When I grew up, it never occurred to me that Sweden could be the setting for stories of fantasy, magic or horror. Or rather: it could, but only in fairy tales and the children books by Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson.

Swedish fantasy movies aiming for an older audience were unthinkable, for various reasons. One was that special effects originating in Scandinavia usually looked awkward, probably because it’s a small market where movies are made with small budgets and there’s never enough money to make anything fancy. Another reason was that my homeland just didn’t feel like a believable setting for fantastic stories. It’s a country built by engineers rather than by storytellers and magicians. Stories about dysfunctional families and existential angst seemed to come more natural to us than expeditions into the realm of imagination.

However all of this changed when Let the Right One In came out. It made me realize that vampires can melt into a suburb of Stockholm perfectly well. Sweden is situated far up in the north, where few people live, sunlight is scarce and the forest is right next to us. We’re soaked in melancholy, an environment where creatures from the other side can thrive.

Based on a book series
The movie The Circle is based on a book with the same name, which is the first part of a hugely popular trilogy in the genre young adult fantasy. In the centre of the story is a group of teenage girls in a small town who discover that they are witches and that they need to save the world from Something Evil, The girls are all very different from each other, and when they find out that they need to cooperate, they do so reluctantly. Each one of them faces challenges in their ordinary life, such as abuse at home or bullying at school, problems that not necessarily can be solved by the means of magic.

Currently this movie is only available in Sweden, but it’s been screened at the Berlin film festival, so chances are that it will be sold to at least a few more countries. I hope it will, if nothing else because it will increase the chances that they’ll make a follow-up.

I liked the way the movie balanced between realism and fantasy. The actors are ok, or even fine, the visuals better than we’re used to in this part of the world, and the sound and score was brilliant. There is currently a huge international demand for Scandinavian crime, but why not extend it to Nordic Fantasy? We already have Let the Right One in and Troll Hunter, if you include The Circle, it looks like a trend.

The remake question
Succesful non-US franchises sometimes become remakes. Should Hollywood make one out of this?

Well, it depends. I don’t think they need to make a similar movie where everything is the same apart from that it takes place on a different continent and everybody speaks English (that’s what subtitles are for!)

Like many other fantasy novels, the source material is extensive . It contains no less than six main characters, and we get to see the events from the point of view of each one of them. Even after squeezing, leaving out two important and popular side characters, it’s a two and a half hour long movie, which is a tad long. And I can’t help thinking it would have been even better as a TV series. It certainly was written lke one.

At this point we don’t know if there will be any international launch or if part two and there in the series will be turned into movies. It’s all in the hand of the box office sales. So far, so good. The film went to second spot on the chart in the opening weekend, right after Fifty Shades of Grey. Let’s hope it will stay up there for a while.

The Circle (Cirkeln, Levan Akin, SWE 2015) My rating: 4/5

Some other Swedish movie bloggers also wrote about The Circle:

Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
Fiffis Filmtajm
Jojjenito
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den

Fifty Shades of Grey. That would be a good description of my hair these days. I try to trick myself into accepting it, calling it “natural highlights”. But to be honest it makes me look way older than my age.

If it hadn’t already had this color, I swear the movie with the same title would have changed it that way. It has that effect on you. It makes you feel old and tired.

The movie with the same title had about the same effect on me. It made me feel old and tired.

I ask myself why I’m writing about it in the first place. It’s a rubbish, rubbish movie. I’ve got a whole queue of great movies I’ve seen that I want to share my love for. So why not just leave this one to a well deserved oblivion? To tell you the truth, I’ve made an agreement with my Swedish blogging friends to make a post about it since we watched it together. And I try to stick to my promises.

Besides, as we talked about it afterwards, it turned out that we disagreed about it pretty vehemently. And the fact that we discussed, I guess is an argument for writing about it. There are a few things to be said after all. I’ll keep it brief and make it a list of five issues I had with it:

1. The idea to launch it a Valentine’s Day seems bizarre. It’s not a romantic movie. At all. It’s a movie about a relationship that starts on a not-overly-hot level and then quickly descends into misery. Not melancholic, bittersweet, love illness suffering misery. We just watch two people trying being together despite the fact that they’re not compatible sexually. Who wants to watch that on February 14? (Apparently many, since the theatre was sold out.)
2. The writing just isn’t any good. I haven’t read the source material, but I can imagine that it’s silly, but also a little charming and forgivable when you read it as a piece of fanfiction. However, turned into a movie it made me roll my eyes and I wasn’t the only one. There was a lot of laughing during the movie, and all for the completely wrong reasons.
3. It’s ridiculously old fashioned in terms of gender politics. The rich man, the virgin girl, the constant objectification of the female body. It’s not even trying to pretend to be something else. This is not a feminist movie, even if the writer and director happen to be women. (A female crew is definitely not a guarantee for a female perspective).
4. I suppose I’m expected to swoon over Mr Grey. That’s the very idea of this series, isn’t it? Well, I’m not. He’s as hot as a dressing doll after spending a week in a freezer.
5. My final – and biggest – issue with this film is the stance it takes on BDSM- I’m not into that kind of sex myself, but from all I’ve heard about it, it appears to me that it has a prejudiced view on it. It suggests that only people who are damaged through traumas in their childhood can be into it, and even hits that you can be taken out of those terrible desires if you discover “true” love. I’ve understood that mutual agreements, a good communication and “safe words” are essential in BDSM. Those concepts are introduced in the film, but soon forgotten. In the end, the one with the kinks turns out to be a monster. The audience is supposed to sympathise with the one who prefers vanilla sex. I guess they wanted to stick within the accepted boundaries, not upsetting anyone.

If you want to see a movie about a less-than-ordinary romantic relationship, I urge you to watch Secretary. I’m probably not the first one to point it out, but I’ll do it anyway, since it deserves it. It’s funny (not involuntarily so), it’s thought provoking and – above all – it’s romantic and endearing. A way, way, way better choice if you want a kinky edge to your Valentine movie.

Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor Johnson, US 2015) My rating: 1,5/5

The views on this movie among the bloggers in the network Filmspanarna varied quite a bit. Here’s what the others made of it:

The Nerd Bird
Jojjenito
Den perfekta filmen (podcast)
Fripps filmrevyer
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
Fiffis filmtajm
 

“… and so they lived happily together for the rest of their lives.”

This was the way fairy tales used to end when I grew up, way before Disney realized that girls actually dream of other things than marriage.

Nowadays I find most love stories with happy endings quite unbearable. Is there anything more boring than to see a couple wrapped up in their own little bubble of happiness? They obviously don’t care for anything but themselves. Why should I care about them?

The movie bloggers in Sweden run a blogathon every month and the theme of February was “love”. (I suspect that the upcoming Valentines’s Day might have something to do with this).

And the more I thought about the topic, the more I realized how dark I want my love movies to be.

You have to push me hard to come up with a love movie with a happy loving couple that I truly love. I suppose there are a few in Love Actually, but my favourite one in that movie is the miserable guy who communicates his unfulfilled love with cards. Then there’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is a bit in-between and not very clear about the prospects of the future. One of my favourite love couples in a movie last year was Only Lovers Left Alive. If you think about it, their relationship is pretty great. But their overall life situation isn’t.

So let’s have a look at my current favourite movie couples:

10. Perfect Sense
Susan and Michael fall in love. Unfortunately the world is coming to its end meanwhile. It’s just a shame that I don’t know of anyone else apart from me who has seen this film.

9. Roman Holiday
Joe and Princess Ann fail badly in overcoming the class divide.

8. Never Let Me Go
As if a dystopian society wasn’t enough, poor Kathy and Tommy are separated from each other because of jealousy.

7. Bright Star
Fanny Brawne and John Keats, seperated by a wall of financial issues and disease. The further away they are from each other, the more I root for them.

6. Brief Encounter
There isn’t much physical contact between Laura and Dr Alec during their brief encounters at a railway station café. But this means that every little touch will mean something. Oh, that touch on the shoulder – immensely more erotic than any intercourse possibly could be. The impossible love is the sweetest one.

5. Brokeback Mountain
Ennis and Jack. Do I really need to say anything? Isn’t this the most heart breaking love movie ever?

4. The Bridges of Madison County
Robert and Fransesca – competing with Brokeback mountain for the title “Most tear provoking love movie ever). It’s a shame that it appears so rarely on people’s top lists.

3. Lost in Translation
I’m not entirely sure of the nature of the relationship between Charlotte and Bob, what to make of the food holding scene and exactly what words that were uttered in their final meeting. Regardless what, they’re my favourite platonic love couple evs.

2. The Remains of the Day
Miss Kenton and Mr Stevens. Every time I watch this movie I can’t help hoping that you’ll step out of your comfort zones, cross the barriers and confess your love to each other. Miracles DO happen, right?

1. Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight
Oh, Jessie. Oh, Celine. Unlike most couples on my top list, you aren’t doomed. Your relationship is worth saving, though it will require some effort. Please, please give it a try!

Summary:
Separation, yearning, death and disaster, misery and melancholy. There you are, my favourite ingredients for love movies. And all movie kisses are overrated, unless they’re performed in a sense of danger and desperation.

