In Bruges - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"I don't know any Belgium jokes, and if I did I think I'd have the good sense not to... hang on. Isn't it Belgium with all those child abuse murders lately? I do know a Belgium joke. What's Belgium famous for? Chocolates and child abuse, and they only invented the chocolates to get to the kids."

As far as comedies go, I tend to prefer the darker ones with dry humour and an ironic sense of self awareness, such as Burn After Reading, A Serious Man and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I love the way in which these types of movies encapsulate the human condition much more accurately than most lighthearted and audience friendly comedies do it, and I tend to find them very honest and believable in their approach to character creation and development. I decided to watch In Bruges last night because I'd heard a lot of people with a similar opinion on comedies hold it in high esteem, and even though I do have a problem with some of the things that took place in the story, I'm happy to confirm that writer/director Martin McDonaugh's feature film debut is one of the funniest pitch black comedies I've seen since The Coen Brothers' Fargo.

In Bruges takes place in a Belgian city by the name of Bruges. Collin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are a pair of Irish assassins who's been given orders to go to the city after they've completed a job back an London, and as they await further instructions from their boss, the audience gets to witness how the two blokes navigate the small romantic streets of this old, almost medieval type of city. Farrell plays the main character, and he hates Bruges with a burning passion, whereas his more experienced partner, who's played by Gleeson, enjoys their stay very much. The two characters' countless discussions about the city and all its old buildings are one of the biggest sources of laugh out loud moments in the entire film, which partly is due to the very intelligently written lines of Tarantino'esque dialogue, and partly is because of the superb performances delivered by the lead actors. Colin Farrell did an especially good job in my opinion, and he won a golden globe for his performance. 

Whereas the dialogue is snappy, witty and very well timed, the actual narrative aspects of the film are less remarkable in some cases. Some of the plot details were a little iffy at times, and especially one storyline about a dwarf actor was somewhat inappropriate in my opinion. The film doesn't ridicule or discriminate against midgets or anything like that, but I just don't think that the character fit into the story, and the way he's used as a catalyst for something monumental at one point in the plot felt very circumstantial to say the least. He does have several very funny scenes with Farrell's character though, which somewhat redeems these flaws. Fleur Delacour is also in this movie, and she plays Colin Farrell's love interest, because hey, the main character's got to have a love interest in order for the movie to have emotional weight, right? Well, not exactly. Even though she's a decently funny and well portrayed character, there was absolutely no reason for her to exist whatsoever, and the way she affected Farrell's character seemed very flimsy and inconsistent in terms of reasoning and plot decisiveness. 

When I say that In Bruges is a pitch black comedy, I really mean pitch black. People get killed regularly throughout the film, the main characters are depressed and suicidal, and there's a couple of very gory scenes in the movie that a lot of audiences will find sort of disturbing. In spite of all that though, I was consistently laughing from start to finish because of the actors' and the script's impeccable sense of comedic timing, and it's very cool to me that a movie as dark as this one ended up making me feel as uplifted as it did. There are a few times where the roughness and the grittiness gets a little too over exaggerated though, and I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry on at least two separate occasions. I don't know if that's how Martin McDonaugh intended to make me feel, but it felt awkward and a little estranging in any case. It's not a big problem though, and over all I'd say that the story of In Bruges was well conceived, brilliantly written and well executed. 

Apart from the dialogue, the main characters and the actors who portray them are the stars of this movie. Farrell's and Gleeson's characters both have a lot of inner demons to deal with, and although In Bruges is primarily a comedy, these two brilliant actors' performances made some of the more emotional scenes surprisingly harrowing and emotionally conflicting. Ralph Fiennes has a role in this film as well, and even though he's only in it for about 40-45 minutes, he manages to make a detrimental impact on the story in a very short amount of time, because of how indecent and profoundly unlikable he is. He's part of some of the funniest and most captivating scenes in the movie too, and even though it's not very likable that things would have gone down the way they did in them, his scene in on the stairs with Gleeson and his scene in the hotel with Farrell are my favourite ones in the whole film. Fiennes' character is a slimeball and a crook if ever there was one, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't very entertaining to look at. 

