Change Your Image
andy_n_johansen
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Nous trois ou rien (2015)
Sympathetic movie but too superficial
Overall this movie is a sympathetic story about Hibat and his life, going from being a jailed anti-shah activist in Iran, to becoming a French social worker. The problem with the movie is that it suffers from not really knowing what it want. It does not have a good balance between being serious or/and funny. Lots of characters from Hibats life appear, and is often given so little screen time that by the end of the movie, you often dont really care about most of characters. It feels like the movie is made for people who already know Hibats real life story, But that would work much better as a documentary or a book, But really becomes a superficial movie when made into a fiction.
When the movie started, i thought there would be a bigger focus on Hibats family with siblings, But besides his clothes Stealing brother, you dont really hear more about the Big family that is introduced in the beginning.
Unfortunately this movie could benefit from a better director and a better script.
Spoken van Viggo (2014)
Interesting documentary with unexplained holes.
Just saw this dutch doc at the Docpoint Film Festival in Helsinki. I was amazed at the great material the documentary makers managed to get for this. Basically the documentary is about Viggo, and two of his sisters, who in their own way confront issues from their past as they grew up with a father who sexually abused them. The mother died when Viggo was a child and at some point the incest-relations started happening. Viggo has been a criminal most of his adult life, but is trying to put all that behind him and pursue a course in psychotherapy plus have a good relationship with his sisters.
There are some weak point about the documentary though. It seems to be heading off in too many directions. At one point it is mentioned that the family consisted of 6 children, and it is often mentioned that an older brother also joined in the abusive part. But Besides Viggo and his two sisters we don't hear anything about the last two siblings, and it is never mentioned whether older brother Tjeerd is dead or he just didn't want to participate in the documentary. It is also mentioned that the father got a medal from the danish resistance movement during WW2, plus there are several songs throughout the documentary in danish language, but it is never mentioned whether or not the family actually had any ties with Denmark. Plus the doc seems to change its focus quite often, leaving viewers wondering for more. But overall still a very interesting film, the best parts being the honesty and openness from Viggo and his sisters when the camera is on. There is also impressive 8mm archive footage, as their father filmed quite a lot and it goes well into the telling of the story. But a more tight and selected narrative from the documentarists would have suited it.
Motyle (1973)
Sweet semi coming of age pre teen movie
Basically a story about some polish kids on summer vacation in the countryside. The story mainly follows Edek, an 11 year old buy who starts hanging out with the intriguing and flirting next door girl Monika, and how their friendship/relationship evolves. Edek is a simple boy, while Monika is the total opposite, boasting a different sophisticated lifestyle.
The film is beautifully shot with nice scenes in the nature featuring Edek and Monika, accompanied by nice music and moments that might make you compare the movie a bit to the Swedish director Roy Anderssons debut movie "A Swedish love story" which was released in 1970. A well-made portrait of what it might feel like to have your first real crush on another person, and the confusion that also follows.
The plot has a few twists but is kept relatively simple as the target group for the movie is the same age group as the kids in the movie, kids in their pre-teens. But an entertaining movie as well for adults.
Bron/Broen (2011)
Well made crime series worth watching until the end.
It was a great pleasure to watch this series. I actually missed the first episode unfortunately, but watched from episode 2 to the last one. One of the reasons i enjoyed it was that the story actually at several points resembled one of my favourite campy b-horror movies from 1971, the British "The abominable Dr Phibes" starring Vincent Price. There were a lot of similarities so i could eventually guess what would happen in episode 9 and 10, but it didn't ruin the experience at all.
Acting was great, i loved the characters that Sara Helin and Kim Bodnia are playing, and the complicated story of finding out who the serial killer is and what the motivation is really plays out well. Hope this gets distributed outside scandinavia.
Baekyahaeng: Hayan eodoom sokeul geolda (2009)
Another filmmaker needed here.
This big budget suspense movie started out with a good story but eventually it becomes more and more uneven.
It is nicely shot, but the script is messy and almost every scene is headed towards a climax and it just kills the mood and the interest in the story.
I personally felt like that the film crew focused on shooting all the scenes but did not succeed in editing the story together well enough. Many scenes also feel like they did not need to be in the film and i did not really feel sympathy for any of the main characters.
With another director like Jong Boon-Ho or Park Chan-Wook i think this movie could have been very well made, instead of this more or less forgettable mess of what is basically a very interesting crime suspense story.
