A Seperation (2011) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Source: http://muftah.org/a-separation-what-american-film-critics-seems-to-have-missed/#.VkPPs2SrS2w

Director: Asghar Farhadi
Screewriter: Asghar Farhadi 
Stars: Peyman Moaadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat, Shahab Hosseini
Trailer link
IMDb page

A Master of the Domestic:

The modern Iranian family and the people they encounter in A Seperation, Asghar Farhadi's Oscar winning drama from 2011, is one of the most well constructed and many layered groups of movie characters I've ever seen on film. This director's understanding of mise-en-scène and his approach to natural storytelling is freakishly impressive to me, and the fact that he went on to write and direct The Past, which in my opinion is just as good as A Seperation, solidifies Farhardi as one of the most interesting filmmakers working today (at least in my book). Divorce and family fragmentation in general is a theme that often seems to make its way into his narratives, and as the title suggest, A Seperation is no different. 

A familiar story, or so you thought:
The film opens in a courtroom, where Nadar and Simin are in the middle of a heated argument. She wants to divorce him, he doesn't want to divorce her, and both of them want custody over their only child. Sounds familiar? Of cause it does, and that's exactly the point. For a while, A Seperation appears to be nothing more than what its title promises; yet another film in a long line of divorce dramas. But then something happens, and the film completely changes course. Yes, it's still essentially a movie about a family going through a tough breakup, but at the same time, it's so much more than that. It evolves into a poignant depiction of religion, pride, honesty, grief and forgiveness, and shows how those themes come into play in modern day Iran.

People Being People:  
To me, the best aspect of this film is the naturalistic way in which the director lets his story unfold. It is absolutely devoid of any kind of melodrama, yet still profoundly emotional when it needs to be. The way each character acts a tiny bit differently after each major and minor plot point, Farhadi's way of suggesting rather than showing, and his elegant use of reincorporation; All of this makes A Seperation a master class in natural, relatable storytelling, something I as a child of Scandinavian cinema am able to respect and admire. Most films are lucky to have just one or two real, flawed and genuinely human main characters, but in A Seperation, Farhadi has created at least five of those. In the end, the dilemmas these characters go through are so transcending and fundamentally human, that I often found myself forgetting that I was watching an Iranian film set in Iran, with Iranian actors and actresses. They were just people to me; real people in real situations. 

One Event, a Thousand Consequences:
As I explained previously, this film reaches a whole new level of depth as it gets going. By the time it reaches it's second hour and something unexpected happens, the layers of conflict, ethical chaos, doubt, anger and paranoia which the main characters find themselves plunged into, is so deep and multi colored that the drama and tension simply just soars. In particular, Peyman Moaadi's character and his struggles concerning his daughter, his feelings towards his soon-to-be ex wife and an inner battle between pride and honesty, shades him and his motives in a million different shades of gray. When the film is over and the credits start rolling, you're not only left wondering where this man will end up physically, but also how his relationships with the people around him will develop in the days and years to come. It might have come to a narrative end, yes, but A Seperation kept on rolling in my head, in the way that great films often do. 

Force Majeure (2014) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Source: http://www.brockpress.com/2015/02/bufs-preview-17-046/

Director: Ruben Östlund
Screenwriter: Ruben Östlund
Stars: Johannes Khunke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Kristofer Hivju, Fanni Metelius
Trailer link
IMDb page

More negativity to come, I promise:

So it turns out that being unemployed doesn't give you an unlimited amount of time to do whatever you feel like, and that job hunting actually requires almost as much work and dedication as a regular 9 to 5. Between interviews, watching movies, other film related writing and just life in general, I don't get to do a whole lot of blogging these days, which is something that has been bothering me a lot over the last few weeks. I want to get back into the habit of reviewing films from both sides of the quality spectrum, and stop popping online just to write a few lines abut my favourite films once in a while, like I've been doing for the last couple of months. That being said however, today's review will be a very positive one, so I guess I'm already starting to contradict myself. Sigh.

Skiing the pain away:

Force Majeure is a pitch black comedy set in and around a luxurious ski resort in the French Alps. We're introduced to a husband, his wife and their two children in an awkwardly funny and relatable opening scene, where an intruding photographer forces them to pose for his unforgiving camera. The family on the post-card-worthy photos seems pitch perfect at a glance, but within the first 10 minutes of the film, we discover that this isn't exactly the case. It turns out that Mama and Papa have a very hard time communicating with each other, and when their respective weaknesses and limits are exposed as a result of an extraordinary event, a family crisis unparallelled but anything you've ever seen before ensues.  

Naked vastness:
One of the best things about Force Majeure is it's uncanny sense of mood and atmosphere. Director Ruben Östlund treats his audience to magnificent shots of snowy mountaintops and brooding pine forests all throughout the film, and the wast loneliness and isolation of these vistas matches the tone of the film perfectly. Our main characters, Thomas and Ebba, traveled to this place in an attempt to salvage their damaged marriage, desperately hoping that a holiday in the idyllic Alps would tighten them as a family. What actually ends up happening is quite the opposite; the silence and emptiness of the place reveals how far apart from each other they've grown, and threatens to drive them even further apart. There's nothing but snow, emptiness and silence in this place, which forces the characters to look at each other and themselves in a new light, and Ruben Österlund uses the chilling surroundings to capture this this sense of chaos, clarity and emptiness extremely well.

