Barton Fink - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"I'm a writer, you monsters! I create! I create for a living! I'm a creator! I am a creator!"

So whenever I watch a movie that I feel the urge to blog about right after it's finished, I usually restrain myself from doing so, and wait a day or two before starting the writing process. I do this make sure that I've had the possibility to think things over and get my head straight about my opinion and understanding of said movie, and as I'm sure most movie enthusiast will agree, distancing yourself from a film you've just seen like this, often makes you realise new things you hadn't though about before, and sometimes it even leads to the discoveries of entirely new layers, messages and plot points. Today, I'm gonna do the exact opposite, and give you the very first thought about Barton Fink that pops into my head, in order to spice things up a bit. 

Barton Fink is from 1991 but takes place in the 1940's, and it stars John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis and Michael Lerner. Turturro play the titular Character of Barton Fink, a talented New York playwright who's brought to Hollywood to write for the movies, where he forms an interesting friendship with his next door neighbour Charlie, played by John Goodman. Fink is a lonely, frustrated and misunderstood man who truly believes in the craft and the art of writing, and he describes his work as being "for, about and by" the common man. He's extremely passionate about what he wants to write about, which is working class people and the everyday hardships that they suffer from, and if he doesn't like the final product he's created, not even the highest amount of praise or critical acclaim can change his mind about it. He moves to Hollywood in hopes of finding a better outlet for his creative frustrations, and is extremely perplexed and horrified to find out that Hollywood production companies and studios are even more superficial, money hungry and way less concerned about the art of their industry than his Broadway producers back in New York were.  

As the movie gets going and as Fink's relationships to Charlie and the other different people he meets in Hollywood begin to unfold, a lot of slightly weird things begin to happen, and several interesting, provocative, eye-opening and jaw-dropping themes begin to show themselves. Barton Fink is a very abstract movie for sure, and it's very understandable to me why it's one the Coens' least publicly beloved movies to date. This doesn't mean that I think it's a bad movie though, as a matter of fact I absolutely loved almost everything about it, I'm just saying that nine out of ten people will find it weird, unrelatable and unrealistic. The plot might seem very straight forward for about an hour, but just about half way into the story, something extremely surprising happens, and everything you thought you knew about the plot and the characters gets completely thrown off kilter. From here on out the movie is almost unrecognisable, which is a very bold thing to do on behalf of the Coens, and I have to admit that it did take me out of the experience at first. I personally found the first half extremely well created and relatable, and to have that completely violated and messed with seemed very odd in the beginning. Once again though, another thing happens, and everything you though you knew about the reality that had just been changed, is thrown for yet another loop. It ended up working out very well in my opinion, but I do see how a lot people might find this structure very hard to keep up with. 

I mentioned earlier that this movie deals with a lot of interesting themes, and by far the most interesting one of these is self-importance and the way it corrupts the human mind. In the first half of the movie, Fink is established as being a modest and good man, and the audience is supposed to think of him as being the only person from the movie-business who doesn't concern himself with fame, money and reputation. There are a lot of stereotypical Hollywood characters in this movie, characters who all seem so extremely over the top and unrealistically self-important that you can't help but absolutely loathing them, which only adds to the amount of pity that you feel towards Turturro's character. "What a great and humble man this Barton Fink is!" we think. 

As the movie nears its end though, a few important event take place, which as I mentioned earlier means that a lot of the things you though you knew about the film changes completely. Seeing as I'm writing this just after having seen the movie for the first time and therefore haven't read up on any of this stuff, I could be completely wrong in what I'm about to say, but personally, I think that this movie's ultimate goal is to prove that things and people aren't always exactly the way they seem (Silencio!). People who seem like good, honest and loving characters on the outside might actually be something completely different on the inside, and vise versa. I'm not spoiling anything about any of the characters by saying this, cause the way the movie ends leaves everything completely open to interpretations like these, and you might end up understanding this movie in a completely different way than I did, which is an incredibly beautiful thing when you just thing about it. 

Before I end this review, I have talk to about one the most important reasons behind why I enjoyed Barton Fink as much as I did. I've always known that John Goodman is a great actor, his memorable performances in several other Coen movies are proof of that, but I've personally never seen him shine as much as he did in role of Charlie Meadows. This character is much more important to the over all story of the movie and to Tuturro's character development than you might think, so much so that when the film was over and the credits started rolling, I felt like I had to rewind it a bit and watch a few of his scenes over again. When combined with the knowledge I had gained from watching the completion of the movie, the things I saw in these scenes where Charlie and Barton simply just talk together about nothing in particular, completely and utterly rocked my world. Not only is their back and forth dialogue extreme witty and well written, but the subtle hints towards the things that are going to take place later on are absolutely gorgeously interweaved into the things they talk about, which is largely due to Goodman's powerhouse performance. His understanding of his character's motivations and the situation he's in is nothing short of jaw dropping, and I'm sure my second viewing of this movie will be just as good as the first one, because of Goodman's performance's depth, importance and awareness of what's going on. 