When it comes down to it, In Bruges is one of the funniest films I've seen all year, and quite possibly the darkest one as well. Most of the characters are very well written and acted, and even those who weren't were almost just as funny as those who were. The story does have a few slightly visible bumps in the road though, and even though they aren't nearly problematic enough to ruin the film, they do drag its over all rating down a bit. In Bruges is a witty, clever and compelling cinematic experience anyway though, and it deserves my seal of approval as much as any other comedy I've ever reviewed, and a tad bit more than that as well. (4,5/6)

In Bruges IMDb page here

In Bruges trailer here

The Hunt - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"I want a word with Theo. Look into my eyes. Look me in the eyes. What do you see? Do you see anything? Nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing. You leave me alone now. You leave me alone now, Theo. Then I'll go. Thank you."

Thomas Vinterberg bursted onto the European film scene back in 1998 with his directorial debut "The Celebration", a Dogma 95 movie about child abuse and family corruption that has gone down in history as one of Danish film's greatest achievements ever. Vinterberg helped put the small Scandinavian country of Denmark on the map as one of the countries to look out for in terms of cinema, but he never really managed to duplicate that initial success he achieved with The Celebration. Not until 2012 anyway. His newest movie "The Hunt" takes place in a small Danish town with a tight local community, where Lucas, a former school teacher played by Mads Mikkelsen, is forced to work in the local kindergarden after his wife leaves him. Lucas is a friendly and likable guy, and he has a lot of family, colleagues and friends who enjoy his company very much. Seeing as he recently lost custody of his only son though, Lucas feels very lonely and assimilated from the rest of the people around him, and it's clear from the very beginning that he's a very broken man at the moment. However, as if the world wasn't tough enough on this poor individual already, one innocent little lie is about to start a chain reaction of tragic events that threatens to push him completely off of the edge of society. 

Every movie enthusiast has their own personal favourite genre, whether it be horror, rom-com, action, comedy, thriller etc. I personally love dark dramas with damaged and interesting characters such as A Single Man, Drive and Take Shelter, and Thomas Vinterberg's latest directorial success fits that mold incredibly well, which automatically scores it a few extra points in my book. That being said though, these kinds of movies tend to have  a very niche target audience because of their serious and often terribly depressing subject matter, and The Hunt doesn't do a very good job of changing that statistic. It actually strengthens it. I personally haven't seen a movies as joyless or as heartbreaking as this one for as long as I can remember, and I wouldn't be surprised if some people end up hating The Hunt because of the melancholic way it leaves most of it's audience feeling. No matter how you twist and turn it though, this movie is a phenomenal piece of film making on every single taxonomic level, and it had me engaged from the very first shot of Mads Mikkelsen walking around in the woods all by himself.

The main plot device in The Celebration was sexual child abuse, and that goes for The Hunt as well. The difference is that it actually didn't happen this time around, but unfortunately for Lucas, everyone thinks it did, and that's the main essence of the entire movie. The concept of one little lie that transform into a false rumour that then proceeds to spread across an entire town like wildfire is both fascinating and horrifying to behold, and the way in which Thomas Vinterberg puts these suburban group dynamics on display is incredibly impressive. No matter how great Mads Mikkelsen's performance is and no matter how effectively this film manages to make it's audience physically shake in despair, the real star of The Hunt is its superbly written script and the way in which it emphasizes the tremendous powers of rumours and hedge talk in  rural environments. Vinterberg and his co. writer Tobias Lindholm deserve to be given something very expensive and flashy for the incredible job they did with this screenplay in my opinion, and if The Hunt doesn't get nominated for best movie in the foreign language category come Oscar season, I'll be fully convinced that this world has lost it's sense of justice completely. 