Yume no Shima (2009)
Nice retro movie.
Tsuta Tesuichiro's debut feature manages to recreate the tone and the texture of Japan's popular gangster movies from the 1950s and 60s. 'Island of Dreams' was shot on black-and-white 16mm (which has since been blown up to Cinemascope), the special effects were created in the camera, and Tetsuichiro has even developed the exposed film reels himself. The result looks exactly like a rediscovered film noir from the period, and even if the story is set in the present, it remains faithful to the rules of the genre with clearly drawn characters, a straightforward story, a dry sense of underplayed humour and an unambiguous moral.
The eco-terrorist Alan blows up home-made bombs in factories around Tokyo's rubbish dump, which goes by the euphemistic name of Island of Dreams. He wants to attract the whole world's attention, but primarily gets that of the policeman Terayama, who is constantly at the young antihero's heels. Had it been a modern film, one might have found the plot a bit too thin and the message a bit too heavy-handed, but within the historical genre framework, the tone holds all the way and it gives 'Island of Dreams' its own authenticity.
La pivellina (2009)
Great movie in the spirit of Dardenne brothers movies.
Just saw it at the Copenhagen PIX film festival 2010, and really felt it was a good slice of social realism in the style of Belgian filmmakers Dardenne brothers, but the style applies for other earlier directors as well.
The actors and the dialog in the movie is what really lifts this movie as it could really have ended as a failed movie without believable characters to make the story unfold. The child playing Asia/Aia also acts really well with the other characters.
The story is very simple but it doesn't need to be more complicated than it is. The movie worked well for me as it didn't fall into the usual clichés towards the ending as many other similar movies would have done.
Charlotte for Ever (1986)
Pretentious and plain boring.
I would only recommend this movie for fans of Serge and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Most of the movie takes place in a really dark apartment where we are witnesses to long tedious conversations between the main actors, discussing a lot of nonsense. Pretty much all conversation is delivered unconvincingly and if it weren't for the big name that Serge Gainsbourg is, then this movie is just too boring to be a work of well-made art. It really wants to be a cool and dark art house movie, but succeeds only in putting you to sleep unless you buy the whole idea of the screenplay.
The music is quite nice, but is just repeated constantly with the same numbers played in between scenes that really doesn't do anything for the story. The music is just a relief when we see everybody's sad faces and Charlotte Gainsbourgs ass and naked body. Sadly the best scenes of the movie is two scenes with girls wiggling their sexy behinds, and some cool shots of a car exploding.
The camera-work is fine as well, but there is not much interesting material to work with here.
Babi Buta yang Ingin Terbang (2008)
I just called to say that this movie fails.
I just saw 52 movies at the CPH:Pix Film festival 2009, and this movie unfortunately fails in so many aspects. The theme of shedding some light on the problematic issue of Chinese immigrant population in Indonesia sounded very interesting in the program, and usually love avantgarde movies. But from beginning to end, i felt like i was watching a movie made by some art student that really wanted to make a point with every scene, but who does not seem to have learned how to put together a well presented movie. There are many interesting scenes, which in the hands of a good movie director would have been able to make a big impact. But instead you are just left with a feeling of watching something very boring and you don't really feel the the individual tableaux are connecting with each other.
Unfortunately this movie went to my bottom 5 list of the 52 movies seen at the festival.
The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins (2008)
Interesting documentary.
During the COPENHAGEN DOX festival i went to see this not knowing what it was about. I was pleasantly surprised by the presentation of the themes in this documentary. The story revolves around the concept artist Vanessa Beecroft and her plans of adopting two Sudanese twin kids. Vanessa Beecroft is an artist who has been known for staging art shows with naked people in groups standing up for so long in a room that eventually the models get tired and sits down one by one. On one of her projects in Sudan, she comes across two children she wants to adopt. The mother is dead, and the father does not have money for raising them. The documentary partly follows the process of Vanessas struggle for adopting the children, and partly (for the most part) it is also the story of the eccentric artist that Vanessa Beecroft is. The viewer is presented to fragments from Vanessas art shows, stories from her husband, mother, and father, how she works within the art world, and so on. The more we get to know about Vanessa, the more interesting it becomes. Vanessa turns out to be a very flimsy person whose eccentric fits makes her create chaotic situations where she goes. And she does it intentionally. Apparently she is an artist that thinks that creativeness comes from chaos. I will not reveal more about this documentary, but just say it is an interesting way of portraying a person. At the screening, the director of the movie was there, and it was very nice to get some further background information about the doc. That talk was a nice supplement to the film. As the film actually leaves a lot of questions unanswered. But it is actually not the purpose of the film to answer everything, but just to state that we are dealing with some complicated issues that involves a complicated person.