In the end, I have to admit that Barton Fink is on of the best "behind the scenes of Hollywood"-movie that I've ever seen, and it's definitely a strong contender for the title of my favourite Ceon brothers movie as well. There were only a few things about it that bothered me, one of them being my initial negative reaction to one of the film's many twists, which turned out not to be a very big problem at all anyway. Fink and Meadows are very interesting characters that I found incredibly multilayered and well acted as well, and the way Tuturro and Goodman tapped into these personalities and delivered the superbly written dialogue that the Coen brothers supplied them with is remarkable to say the least, and as a result, Barton Fink is a very well directed movie filled with interesting plot points, ideas and themes about greed, loneliness and ignorance. I'm very much looking forward to watching it again, that for sure. If you're a fan of the Coens and don't mind abstract movies that require a bit of thinking, I'd say that buying Barton Fink on BluRay is a very worthwhile investment. (5/6)

Barton Fink IMDb page here

Barton Fink trailer here

Brazil - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"There you are, your own number on your very own door. And behind that door, your very own office! Welcome to the team, DZ-015!"

As far as I have heard, Brazil is one of those movies that you absolutely have to watch if you're just the least bit interested in movies. A lot of critiques hail it as one of the best and most important movies ever made, and it's in my father's top five as well, but for some reason, I've just never had the desire to watch it. This happens to me a lot, and it's really kind of stupid, because I always end of liking these kinds of movies a whole lot more than I'd expected. With this in mind, I finally decided to watch Brazil last night, and before the opening scene had even finished, I knew that I just absolutely had to write about it. Brazil is is written and directed by Terri Gilliam, who in my experience is a very unpredictable and diversive film maker. He's the director behind several classic comedies such as The Holy Grail and Life of Bryan, but he's also made several cult classics such as Twelve Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and of cause, Brazil. 

The plot of the movie is a little strange and weird to put it mildly, but never so much so that it became too unbelievable and too artsy fartsy for my taste.  It takes place in an alternate and futuristic world, where an over protective and paranoid totalitarian government has taken complete control over the nameless city that our main character Sam Lowry lives in. Sam works for the government, just like almost everyone else does, and his job is to collect and store the millions and utter millions of forms and contracts that the government makes everyone fill out. Sam is lonely and tired of his boring existence, and it seems to him that he's the only person in the entire world who doesn't care about plastic surgery, governmental regulation, power, money or control. His boss is horrible at his job and relies on Sam to fix everything he does wrong, which includes fixing his computer and taking care of his paperwork and his decision making too. Technology has a big tendency to just suddenly stop working in this alternate universe as well, and when one of the millions of forms that Sam's department takes care of is altered with as the result of a typing error, our protagonist's life is changed in every way possible. 

Being a movie that critiques hail as one of the best films of all time, I don't think anyone will be surprised to hear me say that it has a lot of hidden messages about society, capitalism, selfishness and so on and so forth. The way this movie handles these elements is what made it stand out from most of the other, often slightly dull critique favourites back when it was released, and I definitely felt that Terry Gilliam had a lot of things to say with Brazil, especially about technology and governments. Dreams play a big role in this film as well, because of how they're used to display what Sam Lowry is feeling at specific points in time throughout the story. His dream is a reoccurring one, and it shows how much he longs for a better, more adventurous and more loving life, where he's free to make decisions on his own and control his own destiny. The life that Sam lives in these dreams is virtually the the polar opposite of the one he lives when he's awake, and I felt surprisingly sympathetic towards him for large portions of the movies duration, because of how happy he is in his dreams, and how unhappy he is when he's awake. Apart from this rather obvious way of understanding the dream sequences, I got a feeling that they were used to tell another story as well, one that has much more weight to it than it might seem like at first glance.

Alas, we've come to the sad part of this review. Brazil might have gotten off to a good start so far, but that won't last for long, cause we're about to delve into the political undertones of Terry Gilliam's cult favourite. The main message of this film is that technology has taken too much control of everyday lives, and that people should spend more time taking care of each other, rather than being paranoid and greedy. Seems familiar, doesn't it? I think so too. Even though Gilliam does a good job of telling his story in a different and original manner, the content of his messages remain incredibly predictable and out dated, in terms of where we are now. My theory is that these preachy undertones might have been somewhat original and new back in 1985 when Brazil first came out, which would explain why so many slightly more seasoned movie lovers and critiques think it's such a great film, but judging from a 2013 standpoint, Brazil just isn't as hard hitting or as groundbreaking for most of its runtime as its hype had me believing. I'm fully capable of appreciating the fact that this movie helped usher in a new era of movies and that its a different take of the political satire genre, but that being said, watching it for the first time wasn't as religious an experience as I had hoped it would have been. I understood what the subplots had to say about technology and control, and I got the metaphors and the dream sequences and what they wanted to emphasise, but they only served to make me go "Oh, okay, that's interesting, I guess", and not "Blimey Charlie, that's incredible!". 