Here are the takes on love in movies by my fellow bloggers (in Swedish):

Fiffis filmtajm
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den?
Jojjenito
The Nerd Bird
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord

Long time no see!

What have I been up to? I don’t know. A huge workload. A need for rest I guess. Lots of movie watching, but no strong desire to write about them. Until now.

It’s about time that I get this place running. I feel the itch. It’s in the air. The force is with me. It’s time to leave the solitude and once again contemplate what I see publicly.

It seems appropriate that the thing that pulled me out from my temporary isolation from movie blogging was the Austrian film The Wall. The idea to watch it was given to me by Lena, who runs the movie blog Moving Landscapes. We’re both members of a Swedish network of movie bloggers, which regularly runs blogathons on various themes. This month we agreed on giving each other challenges, where we were supposed to dictate a movie to another randomly chosen blogger. It should preferably be something that went beyond what the movie blogger normally would watch. An opportunity to expand our horizons a bit.

Since I’m fairly broad in my taste for movies and love almost all sorts of movies, from the block buster to the low budget artsy film festival reel, it’s not all that easy to find a good challenge. I think this pick was a good effort though. While I watch many different types of movies they have one thing in common: most of them are in English. If you check out my blog there are very, very few movies in German. There’s a couple of Haneke’s movies, there’s Fritz Lang’s M and Wings of Desire but that’s about it. It’s not that I leave out movies from Germany and Austria on purpose, out of prejudices. I just don’t run across them a lot I guess. It’s very rare that they get cinematic release in Sweden.

In the case of The Wall, it’s certainly not something that you stumble upon by accident. It hasn’t got any distribution in Sweden whatsoever, digital or DVD. You have to buy an import version, with English subtitles, which enhanced the feeling that I was watching something that was beyond the ordinary, a movie which probably very few Swedes have seen or even heard of.

So what kind of movie is this? Well, I guess you could say that it’s some kind of mix between a “one man’s (woman’s in this case) survival” drama and a “something weird has happened to the world and we don’t know what it is” fantasy movie. The entire film takes place around a cottage in the Austrian Alps. A woman wakes up one morning and finds herself cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible, impenetrable wall. She has to find a way to survive on her own, with a couple of animals as her only company. The film shows how she deals with the situation. The woman is basically the only person in the movie, apart from a couple of very brief appearances and almost every line she utters is in the form of a voiceover, excerpts from her diary that he reads aloud.

It’s a somewhat sombre, slow burning film, which contains less action and intensity than you might expect from a movie about someone struggling for their life. The woman, excellently portrayed by Martina Gedeck, adjusts to her new life situation surprisingly well, without having a mental breakdown or cursing the world. She’s miserable, but still content at some level. In the review at The Guardian, they called it a “Walden pond with added wall”, which I think is a spot on way to describe it. We never get any explanation why the wall is there, if it’s a natural phenomenon, a glitch in the time-space continuum, an alien invasion or some kind of magic at work. This opens up for all sorts of interpretations of what actually is going on. Is it really about a woman who is trapped physically in the mountains? Or is it in fact an effort to depicture a state of mental illness, like depression?

It’s not a movie I would recommend to everyone I know. It’s probably too odd for most people. I kind of liked it though. It seemed appropriate. But unlike the heroine, I’m now going to reach out to the other side of my wall.

Hey out there! It’s good to be back. I’ve missed you!

The Wall (Die Wand, Julian Pölser, Austria 2012) My rating: 4/5

This post is a part of a blogathon in the Swedish network Filmspanarna.

Links to the other bloggers who picked up a challenge (all in Swedish):

Absurd cinema
Fiffis filmtajm
Filmitch
Filmmedia
Fripps filmrevyer
Flmr
Joel Burman
Jojjenito
The Nerd Bird
Har du inte sett den (blog)
Har du inte sett den (podcast)
Movies-Noir
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord

Nightcrawlers. Believe it or not, but once upon a time I was one of them. Kind of.

I could never hear what they said on the police radio. In the middle of all the crackles and noise you could hear something that must be a human voice. But their words were usually indistinguishable, and if you by chance heard what they said, they spoke in codes that didn’t tell me anything.

My lack of understanding wasn’t really a problem though. This was in the late 80s and early 90s, when local newspapers still could afford to hire professional photographers. I was a junior reporter, fresh from the university, clueless and disposable. No one expected anything of me. Like everyone else I relied on the photographers.

Nothing on the police radio would escape their magic ears. And whenever they caught something newsworthy, they would change the plans of the day instantly. Whatever we were up to, we would instantly throw ourselves into the car in order to get to the place where all the action was as soon as possible.