Even though its way more unlikely, I'd also love to see Mads Mikkelsen get an Oscar nod for best actor in a leading role. I don't know if a movie in a foreign language has ever been nominated in this category before, but Mikkelsen's performance is every bit as worthy of that golden statue as any other male performance I've seen all year, if not even more deserving. The way in which he manages to look as if his entire life has been taken away from him is just unheard of, and even though I've seen the guy in countless amounts of other Danish movies, his character is one of the single most relatable ones I've come across all year. You truly believe that this man you're looking at is broken all the way to his core, which is very impressive considering how little actual dialogue the character actually has. Mikkelsen doesn't need those epic monologues about how much he's suffering on the inside to convince people that he's hurting though, and there's one scene in particular where this really goes to show, and it's stunningly to witness. His character progression reminded a lot of the arch that Michael Shannon's character experienced in Take Shelter, a movie that has become one of my all time favourites since I reviewed it about six months ago, so if you liked that movie, consider giving The Hunt a go as well. 

Every single globally famous actor/actress comes to a place in his/her career, at which it becomes impossible for people to recognize them as anyone but their real world persona. As an example, it's been a very long time since I've seen a Bruce Willis movie where I didn't look at his character and just saw Bruce Willis. Apart from in Twelve Monkeys, that's actually never happened. The point I'm trying to make is that Mads Mikkelsen is Denmark's answer to stars like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, who are two of the guys that suffer from this celebrity-phenomenon the most, and to have him convince me that he actually was the character that he was portraying and not the famous actor that I see on the front of magazines every day as effectively as he did, is a testimony to how enchantingly magnificent his performance in The Hunt is. I've never seen an actor break the "real life spell" as effectively as Mads Mikkelsen does in this movie, and that's very impressive to say the least. 

Another character that I'd like to talk about in this review is Klara, the little girl who starts the rumor about Lucas being a child molester. She's a very important part of the movie and its story in a lot different ways, and the methods that her parents and other adults use to to try and find out what happened between her and Lucas are a big part of the moral lesson that Vinterberg wants to get across. The adults actively force this poor little girl to describe scenarios that never even took place, and even though it's a very effective and thought provoking way of propelling the moral dilemma along, it did feel kind of unrealistic and forced at times. I've heard other people speculate about the suspiciously high amount of very poor parents and nannies that seem to be inhabiting the town that The Hunt takes place in, but because I'm not a parent who's had to deal with a situation like this myself, I'm not quite capable of judging whether such behaviour is truthful or if it isn't. All I'm saying is that it seems a bit fishy, and the child that played Klara didn't do a very good at portraying the feelings a child in that situation must have felt either. 

All in all though, I have to say that The Hunt is one of the best cinematic experiences I've had in a long time. It's easily the best Danish movie I've seen since 2008 at least, and Mads Mikkelsen has never been better in his entire career. The story about Lucas being accused of a crime he didn't commit was very thought provoking and eye opening to me, and seeing his life collapse as a result of the talk and the rumours that went all over town was equally powerful and engrossing. Another important thing I almost always forgot to talk about is the movie's musical score, because even though there's only about 20 seconds of it in the entire film, it's still one of the most important elements in it. I was very much aware that there was no background music or sound effect at all in any of the most important and climatic scenes, and it almost allowed me to reach out and physically touch the emotion much more than I would have been if some cheesy violin had been weeping for attention in the background. Less definitely was more in this situation, and I applaud Thomas Vinterberg for realizing this and for sticking with that one mood throughout the entire two hours of the movie. 

What it comes down to it, The Hunt really is writer/director Thomas Vinterberg's, his cowriter's and Mads Mikkelsen's shared masterpiece, and had those scenes with the parents and the child actor that I talked about earlier been more convincing, it probably would have ended up surpassing the rating of worth buying on BluRay. As it stands though, The Hunt gets a very solid 5/6 from me. 

The Hunt IMDb page here

The Hunt trailer here

Disconnect - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"Since when did you start caring about what a source feel like after you get what you want, huh?"