On the other hand though, Gilliam did manage to create an incredible main character for this movie. Sam Lowry is played by a guy called Jonathan Pryce, an actor I've never heard of before, and he did an incredibly good job at making me feel sympathetic towards his character, more so than I've experienced in quite some time. I understood what he was like and what he wanted to do with his life, but the situations he got himself into just weren't as exiting or as heartbreaking as my amount of sympathy for the character had the potential to make them be. I also didn't buy into his infatuation with Kim Greist's character whatsoever, which is a pretty big thing considering the fact that this romance is the main plot point of the whole movie, and I ultimately ended up wishing that the movie would have focused on an entirely different part of Sam's journey towards freedom. The romance just slowed the plot down tremendously, and had it not been there at all and had everything been centered around Sam's character and his standing up against his job, his life and his situation instead, Brazil would have been a much better movie. Taking out Greist's character would have shaped off a good forty minutes of the movie's 132 minute runtime as well, which would have made it much more watchable and a lot less dull. 

You probably think that I absolutely hated Brazil by now, and to be honest, I did loathe most of the things I saw during the first 90 minutes of it. Around the 90 minute mark though, something changes, and the movie makes a complete 180 in terms excitement, and all the bad things from the first hour and a half is completely left behind and forgotten. Sam's actions have caught up with him at this point, and as a result, we go on a 40 minute adventure of pure movie spectacularness, and the way these moments were filmed and told made it seem as if they were directed by a totally different person. The weird romance is almost completely forgotten and the preachy messages were put aside, and what I got to see instead was the movie that I wanted Brazil to be from the very beginning, which is Sam's journey and Sam's journey alone. The way the whole thing concludes is chocking and crushingly enchanting beyond belief, and it's by far one of the best final acts to a movie I've ever seen. Had the movie only been this exiting and compelling throughout its entire runtime, I have no doubt that Brazil would have been a masterpiece in my eyes. The fact that I couldn't fall asleep that night is a testimony to the magic that is these 35-40 minutes of mind blasting storytelling, and I'm truly envious of the people who feel this way about the whole film. 

Okay, so let's recap what we've leaned to so far. The first 90 minutes are mostly dull and boring, and I was only kept awake by a few beautiful dream sequences and a likable and entertaining main character. I just realised that I've completely neglected to talk about Robert De Niro's character so far, which isn't too surprising however, considering the fact that he's only on screen for about 20 minutes. The scenes he did have were great though, and I have no clue why anyone though it would be a good idea to have Kim Greist take up so much screen time compared to him. Had it not been for the incredible final act, Brazil would have gotten a rating of two out of six, but instead, it manages to claw its way one step up the ladder, which lands it on a three out of six and the rating of being worth the watch. I'm sorry dad! (3/6)

Brazil IMDb page here

Brazil tailer here

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - A Movie Review By Andrew Lawrence

"You don't get it, do you? This isn't "good cop, bad cop." This is fag and New Yorker. You're in a lot of trouble."

Even though my favourite movie genre is serious dramas with dark and troublesome characters (Black Swan, Magnolia, Drive etc.), I often find myself wanting to watch something a bit more light hearted and easy to digest. Writing about these types of movies isn't as fun or as challenging as it is to write about a deep psychological thriller, but since I'm in a laughing mood today, I decided to mix things up a bit and do something different. Being a genuinely funny comedy, Shane Black's directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang from 2005 fits the bill nicely, and since I just recently picked it up on BluRay as well, it seems like destiny itself wanted me to review it today.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a comedic crime drama about a man by the name of Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.), a petty thief from New York, who trough a twisted turn of events ends up at a flashy Christmas party in Los Angeles. Through a mutual friend who has mistaken him for a method actor, Harry is introduced to Val Kilmer's character, Gay Perry, and it doesn't take long before the two of them unwillingly find themselves in the middle of a dangerous mystery involving money, deceit, broken dreams and murder. This plot synopsis might sound familiar and boring to a lot of readers, but don't be alarmed. Through some incredibly well written dialogue and by applying some genuinely hilarious narration to this otherwise very cliche'd story, Shane Black and his crew manages to create a movie that admittedly does becomes a little overly convoluted at times, but still manages to retain a wholly original sense of atmosphere and comedic timing. 

