drunk--at his home in Norway, and basically drags him on a road trip back to Scotland, over the course of which they're forced to grapple with their past. This could be a recipe for maudlin sap, but instead--thanks to sharp incisive writing, unexpected characters, and performances that encompass humor, brutally honest self-destructive behavior, and subtle gentleness--Aberdeen is bracing, constantly surprising, and deeply engaging. The entire cast (including the always solid Ian Hart, of Backbeat and Hollow Reed) is incredibly good. Highly recommended. --Bret Fetzer |
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The Other Side of Sunday
Release Date: 2000-07-05
Sales rank: 32298
The actual translation of this Oscar-nominated Norwegian film's original title, Sonntagsengel, is "Sunday Angels," which comes close to reflecting the state of innocence and grace from which the young heroine, Maria, attempts to penetrate adult mysteries in defiance of her father, a priest. The story is set in 1959, and Maria is unhappily lagging behind the rock & roll rebellion of her peers. Her father is severe and arbitrary in his judgments of what's best for her, her mother is in and out of a hospital, and her Sundays are spent in church, allegedly hanging on the old man's every word despite her ever-clarifying atheism. One way out: Find an ally as well as a cautionary figure in a lovely but miserable church servant who wishes she were as free as her true spirit. Directed by Berit Nesheim, the film is most vital during Maria's moments of unspoken yearning and accelerated confidence, giving us a palpable sense of a girl's inner life metamorphosing into womanhood. The rest--family scenes concocted to underscore Dad's own emotional conflicts and tyranny--are much more wooden. --Tom Keogh |
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Breaking the Waves
Release Date: 2000-07-25
Sales rank: 31257
When Bess, a naive young woman, marries Jan, a handsome oil-rig worker, she experiences passion and physical pleasure that she never imagined. Their bliss is cut short when an accident on the rig leaves Jan paralyzed. Believing he will never make love to Bess again, he tells her to take other lovers, convincing her that this will help his recovery. Bess is sent spiraling into a world of dark emotions she cannot understandSet in an unmercifully rugged, coastal village in Scotland in the 1970s, this extraordinary film by Lars von Trier stars British actress Emily Watson as a barely contained naive named Bess, who holds regular conversations with God and whose pure and intensely personal faith is hardly tolerated by the gruesome Calvinist elders of her church. Bess marries an oil-rig worker (Stellan Skarsgard) and comes to believe that erotic discovery is a part of God's grand plan. But after her spouse is hurt in an accident, she decides that divine instruction is leading her toward the life of a prostitute--with disastrous but somehow beautiful results. Von Trier (The Kingdom) has made a wonderful, entirely unexpected, and rigorous work of discovery in this film, with a formal visual design that recalls classic films by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Robert Bresson. Watson is a phenomenon, her wide-eyed wonder at the world as God's handiwork a breathtaking portrayal of conviction. --Tom Keogh |
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Edvard Munch
Release Date: 2006-02-21
Sales rank: 53324
Famously described by Ingmar Bergman as a "work of genius", Peter Watkins' multi-faceted masterpiece is more than just a bio-pic of the iconic Norwegian Expressionist painter. Focusing initially on Munch's formative years in late 19th Century Kristiania (now Oslo), Watkins uses his trademark style to create a vivid picture of the emotional, political and social upheavals that would have such an effect on his art. The young artist (Geir Westby) has an affair with "Mrs Heiberg" (Gro Fraas), a devastating experience that will haunt him for the rest of his life, and his work is viciously attacked by the critics and public alike. He is forced to leave his home country for Berlin, where, along with the notorious Swedish playwright August Strindberg, he becomes part of the cultural storm that is to sweep Europe.Positing itself as a live documentary filmed between 1884-1894, director Peter Watkins' experimental biography of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch(played by Geir Westby) is an angst-ridden glimpse into the traumatic political and social conditions that birthed Munch's invention of Expressionism. Tracing Munch's rise to infamy, the film begins in Victorian-era Christiania (Oslo), where Munch spent his formative years with a family plagued by disease. It then follows Munch to Berlin, where after studying Symbolism and befriending August Strindberg, Munch finds the impetus to create honest work that mimics his life rife with disconnect and rejection, despite scathing reviews by conservative art critics for his "nervous dissolving treatment of color." Plot-heavy scenes set in his studio and elsewhere are interrupted, as if by Munch's own obsessive memories, by shots of his lost true love, "Mrs. Heiberg" (Gro Fraas), accentuating the loneliness and longing Munch feels for this unattainable married woman. As the film's somber color palette alternates between black and blue, Munch's preferred "colors of death," Munch's interior thoughts are conveyed through Watkins' experimentation with sound and film. The sound made by Munch's brush scratching canvas is, at times, unbearably magnified, for example, and visual montages featuring close-ups of the artist's facial expressions elucidate Munch's disturbed emotional states and fragile nerves. The film's expressive qualities emulate the artist's stylistic approach to his art-making, making Edvard Munch an especially convincing artist's biopic. –-Trinie Dalton |
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