To be honest it always freaked me out. The sooner we got to the place of the accident (usually it was a car accident), the higher was the risk that I actually would see something. Someone injured, someone stuck in a car wreck, a dead or close-to-dead person. And it just didn’t feel right. But who was I to argue? I was a junior. This was what I was supposed to do. So I put myself into robot mode and stopped thinking about it.

The memories from my short career as a journalist came back as I watched Nightcrawler, which is a movie about the people who make a living on taking pictures from scenes of crimes and accidents. Of course there’s a huge difference between my experiences and what we see in this film. For instance we never published images of the victims. We had innumerable photos of car wrecks, but if there was one where you could see and identify someone, we refrained from publishing it, or masked and blurred it so you couldn’t see the person in question. We didn’t trespass any barriers put up by the police. Compared to the photographers in Nightcrawler, we were saints.

And yet – there is a connection: the nagging thought: “why are we doing this?” and the following answer: “because there’s an audience for it.” The only reason to publish images of wrecked cars and homicide victims is that people want to see them. It’s a shared responsibility.

A favourite
Enough of rambling about my lost youth, I should move on to Nightcrawler, because it’s certainly worth talking about, as one of my favourite movies of this year. Besides I’ve probably mislead you a little with all this talk about ethics in journalism. While it’s undeniably about journalists, I would say that the theme isn’t journalism as much as it’s capitalism. It’s got a knife-sharp edge, directed towards self-help and management literature.

Most of it takes part at night in Los Angeles, where we follow photographers who drive like maniacs all over the city in order to come first to the spot to get the best shots to sell to TV channels.

In the centre of the film is Lou, a former thief, who accidentally ends up in this profession. It’s clear from the start that he’s a psychopath, a person you’d want to stay as far away from as possible in real life. But as unlikeable as he was, I still found myself engaging with him.

I kept wondering how much further he’d be ready to go (the answer always being: “further”), I was constantly sitting on my edge, and when the movie finished, I was equally exhausted and exhilarated, but also a little troubled. All those terrible empty business phrases that Lou used – didn’t they sound awfully familiar, as something that I would say at my job without thinking further about it?

Before finishing this report I also need to mention Jake Gyllenhaal who is absolutely convincing playing Lou. I could have imagined an actor like Matthew McConaughey in this role, but Jake Gyllenhaal – sociopath? That was something I never saw coming. I would be surprised if he wasn’t one of the candidates when it’s time to hand out the Academy Awards.

Dark, funny, engaging and exciting, with a brilliant acting performance, that already feels like a classic. There are many good reasons to watch Nightcrawler.

Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, US 2014) My rating: 4,5/5

A bunch of Swedish blogging friend of mine also watched Nightcrawler:

Fripps filmrevyer
The Nerd Bird
Har du inte sett den (Carl )
Movies-NoirJojjenito
Fiffis filmtajm

What is a good conspiracy theory? Does it need to be believable, trustworthy and reasonable? Do you expect it to be founded on at least some kind of evidence?

No, not at all if you ask me. The good conspiracy theories are the ones with sticky ideas. They’re odd enough to tickle your imagination and spark a conversation. They’re crazy enough to provoke a laugh of surprise. Conspiracy theories have nothing to do with journalism or science. They’re all about entertainment and that’s why they work so well in movies.

We’ve seen quite a few of the more popular theories brought to the screen. The “truth” about the assassination of JFK, the moon landing that “never took place”, secret societies in control of the world and a crashed spaceship covered up by US authorities. We know that territory well by now; we’ve walked the grounds so many times that I’m afraid that the entertainment value is diminishing. We’re ready for some new, fresh and juicy conspiracies to be amazed by, something we haven’t heard before.

This is one of the things that makes documentary Room 237 such an enjoyable watch. While it admittedly touches on the moon landing, it also brings new ideas to the table. Unlike in most conspiracies, it isn’t the government that is accused of manipulation. The one who is claimed to have a hidden agenda is a film director, which of course makes it even more fun to watch for a film fan like me.

Halloween screening
I had the opportunity to watch Room 237 at a special Halloween event arranged by the local film club where I’m a member. We made it a double where we first showed the classic horror movie The Shining and then went on showing this documentary which examines the said movie inch by inch, second by second, backward and forward and from all sorts of angels.

Since I knew what the following film was about, I paid more attention than usual to the details in The Shining. I was constantly checking out the background, looking for patterns, something that could have a second meaning, but alas, unless someone else pointed it out to me, I couldn’t see anything hidden at all. All I saw was a good horror movie, with a great atmosphere, some beautiful, haunting shots and a Jack Nicholson at his best.