The thing about this movie that really makes it work in my opinion, is the way that Shane Black manages to mix dark and satirical comedy with dry and sarcastic jokes, without letting it get out of hand. A lot of comedies, especially Adam Sandler comedies, tend to throw too much storytelling and too much character emotion overboard in order to shoehorn a pair of cheap laughs into the film; a tendency that absolutely kills the momentum of the plot and ruins the audience's trust in the atmosphere of the movie. I'm aware that this might sound like a bloated statement to use in a situation like this, I mean, we're just talking about a comedy, right? No. There's no such thing as "just a comedy". It's a real and respectable movie genre just like the drama and and thriller, and just because the quality of the average comedy has declined severely over the years, I'm not gonna hesitate to take them just as seriously and judge them just as harshly as movies from those other genres. Most script authors agree that writing a truly funny comedic screenplay is much harder than writing a dramatic one, and the fact that Shane Black was able to do just that for this movie and still managed to keep all the other balls he was juggling in the air at the same time, truly is admirable.

Now that the script is out of the way, you need someone to act it out in front of the camera. Robert Downey Jr. entered Shane Black's directorial feature film straight out of rehab, and luckily enough, his performance as Harry Lockhart is just as fresh and sober as it is funny and relatable. He plays the underdog in this movie; the guy who never achieved his dreams and didn't land his dream girl, and I found his character both entertaining and well written. He's a newbie in terms of Hollywood code-of-conduct, and his unknowingness and the many rookie mistakes he makes along his way, make for a lot of very entertaining and awkward situations. Also, because of the sharp and rapid way the dialogue in this movie is delivered, Robert Downey was cast perfectly for the role of Harry Lockhart in my opinion. Had the character been portrayed by an actor who doesn't possess the ability to process and deliver dialogue as fast and as on point as Downey is, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang wouldn't be nearly as fluent or as sharp as it is. 

Michelle Monaghan is also in this movie, and she plays a 34-year-old actress who struggles to find work in the enormous city of LA. She has kind of given up her dreams of becoming a famous movie star, and this element is used as one of Shane Black's several methods of poking fun of the Hollywood way of living, but I'll get back to that later. Even though she did supply me with a few laughs here and there, Monaghan didn't do anything too special in this movie, and I definitely felt as though her part could have been played by almost any other actress. Luckily, the same can't be said about the next guy. 

Val Kilmer is the final actor in this this movie that I want to touch upon, and in this case, I definitely did save the best for last. Kilmer's character works for the guy who has hired Harry and brought him to LA, and his job is to prepare Downey Jr.'s character as much as possible for his upcoming film shoot. I'm only describing the tip of the iceberg here, but what they do together isn't important anyway. It's the way they do what they do that really matters, and this is where Kilmer's acting and comedic timing really shines. First of all: He's gay, and his nickname is Gay Perry. As if that wasn't funny enough, Kilmer treats this element of his character in such a way that it makes everything he says and does ten times more hilarious, but he manages to stay completely badass and respectable at the same time as well. My favourite part about Gay Perry though, is the overly sarcastic way he talks to Harry whenever he says something stupid or makes a rookie mistake on one of their countless nightime jobs. These moments had me laughing so hard my sister came down from her room upstairs to see if anyone had released a pack of wild walruses in our living room, and I won't even begin to describe how long it took for me to explain to my mom why we now have coffee-infused snot-stains on the cealing. Gay Perry is entertaining. 

As funny as the main characters are, this movie would not have been nearly as entertaining as it is without Shane Black's huge amount of subtle and provocative meta-jabs at Hollywood and the luxurious Los Angeles lifestyle. I talked a little bit about how Monaghan's character had given up on her dream of becoming a top-roster actress after having moved to LA at a young age earlier, and I'd like to explain the nature of this element in a little more detail. The funny thing about her character is that it seems so stereotypical and cliche'd, that it's hard to believe that Black didn't include the character as a blatant reference to the huge amount of aspiring young women who move to Hollywood with dreams of becoming the next Marilyn Monroe or the next Meryl Streep. If you're not convinced that this is what Black meant to say with the Monaghan character, I'd like to direct your attention to another one of his satiric strokes of movie making genius from this film; Harry Lockhart's narration. 

Throughout Kiss Kiss Bang Bang's runtime, Downey's character interrupts the movie to give his few cents about what's going on at specific points in time of the story. Sometimes he stops the film to talk about how overdone an event that just took place is in movies like this one, and other times he just flips out about how stupid specific scenes are and how bad a job he's doing at narrating. Next to Gay Perry's remark about gloves made from fawn's fur, this element is the most hilarious part of the entire film, because of how unexpected and cool it is to see a director do something that feels as down on earth, grounded in reality and as respectable towards the audience as Harry's narration does. Black creates a connection between the audience and movie that's straight up incomparable to anything I've ever seen before, and I have a lot of personal respect for him as a movie maker because of this sense of connection. I mean seriously, the title of the movie is an overseas expression that was created as a way to make fun of predictable detective movies from the 60's and 70's, movies that this film obviously took a lot of inspiration from! Shane Black, I salute you.