Disconnect is a multi-narrative drama that originally premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, where it received a batch of very mixed critical reviews. Some people absolutely loved it and thought that first time director Henry Alex Rubin had created an important and clever movie about tragedy and social awareness, whereas others called it a cheap and emotionless ripoff of other movies with several interlinking stories, such as Paul Haggis' Crash and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel. Although I personally love Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia to heaven and back, I don't particularly care that much for multi-narrative films, the main reason being that I don't think there's enough time to get to know all the different characters, which in turn means that I don't care about them at all. This meant that I didn't have too high hopes for Disconnect going into it, and in spite of how many problems it had, these low expectations probably were the main reason why I ended up enjoying it as much as I did. 

Being a movie with several interweaving stories, Disconnect has a downright enormous cast. Jason Bateman, Alexander Skarsgård, Max Thieriot, Jonah Bobo, Colin Ford and Hope Davis portray the most important characters in the four respective storylines, and even though all of them do a really good job acting vise, it's actually one of the less important characters that ended up stealing the show in my opinion. One of the main characters' father is played by Frank Grillo, an actor whom I've never really noticed before, and I was kind of flabbergasted by how amazing he was at portraying this hardened, emotionally distanced parent, whom I would have loved to see get more screen time than he did. Jason Bateman was surprisingly good as well, seeing as he tends to do comedies exclusively these days, and I'd like to se him take on more serious roles in the future. Another actor that took his character a little too seriously however, was Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård. He delivers a very fine performance as a down on his luck office worker who recently lost his only son, but I felt as if he overacted his emotional breakdown a little too much at times. Over all I think that the main cast did a good job though, which is a detrimental must for multi-narrative movies like this one. 

As for the actual plot of the movie, there is a lot of things that don't work. The film's central theme is post modern people and the way in which they tend to distance themselves from each other through the internet; at least that what the movie wants you to think. This message is clearly visible in the beginning, but when we get to the narrative point of no return about half way through the movie, it's as if all the themes about spending too much time on the internet and people distancing themselves from their families and friends is thrown into the toilet, in order make room for a more generic cyber-thriller kind of atmosphere. The director and actors handle this new way of doing things quite well actually, so much so that I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat for entire last fourth of the film, but the main message and the feeling of being disconnected that the first half established is complete gone anyway. This change in attitude is not as big a problem as it could have been, but I still feel as if the main theme and the power of the narrative got lost in the shuffle. It's as if the title "Disconnect" fits the first half brilliantly, but looses it's meaning in the second. 

The four stories that tie this film's narrative together are all very well acted, but as it always seems to happen with these multi-narrative film, some of them are good, and some of them are less good. Bateman and his family's plot kind of is the main story, and it's probably the most entertaining one of the lot as well. Bateman plays a father who's constantly busy with his job, and the character progression that he undergoes when something tragic happens to his family was one of my favourite things about the entire film. This "main" story is closely related to a second one, in which a couple of young boys end up taking cyber-bullying to the extreme. This is also the plot line in which Frank Grillo appears, and the back and forth he shares with his son and the way in which their relationship and their personalities is being displayed made for some very heartbreaking moments. There's one scene that stuck with me in particular, and it's the one where Grillo gets mad at his son for doing something very stupid towards the end of the film. Colin Ford who plays the boy is stunningly good in this scene, and I've rarely seen a more convincing and truthful daddy/son argument in any movie ever. 

The third story is the most assimilated one of the bunch, and its centered around an 18-year-old boy who "sells himself" though a webcam chat room on the internet. A local news reporter finds out about him and his line of work and decides to make a news report about the topic, in which she wants the young man to tell his story to the rest of world through an interview. This story is actually the most original and groundbreaking one of all the ones in the movie, so it pains me to say that the way in which it was handled kind of sucked. There was so much potential in this idea of going in depth with online prostitution, so much so that I'd say there's more than enough material to make an entire standalone movie about the subject, but there's just too many silly things about the way in which the director handled it in this movie. The two characters kind of start a relationship in the middle of the whole thing which they then suddenly forget all about in the next scene, and the part where the FBI suddenly starts to get involved with the story felt like a very cheap way of injecting some very unnecessary drama into the plot. The way in which this fourth of the movie connects with the other parts is very vague and stupid as well, and I honestly can't believe how unoriginal and forced it felt when the connection took place. 