I would clearly make a terrible conspiracy watcher. I could never join the ranks of the people we meet in Room 237: fans who have dedicated their lives to analyze The Shining down on atom level. They don’t only make their own interpretations of the movie; they’re also convinced that they are revealing the “true” intentions of the director Stanley Kubrick. Since Kubrick died in 1999, he hasn’t much saying in this. But to be honest, even if he was alive, I don’t think that those “truth” seekers would pay all that much attention to his view on this. It’s a conspiracy after all, so he’d probably be lying anyway.

Oddly enough we never get to see the tinfoil hat thinkers in person; we only hear their voices. Their testimonies are instead illustrated by numerous clips from The Shining as well as from other movies.

One of those voices tells us that The Shining in fact is about the oppression of the original inhabitants of North America.  Another one is equally sure that it’s about The Holocaust. One of the “proofs” of this is that Jack Nicholson’s character uses a German typewriter.  And then there’s the everpresent idea about the assumed falsified moon landing. Kubrick is supposed to have recorded film shots that were presented as taken on the Moon, while they were in fact recorded in Hollywood. His confession of this conspiracy is to be found in The Shining, in the form of hidden messages. According to the tinfoil hat wearer.

A new level of geekdom
I don’t find it that strange that someone falls in love with a movie so deeply that he or she decides to see it a lot of times. We hear about it all the time. I have a friend who probably has seen The Third Man about 150 times. This is remarkable, but I’ve never heard a word of conspiracy thinking or other weirdness coming from him. He just thinks it’s a good movie.

It’s also understandable that someone can become intrigued by a certain aspect of a film, like the people who make timeline spreadsheets of Primer or the woman who is so intrigued by the architecture of the hotel that she draws a map to understand exactly what turns the boy makes on his bicycle tour. However, the fans we meet in Room 237 take geekdom to a new level.

They can spend hours and hours staring at one shot of a cloud that appears in the beginning of the movie. The cloud looks absolutely ordinary to me, but they’re able to find a face in it, the same way as some people claim that they see the face of Jesus on toast slices, in drying paint and whatnot. It’s just that in this case Jesus is replaced by the face of Stanley Kubrick.

The dedicated fans also keep track of the storage room that appears in the movie. In the background you can see a few cans, and if suddenly a can is missing or there’s an extra can, they read something Very Important into it.

Back in the days of vinyl records, there were rumors about certain artists that had secret satanic messages on their records that you’d only hear if you played them backwards. Well, there’s kind of an equivalence of this in Room 237, when one in the tinfoil panel plays The Shining in the normal way as well as backwards, at the same time, with transparent layers. The truth is supposed to appear somewhere in the blurred mess of faces on top of each other.

A mirror of film criticism
Some of the findings presented in the film are more believable than others. I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere that Kubrick was interested in the technique of subliminal messages, so it seems possible that he might have played with it in one way or another. But most of the theories aren’t particularly convincing to be honest. However I don’t think that’s the point of Room 237. I’ve seen a few negative reviews from people who are dismissing the ideas as silly. But the purpose was never to turn everyone into supporters of the conspiracy theories. The idea is to entertain us as well as to hold up a mirror.

Of course you can’t help smiling at some of the ideas we’re presented here, but the laughs aren’t only aimed at “those crazy people”. It’s also aimed towards people like you and me. The fans of The Shining aren’t the only ones who read meanings into movies, to second-guess the intentions of the director. Most of us who write about movies, either we’re professional film critics, academics or just amateur bloggers, are also guilty of this, although perhaps in a milder form. And that’s ok!

An author or a film maker may have the economical rights to a certain piece of work, but the interpretation rights belong to the audience. Correct or not, who are we to tell? As long as they’re fun, interesting and thought provoking, I’m good.

Room 237 (Rodney Asher, US 2012) My rating: 4/5

This post is a part of a blogathon iniciated by the movie blog network Filmspanarna. The theme was “conspiracy theories”. Here are links to my fellow bloggers:

In English:

Fredrik on film

In Swedish:

Absurd cinema
Fiffis filmtajm
Filmitch
Filmr
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den (pod)
Jojjenito
Mackans film
The Nerd Bird
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord

Are you familiar with the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher?

He’s the one with the “impossible”, mathematically inspired figures – the stairs where people seemingly walk up and down at the same time, the hands that draw each other and Mobius bands with ands that march and march towards eternity.

My parents loved his art, so I had plenty of access to it throughout my childhood, and I became a fan too.

I came to think of this as I watched the time-travel themed movie Predestination. I think there’s a correlation between how you react to Escher’s pictures and how much enjoyment you get from this film.

If a quick glance is all you need before you’re done with Escher’s images, it may not be for you. You probably think that a short film would be sufficient to share the cool idea and the long format is overkill.