As grandiose and incredible as I've made it out to be thus far, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang does have its fair share of flaws. It's a satiric comedy that makes use of some incredibly funny and original elements to propel it's story forward, but that being said, the story in itself isn't revolutionising or groundbreaking in any way, shape or form. The plot gets really complicated at one point, almost so much so that it becomes too entangled to keep track of, and this did take me out of the experience a couple of times. Another comedy that made me feel this way was The Big Lebowsky, one of the most beloved comedies of all time, and addition to that, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang actually shares a lot of other elements with this so called classic. Both movies center around a down on his luck low-life protagonist who struggles to keep up with the world, and eventually finds himself in the middle of a crime mystery because of it. The Big Lebowsky is a timeless classic to millions of people, but personally, I simply can't get over the fact that there isn't much else to plot than a funny guy who has some funny friends, who end up in a ridiculous situation that they have to solve. The same goes for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; it's a little too much style over substance for my taste. Mark Kermode from BBC radio who's one of my favourite movie critiques, described Shane Blacks directorial debut like this: "It's all surface, but what a beautiful surface it is."

In the end, taking a break from the serious stuff is something even the most hardcore David Lynch or Darren Aronofsky fans have to do once in a while, and if some of you guys happen to be reading this review, then please, give Kiss Kiss Bang Bang a go. It might not have the multi layered characters and the existential subplots that your'e used to, but it's earned a guy who can watch Take Shelter three times a day's seal of approval, and that's not something to joke around with. (4/6)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang IMDb page here

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang trailer here

Volver - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"There are always things that are left undone. Or done badly. And my life has been no exception. Look, I don't know if I can fix them, but if I can, it's up to me to do it."

Wow, I just realised that I've never written a review about a movie not in the English or Danish language. It's not like I've never wanted to; I've had a draft of a review of the Korean movie Internal Affairs lying on my hard drive for months, I've just never gotten around to finishing it. It's well past time that I do something about this foreign-movie-drought though, and the film I've chosen to help me do this is Pedro Almodóvar's Volver. I've heard a lot of good things about Almodóvar and his Spanish movies over the past few weeks, and since Volver is supposed to be one of his best, I decided to give it a go last night.

Volver takes place in a small town somewhere in Spain, and it stars Penélope Cruz, Lola Duenas and Blanca Portillo in the lead roles. The place where these women live is a somewhat old fashioned and traditional place where dead people are rumoured to return as ghost if they have unfinished business, and thos plot device is the main turning point of the movie. Raimunda (Cruz) doesn't believe in that sort of nonsense though, and she spends most of her time working and worrying about taking care of her teenage daughter and her lazy husband. Raimunda is very close to her sister Sole (Portillo) and a friend of theirs called Agustina (Duenas), and the three of them often tend to Raimunda and Sole's Aunt together, who just happens to be Agustina's next door neighbour. 

On one faithful day, this old aunt passes away, and Raimunda and her daughter have a very unpleasant experience in their apartment simultaneously. The film centers around these two events and how the small group of women deal with them, and over time, the plot develops into a mosaic of regret, love, secrecy, faith and death. This might sound great and all, but right off the bat, I have to admit that I didn't enjoy this movie whatsoever. I do realise that I'm probably not the target audience for this sort of movie, but still, there a lot of very simple things about it that didn't make sense at all; things that I don't know how any of the countless amount of critiques that have praised it to the sky can have missed. 

My main problem with the Volver is how unfunny it is, even though it's supposed to be a comedy. I realise that a lot of the funny moments might have been lost in translation, seeing as I don't speak Spanish and had to watch it with English subtitles, but still, there genuinely isn't anything funny about this movie whatsoever. In my opinion, the few attempts it made at being funny fell to the floor very quickly, because of the dull way in which the jokes and jibes were being delivered. Apart from Cruz and Portillo, none of the actors seemed to care about what they were doing whatsoever, and looking at the completely stoned out facial expression that Lola Duenas sports for the entire two hour duration of the movie got especially frustration very quickly. 

