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mercywright
Reviews
Bombi Bitt och jag (1968)
Swedish Prestige TV
"Bombi-Bitt och jag" is best knows for introducing Stellan Skarsgård, then a young teenager, as the lead in a five part TV- series.
The supporting cast included a dozen of Sweden's most iconic actors of that time (1968) - Tor Isedal, Gudrun Brost, Margareta Krook, Sigge Fürst, Åke Grönberg, and Ingvar Kjellson among them.
Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
The summer movie of 2011
The entire summer movie package - romance and action, AND the story takes place in the relatively Wild West. Plus it involves aliens! At the screening I attended, audience was so enraptured nobody texted or chatted with neighbors. Popcorn grew stale, drinks went unslurped. Heroic moves were cheered, dastardly villains jeered.
Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford are more than comfortable in their roles (sequel, please!), and Olivia is a lovely surprise. Intelligent and gutsy, a real "pioneer" woman...
Only small disappointment: the aliens. They look too much like the skitters in "Falling Skies".
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010)
Obviously a 3-D Must
After hearing it praised as a "wonderful, exciting movie for the whole family" I was really looking forward to "Legends of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga'Hoole"...only to be bitterly disappointed by the movie's confusing narrative, borrowed from fairy-tales (mainly H.C. Andersen's) and the Star Wars-saga (the good owls' island looks like Ewok-land, and the air-fights between good and evil use very similar flight patterns). Plus, I couldn't tell the owls apart! Even their voices sounded alike. It probably didn't help to see "Legends" in 2-D either. My son wished we had seen "Tangled" instead, which he considers a girl-movie. I am not familiar with the books the movie is based on.
Les bureaux de Dieu (2008)
Les Bureaux de Dieu - companion piece to Entre les murs
"Entre les murs" (2008, France) wins prizes at Cannes, and is nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar while not much is heard about the very similar movie, "Les Bureaux de Dieu" (2008, also France). Both films use similar techniques - assigning documentary dialogues to non-actors, and the effect is amazing. You don't know if you're watching a documentary or a feature film! Both movies seems like documentaries, since no rosy solutions are provided to the dramatic problems the teachers/social workers have to deal with. Both films are very talky, with no escape outside the confinement of class room/social services office, but the stories and conflicts presented here are so fascinating, you willingly stay with both films to the end.
Shooter (2007)
Government sniper is framed for murder, seeks revenge.
Feel-good, totally enjoyable buddy movie, starring Mark Wahlberg - fresh from Oscar nomination in "The Departed" - in title role, and Michael Peña as his plodding, but reliable FBI-sidekick. Timely government-is-evil scenario has room for laughs and some awesome action bits. Jack Bauer could learn a thing or two from Wahlberg's inventive shooter! Danny Glover, Elias Koteas and Ned Beatty are also good in powerful supporting parts. "The Shooter" is rich in character development, something that usually is sadly missing in action-movies, and this unexpected bonus helps the film achieve status above its genre.
The Painted Veil (2006)
Remake of Garbo Classic
Naomi Watts is every bit as good as Garbo was in the 1934 version, and Ed Norton is outstanding. Great supporting cast as well - Diana Rigg is almost unrecognizable as a Mother Superior, and Liev Schreiber is, as always, terrific as a slimy lowlife. Based on one of Somerset Maugham's best stories, this is a movie that will satisfy anyone looking for an old-fashioned, romantic drama about love lost and love earned. The social quandary of British women after the first World War, which created a generation of unwilling spinsters, is taken as seriously by the filmmakers as the emergence of a new China standing up to its Colonial oppressors. Watts' character's journey from spoiled, selfish Daddy's girl in 1920's fun-loving London to a mature woman in a deprived, cholera-infested third-world country is harrowing.
Jesus Camp (2006)
Religious fundamentalists train children to fight and die for Jesus.
A must-see film! I first thought it was a pro-fundamentalist film, but it's quite the opposite... a scary documentary about people who train kids to die for Jesus. It starts with a heavy-set female Pentecostal children's minister who drags kids to a Jesus Camp, where they undergo some pretty heavy brain-washing. The children look like they're 8-12. They talk about being saved at 5, pledge allegiance to the Bible, and listen to "Christian heavy metal rock'n'roll" (which sounds exactly like regular heavy metal, just with different - religious - wordings). The kids are yelled at by the female Pentecostal children's minister (FPCH) for reading Harry Potter ("You don't make heroes out of warlocks!"). She also makes them cry and confess their sins. On her computer, the FPCH photo-shops a poster with the legend "The Punishment for Sin is Death" in scary, blood-dripping goth lettering. An 8-year old girl says that God is not in every church, "he's not in those dead churches where people sit still. God only comes to churches where people jump up and down, talk in tongues and yell HALLELUJAH!"
When the FPCH has softened up the kids, they meet a creepy smiley-guy who tells them that they will save the world with their faith. And to prove their strength and determination he gives them a big hammer with which they're supposed to crush to smithereens mugs with "Government" printed on them. "This means war, children!" Creepy smiley-guy talks in tongues and keeps bobbing his head the way praying Muslims do. He also hands out little doll-babies, the kind you put on baby shower cakes, and say they represent their aborted brothers and sisters. The kids then talk about the wonderment of being a missionary ("those people die for God and they're not afraid. They're called martyrs and everybody loves them!")
SOmeone drags out a life-size cut-out of George Bush, and he is prayed to and prayed over.
Then the kids are ready to met Ted Haggard, a mega-church minister in charge of 30 million fundamentalists. he talks to president Bush every Monday. He tells one adorable 12-year old baby-preacher, who worries about the contents of his sermons,"just use your cute act until you're 30, then you'll know what to say."
This is the same Haggard who recently had to step down from his ministry when a male prostitute came forward and said he's been servicing Haggard, a married man with five kids, every month for the last three years.
We also get numbers in "Jesus Camp" - 43% of born-again Christians are saved before the age of 13. 75% of home-schooled kids are evangelical Christians.