On the other hand, if you like I can’t get enough of “impossible” figures, if you see the beauty in a thoroughly put-together time paradox or a never-ending stair, you’re likely to enjoy it quite a bit. I did for sure.

As always with this kind of movie you make everyone a disservice if you share too much of the plot, so I won’t. What you need to know is that there’s time travel, Ethan Hawke (always good), Sarah Snook (never heard of her but she steals the show) and very nice art direction, despite what I assume is a fairly low budget.

As the movie finished, my brain kept processing the twists and turns of the timelines for a little while longer, just as it did after watching movies such as Timecrimes and Looper. I had things to brood over, but it was doable. It doesn’t require you to either watch it sixteen times or use a cheat diagram as a watching companion to “get” it (looking at you, Primer). It’s balanced, with the right amount of cleverness to make you feel smart when you understand it.

If you’re a science fiction fan you might have come across the short story that the movie is based on: All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein. I read this story for the first time after watching the film, and as soon as I had finished it I read it two more times. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but as I told you, I can’t take my eyes off Esher’s pictures.

The film adaptation follows the source material fairly closely, with a couple of exceptions. The view on women has been updated. In Heinlein’s story women’s role in space travel is limited to providing sex and company to male astronauts, basically as some kind of luxury prostitutes. In the movie they’re more capable than that. There’s also an additional storyline about an agent who is chasing a criminal in order to prevent a terrible thing from happening at one point in history. As far as I’m concerned, this addition doesn’t improve on the original idea; it mostly makes the movie a little bit longer and the puzzle a little messier to solve.

However, I think what matters most is the tone and atmosphere, which is spot on. The film noir style expresses the sense of loneliness and melancholy from the original short story very well. I don’t think Heinlein would have disapproved.

Predestination (Michael & Peter Spierig, AUS 2014) My rating: 4/5

Some fellow Swedish movie bloggers have seen this film too. Here’s what they made of it:

Fiffis filmtajm
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den (blog)
Har du inte sett den (pod)
Jojjenito
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
The Nerd Bird

Humidity’s rising, barometer’s gettin’ low
According to all sources the street’s the place to go
Tonight for the first time just about half past ten
For the first time in history it’s gonna start raining men

Can you hear it? Of course you can. It’s one of the stickiest songs I know of. And I curse the moment when the idea to write this post popped into my head. Once again it runs on repeat in my head and I can’t find the button to make it stop.

I’m obviously not the only one who finds it catchy. When look closer at it, it has had a lot of appearances in movies and television over the years. And no wonder: the song text as well as the bouncing, energetic beat works well with scenes that give conclusion and release of hidden emotions. What you can’t formulate in sentences, you can express in a dance.

First I’ll give an honorable mentioning to some of the other appearances that are listed on Wikipedia. I’ve got the feeling this list isn’t complete, so feel free to share in a comment if you have additions to make.

Movies:
Easy Money (1983)
Eraser (1996)
Scary Movie (2000)
Khabi Khusni Kabhie Gham (2001)
Stuck on You (2003)
Vampires Suck (2010)

TV:
The British sitcom Miranda: in the episode “The New Me” in series 2, the title character Miranda dances to the Weather Girl’s version of the song in the streets, later the song was heard in the episode’s credits.

The Simpsons: It’s Raining Men is Homer Simpson’s favorite song. In the episode “Fear of Flying, Moe pulls the record out of the jukebox and tosses it onto the street when he banishes Homer from his bar. It appears again in the episode “What to Expect When Bart’s Expecting” when Fat Tony’s gay horse plays it on a stereo.

And now over to the top list. This is my personal ranking of the It’s Raining Men appearances I’ve seen. It’s based on how well it fits into the context, what emotional impact it has and entertainment value.

5. Friends – from the episode “The one with Chandler’s dad” (2001)

Chandler and Monica go to see Chandler’s drag queen father playing at a club in Las Vegas. The scene is quite emotional and It’s raining men comes in towards the end as a comic relief around the 4 minute mark in this clip. It’s a shame it’s so short, I would have loved to see the whole song, with Chandler.

 It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men Amen
I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna let myself get absolutely soaking wet
It’s raining men, Hallelujah it’s raining men, every specimen
Tall blond dark and lean rough and tough and strong and mean

4. Magic Mike (2012)

It’s not one of the best dance numbers in Magic Mike and the version of the song is somewhat slow and unenergetic. But Channing Tatum’s hip movements – what can you say? Amazing!

God bless mother nature
She’s a single woman too
She took for the Heaven
And she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky
And each and every woman could find her perfect guy

3. After the Wedding (2006)

This scene contains a lot more than just some random dancing at a party, which you know if you’ve seen the film. It conveys love and sorrow, the past and the present and the future, all brought together in one last bittersweet dance.