Another one of my main concerns about this film, is how blatantly and abruptly it dropped entire story arcs half way through the story. Also, some of the things that take place in this movie are things that would scar and haunt people for life, but in this case, they just don't. Common sense is completely thrown overboard several times throughout the cause of the plot, and there are several examples of subplots that might mean something or might begin to go places, that are then completely dropped and ignored for the rest of the movie. Every time the main characters experience something or get into a peculiar situation for an example, they deal with it for 20-30 minutes, and then that event doesn't matter for the rest of the film, even though it would have affected a real life human being tremendously. I'm sorry, but I just can't go with that. 

The main plot device of this movie is the one about dead people coming back to fix things they didn't complete whilst they were alive. This might sound like an intriguing and interesting idea, but the way it's handled in this film makes it seem utterly stupid and unbelievable. One of the reasons for this is the fact that when dead people suddenly appear in front of one of the main characters, they don't react to it in a way that any normal person would do, if they were to meet someone they thought was long gone. A lot of the decisions that these dead people make are weird and don't make sense either, and they seem to make up strange rules for themselves that they absolutely have to follow in one scene, but then in the next scene seem to have forgotten completely. I spend way more time asking myself questions such as "if they're able to do that, then why can't they do this?" than I spent being fascinated by what was taking place on the screen, which is one of the deadliest sins a movie can commit in my opinion. 

Watching this movie was a very frustrating, unsatisfying and boring experience that I hope I'll never have to go trough again. I have no idea why so many critiques have praised it as much as they have, and especially those reviews that claim that it's a funny and well written movie leave me scratching my head with a weird expression on face. There are way to many loose ends and sloppy story lines that didn't need to be there in this film for me to enjoy it whatsoever, and even though Penélope Cruz isn't exactly hard to look at, I think her performance as Raimunda is vastly overrated. Not only her character, but all the other characters were just flat out stupid, ignorant and weird as well, which made for a very bad and eyebrow raising movie experience. There's no redeeming qualities in this movie whatsoever, and thus, Pedro Almodóvar's Volver is a true eye gouger, at least in my opinion. (1/6)

Volver IMDb link here

Volver trailer here

Update #5 - Trailer Talk!

In my opinion, 2012 has been a really disappointing year in terms of movies so far. Zack Snyder's Man of Steel wasn't no where near as good as I had hoped, Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines wasn't anything too special, and Shane Black's Iron Man 3 was straight up horrible. Apart from that, none of the hundreds of remakes, sequels and spinoffs of older titles that have come out so far have managed to catch my attention, and neither have the generic Bruce Willis/Jason Statham action cashgrabs or the horrible Adam Sandler-esque comedies. I know that This is The End, Before Midnight and Side Effects are supposed to be fairly good movies, but none of them have premiered in Denmark yet, which means that the only 2013 release that I can say I fully enjoyed is Nic Refn's Only God Forgives. However, according to the newest batch of trailers, everything just might take a change for the better very soon. Oscar season is coming up, a lot of new movie are coming out, and thus, I'm gonna go ahead and give my two cents about some of them.

Spike Jonze's Her

Alright, so apart from Only God Forgives, this is my most anticipated movie of 2013. I don't know much about the director, but it stars Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, who are two of my favourite actors working today. "Her" comes out on the 20th of November, and it's about a lonely writer (Phoenix) who develops a strange relationship with his talking computer (Johansson). No one knows much about this movie, but if the trailer speaks the truth and Her turns out to be as fun and loving as seems to be, we're all gonna be in for a great treat. I don't tend to like romantic comedies at all, but this one actually seems refreshingly different and innovative to me. I'm a little worried as to whether or not the human/computer relationship is gonna be genuine and believable, but because of the talent that is involved in the production of this movie, I'm pretty confident that Her will be able to pull it off. The actual trailer can be found here.

Ridley Scott's The Counselor

Once again, no one really knows much about this one. A short 1 minute trailer came out this morning, and what I saw reminded me a lot about movies like No Country For Old Men, Pusher and Catch me if You Can. In the Counselor, Michael Fassbender, who's one of the most talented actors in the business, plays a lawyer who suddenly finds himself in a bad spot with some drug lord, and thus has to find a way to redeem himself and safe all his beautiful cars and girlfriends. It does seem like a very generic plot that has been done time in and time out before, but then again, Fassbender is known for being very good at picking scripts, and so is Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem, who also star in this film. Corman McCarthy, the man who wrote the novels behind The Road and No Country For Old Men has written the screenplay for this movie, and it's gonna be interesting to see what Ridley Scott and his allstar cast has managed to do with it. The actual trailer can be found here.