International Gorillay (1990)
Shitty masterpiece, but fun
I love this crap movie. Never in my life have i seen something as bizarrely done than this Pakistan Lollywood story about an evil Salman Rushdie who wants to kill every Muslim in the world, starting with infiltrating Pakistan in allegiance with some weird looking Pakistani gangsters and a Jewish army guy, whose sister may or may not be teaming up with the good guy Muslims. The first time we meet the good guys, they are actually robbers. We see one of them fall down through a roof and spraying some weird stuff from a spray can onto the evil owners of a night club that has deadly exploding floor, and then there is some lame dancing while the head bad guy of the night club wonders what the hell is happening. I was shifting very much from being glad and depressed when seeing this movie, because the editing with music and a lot of movie clips from different angles have been edited so bad and so quickly, that you may think that the movie makers were on drugs. But it is a hell of a lot fun. So many bizarre scenes, also the scene where Salman Rushdie appears as 4 clones of himself, but the movie makers just copied the same footage and showed it 4 times....primitive and fun movie-making, and then the good jihad warriors show up in Batman-costumes to battle with Salman. The ending is also very special. Salman vs flying Korans shooting laser beams..... A must see for people that love bad movies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Juroku-sai no senso (1976)
Fine movie from Toshio Matsumoto
I recently bought the Toshio Matsumoto box set containing four movies. The only movie that did not have English subtitles on it was this movie. Since i am a Japanese student, i did however understand bits of it. Juroku-sai means "16 years old" and sensou means "war"... The entire movie is beautifully shot, and it is a youth rebellion and love story movie, which i can fully recommend. I hope it will be released with subtitles one fine day. Good acting!!! The opening theme music was also really nice too!!!!!!!!!!!1 I am fascinated by the art of toshio Matsumoto...i have not yet seen the short films and video art he has produced, but i hope it will be available some day
Milano odia: la polizia non può sparare (1974)
Entertaining Lenzi crime
This seems to be a very typical Italian crime film...and boy, do i love it. Ennio Morricone has a short, but killer instrumental tune going on at the very beginning of the film, setting the mood for what this movie is all about. We have the fine Tomas Milian playing a pathetic, gunhappy bastard who gets ticked off very easily and spends most of the movie killing the people he gets near. A high bodycount for mr. Milian here. Great boys...are you happy??? i know i am for owning this movie. I even have the soundtrack in my collection. Go see it boys!!! The American title for this movie "Almost human" is very misconceiving, as Milian in no sense seems like a human being. A translation of the Italian title is more correctly "Hate in Milano-the police can't shoot".
Semana Santa (2001)
BORING AS HELL!!!
This movie sucks big time. It reminded me of the movie Resurrection (Christopher Lambert), which i also found extremely boring. And "Semana Santa" is in every way an even poorer movie.
Only fine one in the cast doing something for this movie is Alida Valli. Alida is one of the grand old ladies in european movie history. I loved her maniacal looks in "Suspiria" and "inferno" (Dario Argento). I will not spend more time dealing with this movie. I will say another good thing about this movie...use it if you want to fall asleep very quickly...
Nevestka (1972)
Beautiful meditation from Turkmenistan
I recently saw this film on a retrospective at the copenhagen night film festival. When the movie started i was captured immediately by the music in the movie which was very minimalistic and sounded electronically, or it may have been some kind of exotic string instrument. The story evolved around a woman living with her father-in-law in the turkmenian desert. The timesetting: some years after second world war. The woman has lost her husband in the war, so it seems, but still lives on with the hope he will come flying back some beautiful day. She and her father-in-law keeps having lifeaffirming flashbacks about how life was before the war.