The fourth and final part, which is the one where Alexanders Skarsgård looses his son, is quite possibly the weakest of the bunch. Not only did the story of how he and his wife deal with their loss turn out to be boring and corny, but it also ended up being kicked violently to the curb by some stupid side plot where the couple has their identities stolen, which subsequently leads to their credit cards being emptied. It angered me more than I can explain that the whole baby thing wasn't anything but a cheap setup for a more dramatic and action packed plot line that didn't have much relevance to the rest of the film at all, and the only redeeming thing about it is the fact that Frank Grillo's character, who just happens to be a private investigator, is brought in to help them solve the case. Skarsgård's performance was good for the most part though, the most impressive thing about it being that I didn't even realize that he's Swedish until the movie was over, but Paula Patton who plays his wife sadly delivers the only downright bad performance in the whole film. There's one scene with her that made me clench my teeth especially hard, and it's the one in which she's chatting with a stranger on some sort of trauma-relief chat room. The way in which she tries to make her character seem more saddened and hurt by slightly shaking her head and making a silly doggy face is absolutely terrible and untruthful, and it made me which that I was watching Bateman's or Grillos' story instead, which is the one sin that a multi-narrative film must do everything in its power to avoid committing.

My final and biggest problem with this movie however, is the dialogue and the script. Oh man. There's probably 20 lines of dialogue in this movie that don't fit into the overall context of the plot whatsoever, and the amount of time I spend thinking about some weird quote that just blurted out of my speakers instead of focusing on the plot of the movie is embarrassingly high. Some of these verbal missteps take place at very important parts of the climax too, and the impact they had on my overall enjoyment of the film was quite high because of that. 

In spite of all the negative things there are to be said about Disconnect, the movie did manage to keep me entertained for the wast majority of its runtime. Most of the stories were original and decently created, and even though the entire cast (except Paula Patton) did a very good job, Jason Bateman and Frank Grillo stole the show in their respective scenes every time they appeared. The one scene they share was botched by one of the several misplaced and out of context dialogue-screwups though, and when the other negative things about the main message of the film being lost in the second half and the thing about Skargård's storyline is added on top of that, the negatives stack up too high for me to give the movie my seal approval. The over all product was more than just worth the watch however, and that's why Disconnect ends up with a little more than just the regular three stars. (3,5/6)

Disconnect IMDb page here

Disconnect trailer here

Valhalla Rising - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"We're God's own soldiers, heading for Jerusalem to reconquer the holy land.."

Valhalla Rising is the third Nicolas Winding Refn film to be up for review here on my blog, and based on what I had heard about the movie prior to seeing it, I didn't have very high hopes all. As it so often is the case in these situations though, Valhalla Rising proved to be far better than the hype had let me to believe, and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself feeling both amazed and emotionally battered once the credits started rolling. I do realize that this movie won't do the same thing for everyone else though, seeing as it is very artsy and "out there" in terms of storytelling and narrative format, and I'm pretty sure that most of the people who's seen the movie will disagree with me on most of my opinions about it. If you do happen to be a fan of art-house movies that don't hesitate to throw caution to the wind though, Valhalla Rising will be right up your alley. 