It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen
It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen
It’s raining, it’s raining, oh it’s stormy

I feel stormy weather moving in
About to begin about to begin
With the thunder don’t you loose your head
Rip off the roof and stay in bed

2. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

I don’t remember a lot of this movie, apart from the fight scene between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. Extra points for moving the fight into the street: “Street’s the place to go.” (Song starts around 1.50 in this clip)

God bless mother nature
She’s a single woman too
She took for the Heaven
And she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky
So that each and every woman could find her perfect guy
Oh it’s raining men, yeah

1. Queer as Folk, UK version season 1, ep 8 (1999)

Sadly they only made ten episodes of this brilliant British TV series about a few gay men in Manchester. It’s Raining Men appeared in the final scene of the finale of the first season. And just how great doesn’t it fit in? Stuart and Vince have been struggling quite a bit with their on-off relationship throughout the series. Then finally they reunite, dancing ecstatically to It’s Raining Men, after sorting things out in a beautiful conversation across the dance floor where words are replaced by looks, smiles and nods.

It only lasts a brief minute (you can fast forward to 9:17 at the clip I’ve included), but watching it again puts just a big smile on my face as it did when I watched the series on Swedish television so many years ago. This is the unquestionable winner.

Humidity’s rising, barometer’s gettin’ low
According to all sources the street’s the place to go
Tonight for the first time just about half past ten
For the first time in history it’s gonna start raining men

It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen
It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen
It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen

The original
We’ve come to the end of this It’s Raining Men odyssey in movies and television. In case you didn’t know it, It’s Raining Men was originally performed by The Weather Girls I’ll finish this post with a link to their lovely music video. Enjoy it one last time. And then try to get this song out of your head again. From my own experience it might take you a while.

This post is a part of a blogathon from the Swedish network Filmspanarna. The theme was “Rain”. Here are links to the other posts :

In English

Fredrik on Film

In Swedish

Fiffis Filmtajm
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den
Jojjenito
Mackans film
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord

“When everyone remains seated during the text credits, you know it was a good movie”, the projectionist remarked after the screening of The Fisher King at our local film society.

Every Thursday night we show two movies after each other in our theatre, which is one hundred years old and has been restored to the original look. The old interior gives the room a lovely, timeless atmosphere, suitable for an association of cinephiles, but to be honest the seats are rather uncomfortable, as I suppose seats usually were historically. They’re not anything like the soft, cushioned armchairs we’re usually spoilt with. This means that you really don’t want to sit down any longer than you need to. It takes a very special movie for you to linger in the seat, contemplating what you just have seen, enjoying the “long tail” of the film, to use the vocabulary of wine testing.

The Fisher King was one of those films. If we hadn’t had the next movie starting within minutes and if the seats had been a tiny more comfortable, we could have stayed long after it finished. The air was dense with emotions and thoughts following what we just had seen: a drama, a comedy, a fantasy, a romance, a tragedy all at once in the crazy mix of genres that constitutes The Fisher King.

I hadn’t watched The Fisher King since it came out in the early 90s and I remembered very little of it. I remembered a frightening red knight. I remembered a homeless Robin Williams poking in a garbage bin in a dark city. And I remembered that I loved it deeply, so much that I had it among my favourite movies. Considering this you’d imagine I’d re-watch it once in a while over the years, but for some reason I hadn’t. I think it’s a movie that isn’t high in the public consciousness; it’s hidden in the shadows.

The reason why we showed it this particular night was of course the passing away of Robin Williams. It was our tribute to him, and we couldn’t really have picked a better one. In this movie he really gets to show his whole range.

I’m actually not going to say so much about the plot. If you haven’t seen The Fisher King, I recommend you not to read up on it before you see it (which you obviously should). It’s a well told story with some twists and turns and I think not knowing anything about what directions it goes into may add a little bit more to the enjoyment. However I want to give you a warning: if you’re very sensitive about violence, there is particularly one scene which is horrifying and shocking. It’s normal for a horror movie or even an action movie these days, but you’re probably not prepared for it in a film that stars a funny Robin Williams. The contrast is brutal, but it’s also a part of what makes this film so special that you remain in your seat even if your butt aches. It doesn’t shy away.

From now on I won’t let it pass over 20 years between my viewings of The Fisher King. There are so many reasons to see it: to enjoy the performance of Robin Williams (and for that sake of Jeff Bridges, who is fantastic as the main character), to break the wall between reality and imagination and what can come out of it and to enjoy NYC from its best perspective, naked on a lawn in Central Park under a starry sky.