Lee Daniel's The Butler

Alright, there has to be one of these movies every other year or so. The Butler's gonna be one of those three hour long biopics about some great freedom fighter who meant a lot to the rights of some ethical race, that wins a lot of oscars because it's about as politically correct as a movie can become. Forest Whitaker plays a butler who works at the white house in this film, and through him, the audience witnesses some historical moments and consequently how he, his family and the rest of the world reacts to these events. Apart from the fact that they've been done a quadrillion times before, I'm not saying that there's anything particularly bad about these kinds of movies or that I'm a racist bastard or anything like that, I'm just saying that I'm not gonna watch this movie for the simple reason that I'm 95 % sure that there's nothing new to be seen in it. It's probably gonna be an important movie that a lot of people are going to like, I'm just not gonna be one of them. The actual trailer can be found here.

David O. Russel's American Hustle

Okay, so am I the only one who has been eagerly waiting for this one ever since it was announced? David O. Russel's Silver Linings Playbook was the best character driven movie of 2012 in my opinion, and I absolutely can't wait to see what he and his incredible cast has done with American Hustle. This movie stars Cristian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence just to name a few, and according to the trailer, all of them are gonna be great in this crime/drama/comedy about con artists, money, fame and partying. The movie is a historical piece set in the 60's or 70's I think, which thanks to Bale's and Cooper's brilliant haircuts become very apparent very quickly, and I'm happy to say that I think this movie's gonna be both original, funny and very interesting. It reminded me of a lot of the upcoming Scorsese/DiCaprio movie called The Wolf of Wallstreet, which also seems like a funny historical movie about some con artists, but I'm definitely looking more forward to David O. Russel's American Hustle out of the two. The actual trailer can be found here. 

Neill Blomkamp's Elysium

Matt Damon playing a rugged underdog who has to travel into space in order to destroy a space station, so that he can cure himself of some life threatening disease and save his people from being oppressed? Yea, sign me up. Elysium is directed by Neill Blomkamp, the guy who directed District 9, which is one of my all time favourite science fiction movies. Several different versions of this movie's trailer has been released over the last few months, and they're all incredibly well made and gorgeous to look at, and it feels like the CGI and the explosions in it is being used as a tool to strengthen the other parts of the movie, and not as the main thing that everything else is build around, which is a huge plus in my opinion. Elysium is one of the few movies that I'm gonna be able to see in Danish cinemas as well, and based on its early reviews and Blomkamp's previous work, I can't wait to see what this movie has in store for us. The actual trailer can be found here.

Ron Howard's Rush

This one is gonna be great. I don't think there's ever been made a big Hollywood movie about Formula 1 racing before, and the talent involved in this one is almost too great for it not to succeed. Rush is about the legendary 1976 rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda, two of the best Formula 1 drivers of all time, and it stars Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl in the lead roles as Hunt and Lauda. 1 or 2 racers died as a result of accidents every season back in the 70's, and the trailer for Rush sets up this great dare devilish and thrill seeking atmosphere that encapsulates this reality very well in opinion. I wish Ron Howard would have opted for real cars rather than CGI cars in the entire movie, but then again, I do realise that crashing hundreds of expensive Formula 1 racers into a wall would end up being very expensive. I used to watch loads of Formula 1 with my dad when I was smaller, and I can't wait see Rush with him when it premieres in Denmark on the 12th of September. The actual trailer can be found here.

That's it for trailer talk this time. I intend to write reviews for most of these films when I eventually get to watch them, so until then, stay tuned and thank you for reading. 

//Andrew

Pusher - A Movie Review and an Introduction to Danish Movies by Andrew Lawrence

Pusher - A Movie Review and an Introduction to Danish Movies by Andrew Lawrence

"For instance, there was this Turkish guy once. He fucked up and owed Milo some money. So I went over to his place. I'd been there many times before, asking for the money in a polite way, without any luck. Finally, I took a knife, stabbed it in his kneecap and teared the shit up. Sometimes, I'd like to have another job. Believe me." - Radovan

Even though I come from Denmark, I've never been a huge fan of Danish movies. For some reason they've never caught my attention, and I honestly think it's because of how different they are from American movies, witch pretty much is what I watch exclusively nowadays. Being a small country with just 5.5 million inhabitants, our economy isn't able to support big multi million productions either, which means that a Danish movie that would be considered "low budget" in the big movie countries like USA and France, might actually be one of the most expensive films to come out of Denmark in years. As you can imagine, this means that there's almost no room for special effects and big overblown and overproduced CGI blockbusters like the Transformers trilogy and the Marvel superhero movies, which is why Danish cinema tends to be very artsy and independent looking, when compared to what the rest of the world is used to.

Most film critiques would describe Denmark as a country that has a long and respectable movie tradition in terms of existential, realistic and often times depressive and destructive film making, a description I personally found dull and boring for the longest time. I mentioned in my first classic movie review that new things tend to scare me, which probably is why I've never thought about giving my own country's movies a go, even though my taste in films has changed vastly over the last 18 months. However, the more I got to thinking about it, the more the though of being a danish movie blogger that doesn't blog about danish movies started to scare me. As you might be able to tell, I ended up growing more afraid of denying my national movie heritage than I am of leaving my comfort zone, and as a result, I now find myself in the middle of writing my very first Danish movie review. 