You'll feel bad, but you'll laugh:
In my opinion, the biggest takeaway from this film is how absolutely hilarious it is. It isn't funny in a Seth Rogen dick-jokey kind of way, but in an understated, awkward and more insightful manner, which suits the overall theme of the film very well. Its best scenes leave you wondering whether you should be crying for or laughing at the main characters and their silly, egocentric behaviour, which is something I enjoyed immensely. This humour doesn't get in the way of the more thoughtful ideas that Östlund proposes in the film however, which Kristofer Hivju's character is a perfect example of; he successfully explores themes such as masculinity, hero complexes and self-contradiction  through this supporting character, but also manages to make him one of the funniest and most enjoyably cringeworthy film personas of 2014. 

Swedish cinema, ho!:

Force Majeure was Sweden's official submission to the best foreign language film category during this year's Oscars, but for some unexplainable reason, it wasn't even nominated. The pure wit and cleverness of Force is unparalleled by anything I saw in 2014, so much so that I often catch myself internally debating some of the questions director Ruben Östlund raises, about themes such as forgiveness, pride, trust and self redemption, in the same way that his characters do. He tells a thought-provoking and darkly funny story in a deeply engrossing and original manner, and in my opinion, Force Majeure is one of the very best films of 2014, and the second Swedish masterpiece to be grossly overlooked by the Oscars within the last decade. (You can read my Let the Right One In review here!)

Let the Right One In (2008) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Source: http://revoltdaily.org/let-the-right-one-in-review-2/

Director: Thomas Alfredson

Writer: John Ajvide Lindquist

Stars: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson

Trailer link

IMDb page

On a cold, stormy night:

Let the Right One In is a Swedish horror film set in a cold and snowy Stockholm suburb. It centers around a couple of lonely and unwanted children; a 12-year-old boy and a female vampire, who despite being stranded in the middle of nowhere (both literally and figuratively), end up finding solace in each other's company. Oscar's parents are divorced, and when he isn't being bullied at school or yelled at by his mother, he spends his time hanging out on a cold concrete playground close to his apartment complex. This is where he meets Eli, a curious girl with black hair who walks barefooted in the dead of winter, seems wise beyond her years, and has some weird eating habits. Oscar immediately notices that something isn't quite right about this girl, but being a true 12-year-old, he happily accepts the impossible when faced with the opportunity to make a friend.

A genre facelift:

Most people associate the term "vampire movie" with sparkly, glaring and depressed supermodels with girlfriend problems, or old, haunted Eastern European mansion filled with bats and coffins. With Let the Right One In however, we get none of these clichés and worn out premises. It's a wholly original film, one that takes the vampire genre (and the horror genre as a whole) by its feet and turns it upside down, making for one of the most unique cinematic experiences I've had in my life. Let the Right One In is a sad, dark, frightening and at times also extremely tender and heartwarming film that has haunted me ever since I saw it, but for completely different reasons than horror film normally do. It is a film entirely devoid of garlic, crosses, silver bullets and other such vampire tropes, yet director Thomas Alfredson still has his feet solidly planted in a mythology that as of a few days ago didn't appeal to me in the slightest. 

The right amount of fiction:

In my opinion, the best thing about this film is the fact that its supernatural elements are used as tools to tell a story, rather than an excuse to put some guts and violence on a TV-screen. I was chocked when I first realized that Eli, the young vampire portrayed by Lina Leandersson, is one of the most believable and convincing characters I have ever come across not just in cinema, but in fiction as a whole. For some reason I just couldn't keep my heart from breaking every time a new side to this character was revealed, and the fact that the relationship she shares with Kåre Hedebrant's character touched me as profoundly as it did, despite this being a horror film, should tell you something about how much I adore it. As I explained earlier, Alfredson doesn't hit you over the head with the fact that there's a vampire in his movie, which lets us view the world he creates through Oscar's eyes. We accept the film's supernatural premise because Oscar does; because we can't help it. 

"Kill for me, baby.":

Horror movies generally don't have subdued messages and underlying currents woven into them anymore, and often leave their audiences with nothing to ponder over on their way home other than how gory that climactic chainsaw fight was. Let the Right One In breaks that mold. One of the main themes in the film is the blurred lines between good and evil, and whereas the American remake from 2010 uses mouthy and forced dialogue to try and achieve a similar effect, Alfredson and his cinematographer's subdued approach is infinitely more thought provoking and lingering. They manage to make me fall in love with a character who kills people on a regular basis, much in the same way that Oscar blindly accepts that this is how his new friend behaves. Let the Right One In is an alarmingly thought provoking and ethically challenging film in my opinion, and one that I'll be rewatching many many times in the future. 

To have seen it is to love it:

You're in for a surprise if you go into this film expecting something in the vein of Twilight, Nosferatu or Bram Stoker's Dracula, but depending on how open minded you are, it's likely to be one of the best surprises you'll ever be subjected to. Thomas Alfredson got his international breakthrough with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a phenomenal cold war thriller which I have reviewed in the past, but he would have never gotten the chance to direct a movie on the scale of Tinker Tailor had it not been for the success of Let the Right one In, which in my opinion is the better of the two films. I'm currently in the process of compiling a top 10 list of movies from 2014, but since this heartbreaking Swedish vampire movie came out in 2008, the very best film I saw this year won't be featured on the list.