Simple story, sympathetically realized on screen. A pearl from an old corner of Turkmenistan, former republic of Sovjet Union. Hope this one will be available on DVD some day :-)
Gibel Otrara (1992)
disappointing
I actually had high hopes for this movie when watching it in the cinema at a film festival in Copenhagen, the director Amirkulov was also present at the viewing, so it felt like a special occasion. And it surely isnt every day one is given the opportunity to shake a director from Kasakhstan in the hand. The movie itself revolved around some historical battles and politics which are really unknown for me, and even though mr Amirkulov pointed out before the film began that we in the audience could expect some obscure historical talk in the film, i was surprised about the lack of many things in the movie. A lot of ideas are tested in the movie, but everything feels like the movie tried so hard to be great, that it fell apart. Bad editing, and often dull cinematography made the interest fall apart. I would suggest finding some reading material about the historical facts about the fall of Otrar, than wasting 3 hours watching this overlong film.
Russian Terminator (1989)
One of the worst and boring movies ever seen!!!
Hello I am from Denmark, and one day i was having a film evening with my friends. One brought this movie with him "Russian terminator" and it was extremely awful. After watching less than half a minute we decided to fast forward only stopping at some laughable "highlights" or should i say "lowlights" in the movie. I was actually mostly surprised to find out that this film was produced here in my homeland Denmark...that must have been the biggest mistake this country ever made.
Incubo sulla città contaminata (1980)
Great Lenzi film
Hello Lenzi-fans. I think that many people out there with love for trashy italian cinema will agree with me that Umberto Lenzis "nightmare city" is one of the most enjoyable semi-zombie flicks of the genre. I say "semi-zombie" because Signor Lenzi himself does not approve of the label "zombies" given to the maniacal humans running around constantly in the movie on a loose killing rampage. According to Lenzi they are only "methaphorically" to be called zombies. The statement itself may seem laughable, when you actually see what is going on in this movie. Of course
it is important to remark that this movie and its statements are typical for many films of the late 70-ties with the message of nature revenging itself upon the careless ways we humans treat the world (with reference to movies like ORCA-THE KILLER WHALE). In the case of "Nightmare City" an unspecified disaster has occurred on a nuclear power plant. The protagonist played by the very stiff mexican actor Hugo Stiglitz, is a reporter that in the beginning of the movie is taking off for the airport to cover a news story. A professor Hagenback from the nuclear power plant is due to arrive in the airport and inform the world of what the hell happened at the atomic plant. While we wait, an unidentified plane is arriving to the airport. Nobody identifies themselves on the plane, and an army platoon is getting ready to enter the plane. The suddenly the door opens and the evil looking Professor steps heavily out on the stairs...tension music begins....AND THEN: Fierce stabbing from Hagenback at the army man standing in front of him. And suddenly mad humans with some paté-looking makeup is coming out of the plane in big numbers with weapons and KILLS KILLS KILLS. And the killing just goes on forever... Throughout the movie Hugo Stiglitz manages to stay alive with his wife, and killing more zombies than anyone in the movie. I will not give the ending away here, for those of you who have not seen this piece of exciting and fun trash, but i rather enjoyed the construction of the ending, although i know many will not agree with me.
Even Quentin Tarantino has said that Nightmare City is the ZOMBIE-movie favorite of his. A special thing about these zombies are that they are GODDAMN fast. Forget about running away from some slow deadbeat zombies. These ones are armored with machineguns and lots of sharp weapons. They are even much more efficient than the spanish military personel that are supposed to fight them off. Even when the army is ordered to shoot the contaminated bastards in the head, they do just the opposite. Through the entire movie we actually never see some efficiancy from the army. Umberto Lenzi has made some fine fast-paced poliziotteschi flicks, so i guess thats why we see zombies running around like bloodhungry criminals.
I have to say that if you wish to buy this movie on dvd, then be sure to get the version with AUDIO COMMENTARY on. This is simply one of the worst, laughable commentaries i have ever heard. And yes, Signor Lenzi whose english sucks, is doing it IN ENGLISH. First of all there are long pauses of 10 to 20 minutes where he doesnt mention a single word. When he does say something, it is mainly some stupid comments like "we see two women walking down into the basement, what you think will happen next?" and "Are you happys?" yes, he does say HAPPYS. It is a must hear and see.
Oh yeah, and if you are on the lookout for poor man versions of actors you already know, then look among the paté-faced zombies, and you will find crappy versions of Donald Pleasence, Peter Jackson, and Bob Hoskins. and many more depending on your imagination...
MY FAVORITE UMBERTO LENZI FILM.....