Danish film studios have been producing movies and television for as long any other studios in the world, but it wasn't until the mid 90s that danish cinema had its big international breakthrough. "Dogma 95" took the professional movie world by surprise back then, and directors like Lars Von Trier (Dancer in the Dark, Europa) and Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration, The Hunt) who spearheaded the movement, have been widely know as two of the world's most talented and artistically gifted movie makers of the last 100 years ever since. Even though the two of them have won 8 awards at the Cannes Film Festival when combined, the movie I'll be reviewing today isn't made by either of them, but by a director who regular readers of this blog have become very familiar with over the last few months, and who also just happens to be a best director award winner at Cannes. 

Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives) made Pusher, his very first feature length movie, back in 1996, when danish cinema had just started garnering international praise. The movie quickly became a national hit, and it ended up spawning two sequels a few years later because of its immense popularity. Refn got off to as good a start as any movie maker could have hoped for, and being one of my personal favorite directors, I thought reviewing his first movie and using it as in introduction to danish movies at the same time seemed like a fitting choice. 

Pusher takes place in the danish capital of Copenhagen, where Frank, a small time drug dealer played by Kim Bodnia, finds himself gaining an increasingly high amount of debt to his local drug overlord known as Milo, played by danish/croatian actor Zlatko Buric. As he struggles to raise the required 230.000 danish kroner (about 41.000 USD), Frank suffers from a series of unlucky events and a string of bad decisions made by him and his buddy Tony, played by famous danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, which eventually leads him down a dark path of fear and desperation. As the film's plot unravels and the dangerous nature of the drug dealing business starts to unfold, Frank finds himself in a very bad situation, having lost all his friends and without any means of mending his situation.

The very first thing I noticed about this movie when saw it for the first time, is how minimalistic and straight to the point it is. Refn created it on a budget of 6 million DKR, which only translates into 1 million USD, and this is greatly reflected in the way the movie is shot and edited. In my opinion though, this definitely is a strong positive for the over all result, because of how authentic and realistic it makes the movie play out. Low life drug dealers like Frank and Tony in Pusher don't live a very glamorous life, and the low budget feel of this movie made that undeniably clear. I also found it very interesting to see how Refn, who's one of the best visual directors in the world today, started out working with different camera angles, lighting and sound design.

In terms of plot and story arch, Pusher wasn't groundbreaking or revolutionizing in any way shape or form. It has a very familiar plot with even more familiar and sometimes even overly clichéd characters, but the way the actors and the director told the story makes Pusher stand out from the rest. Bodnia's, Buric's and Mikkelsen's performances feel incredibly grounded in reality, and when combined with the documentary-esque low budget style that Refn shot in, the finished result is one of the most realistic depictions of how it is to live the paranoid and insecure life of a drug dealer I've ever seen. Pusher does to drug distribution what Requiem for a Dream did to drug addiction in my opinion, and this is largely due to Nicolas Winding Refn's great sense of realistic character portrayal and authentic way of adding atmosphere to his movies.

The great sense of well created-ness that Pusher benefits from is another important factor as to why I enjoyed it for 100 % of its runtime. Done to death stories have a tendency to become very boring very quickly, but Pusher's attention to detail and well written script completely kept me from leaving that zone of suspense and believability that good movies create. All its subplots and supporting characters were very trustworthy and interesting in my opinion, something that the wast majority of new movies can't exactly boast of. Two of the supporting character very in fact so well written and well fleshed out that they ended up becoming the individual main characters of Pusher II and Pusher 3, which should give you an idea of how much material this movie has to offer.

My favorite part of Nicolas Winding Refn's debut movie is the way it ends. I mentioned earlier that Pusher doesn't break any new ground in terms of story arch or character templates, and I was legitimately scared that it was gonna end on the same note that all the other "bad luck drug dealer" movies does. However, to my great surprise and indescribable joy, it's final moments aren't just inventive, refreshing and exiting, they're also downright existential, bound in destiny and philosophical. This might seem like very big words for a very small budget movie, but trust me, the final scene of Pusher is one of the best ways I've seen a movie end in a long time. All in all, Pusher definitely is one of the best danish productions I've seen in my short lifespan, and I'm looking forward to watching its sequels and a lot of other great danish movies. It's a solid movie that should give anyone a good indication as to what they should expect from movies that are made in my windy home country of Denmark, and for that reason alone, Refn's Pusher definitely is worthy of my seal of approval. (4/6)

Pusher IMDb page here

Pusher trailer link here