The movie takes place in 1000 AD, in the cold, windswept and desolate parts of Northern Scotland, where One Eye, a mute warrior slave of superhuman strength who's lost an eye in battle, spends his days struggling to survive the harsh treatment of his captor, a Norse chieftain called Barde. One Eye is troubled by hellish visions of sacrifice and punishment, and with the help of a slave boy called Are, he escapes his captors and sets out on a journey to find himself and to discover the origins of his visions. The two of them soon meet and team up with a band of christian crusaders who are on their way to "God's holy lands", and One Eye's eventual influence on this group of people and their influence on him is one of the many weirdly trippy plot devices that Nicolas Winding Refn uses to tell this fascinations story of faith, violence and religion. 

I have to admit that I didn't fully understand this movie from my one viewing of it, but I'm also pretty sure that that's exactly what Refn wanted. Valhalla Rising is a very metaphorical and thematically rich piece of cinema, and there's a lot of ways to interpret the different events and occurrences that take place during its runtime; a fact that's sure to turn a lot of viewers off very quickly. The mood and the style of the film reminded me a lot of some of David Lynch's and Terrence Malick's work, and especially the very little amount of dialogue made me think of movies such as Eraserhead and The Tree of Life. I read somewhere that the movie doesn't have more than 140 lines of actual dialogue, and I honestly think that this is one of Valhalla Rising's greatest strengths. When there's no voices to be heard, a lot of the more subtle and discrete elements become much clearer, which in turn means that Peter Kyed's mesmerizing score and Morten Søborg's jaw-dropping cinematography becomes much more apparent. This lack of spoken explanation also allows for a much more personal and original experience, and it added a whole lot to my over all experience of watching the movie. 

In terms of Valhalla Rising's actual story, there isn't really that much to talk about. I watched the movie with my mother and my stepdad, and even though I enjoyed it way more than they did, I do understand why they didn't like the way in which nothing seemed to happen. It's a very original movie with a lot of blinding visuals and profound ideas, but its lack of story arch and graspable narrative did make it kinda hard to watch at times. It never got to a point at witch I wanted the movie to end, far from it actually, but I would have liked it to have had a little more structure or something to actually grab onto and hold firmly in your hand, if you understand what I mean. I realize that art isn't always easy to behold and understand, but I have to admit that there does come a time where staring at starving and depressed vikings on a boat for twenty minutes in a row becomes a little dull and repetitive.

Valhalla Rising raises a lot of questions about religion, spirituality and imperialism, and my guess is that these aspects and their meanings are the most important ones to take away from the movie. Both the Christians and the Norse people in the film are depicted as being barbaric, violent, primitive and greedy, and the way in which the movie concludes makes it seem as if all the negative things that has happened are a direct result of religious and especially imperialistic disputes. One Eye and Are, the mistreated slave and the homeless child, appear to be the only people in the entire world who don't judge other men on their religious beliefs and on the strength of their arm, and even though I'm not exactly sure what this is supposed to mean or symbolize, watching the two of them be as different from the rest of the men they're travelling with is strangely compelling and intriguing. I realize that this description probably doesn't make much sense for people who hasn't seen the movie, but explaining exactly what it is I felt when the film ended without spoiling some of the more jaw dropping elements of the spiritual themes is very hard to do.

In the end, I have to admit that Valhalla Rising is one of the most strangely compelling movies I've seen in a while, even though it doesn't have much of a narrative structure at all. Its visuals are nothing short of stunning, the score is beautifully haunting, the central performance from Mads Mikkelsen is as strong as it possibly can be be considering the fact that he has no lines of dialogue whatsoever, and the spiritual and atmospherical themes are very well handled and executed. It's a very niche movie with an even more niche target audience, and I'd be surprised if more than one out of every ten people who see it will like it, simply because of how "out there" and artsy it really is. It's not a movie that your'e going to watch several times in a row, not even if you loved it, which is the main reason why it doesn't qualify for the rating of "worth buying on BluRay". That being said, Nicolas Winding Refn does manage to create a surreal and trippy atmosphere throughout the entire movie that I'd be happy to experience again sometime down the line, and thus, Valhalla Rising has earned my seal of approval. (4/6)

Valhalla Rising IMDb page here

Valhalla Rising trailer here