The Fisher King (Terry Gilliam, US 1991) My rating: 5/5

I’ve never ever recorded a movie in a theatre. Of course I haven’t. It wouldn’t only be illegal, but also against my personal moral principles. However I can’t help wishing I had recorded 20, 000 Days on Earth. I wouldn’t have used the camera (even though there certainly are some visual highpoints in it). But I would have liked to record the sound so I could get back to everything that Nick Cave says in this movie about him, about art, about creativity and about life itself. (I guess I could have written some of it down in a notebook while watching it, but I don’t take notes while watching films. I want to enjoy them to their fullest, immersing myself into them completely, which is undoable if you’re writing at the same time).

There are so many clever, inspiring, truthful, beautiful lines that I wish I could share with all of you. It’s the kind of quotes that you can cut out from a magazine and put on your refrigerator by help of magnets. I don’t remember the exact wording; I just remember how well they were written. It’s a bummer I can’t sprinkle this post with at least a few of them. It would have helped me to make you understand what a beautiful, interesting and heart breaking film it is. (And in case you wonder, I have checked IMDb for quotes, but there’s none there yet)

So how shall I describe this film? It’s not a pure documentary, but not a feature film in its normal sense either. It’s hanging there somewhere in between. But the theme of the movie is the artist Nick Cave, the version that Nick Cave has chosen to use for this movie, since he’s participated in the writing. Yes, I said writing. While there are a lot of “interviews”, they’re all kind of staged. It’s not as if there’s been an invisible person hiding in the shadows with a secret camera that makes everything feel “authentic”. It’s far more arranged. And yet – I think in a way it feels more honest and naked than many documentaries with shaky hand cameras are. Perhaps we don’t get close to the private person Nick Cave. But we get close to the very heart of his creativity. We can its beats; we can breathe the oxygen that fuels it.

I don’t know how familiar you are with Nick Cave. Probably you’ve heard more of his music than you think. IMDb credits him for 69 soundtracks in music and television. Sometimes he’s just the writer, in other cases he’s the singer as well, such as in Lawless from a few years ago, which became a way better movie than it otherwise would have been thanks to his soundtrack. If you’ve seen Wings of Desire you might also remember him. The band that performed in the movie was Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds.

To be honest, Nick Cave’s music probably isn’t for everyone. But even if it’s not for you, don’t let it deter you from seeing it. It’s one of the better films I’ve seen about music or, more correctly, about creativity. Anyone who creates things, be it music, writing, painting or something physical such as a dance, can probably relate to this film and feel inspired by watching it.

20, 000 Days on Earth (Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard, UK 2014) My rating: 4,5/5

Sadly neither of the expectations is met. This sounds weird, I know. You wouldn’t expect a movie about the chase of kidnappers and serial killers who are on par with the craziest ones in Dexter, to be boring. But it was, to me. Utterly, utterly boring.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it is with it that kept me from engaging with it. One aspect is the stakes, or rather the lack of it. It’s not the private detective’s wife who has been abducted. It’s the wife of some unsympathetic drug dealer that you don’t know a lot about or care for. And what is problematic is that you know even less about his wife. She’s just a piece of meat, as they put it in a great discussion on the latest episode of /Filmcast. Not a person.  It’s obvious already in the pretexts, as the body of the victim is slowly and sensually is exposed, as if she was portrayed in a lifestyle magazine. It reminds me a bit of the Dexter signature, but in Dexter it is Dexter’s morning ritual that is on display. Not the suffering of the victims of a serial killer.

It doesn’t help the movie either that Liam Neeson’s detective is such an uninteresting character. He never raises above the stereotype of a lonely, drinking, miserable former cop who turned into a private investigator after something went terribly wrong. Every now and then we see him attend AA meetings, but what they’re supposed to represent I’m not sure of. Perhaps it’s just an excuse for inserting quotes from the twelve steps programme here and there, for no apparent reason. It feels as if they should mean something, correspond to the killings or to how the investigation is proceeding. But I failed to see the connection. It was all empty, like so much else in this movie.

I can’t see any reason why you’d choose to watch this movie when there are so many other movies and TV series in the same area available which are likely to engage, thrill, scare, grip and mystify you way better. Avoid it.

A Walk Among the Tombstones (Scott Frank, US 2014) My rating: 2.5/5

But what if solidarity became a real thing, not an issue for a vague collective, but something that is required by you, personally? Imagine that someone asked you to refrain from a raise of salary so that someone else who needs it as well, or better, would get it instead. How would you react?

This is the theme of Two Days, One Night, which is the latest movie by the Dardenne brothers. Marion Cotillard plays a young woman, Sandra, who recently has gone through a depression, which has kept her away from work. Now she’s back, but during her absence the employer has found out that they could do without her as long as her colleagues work some overtime. The workers have been given a choice: Either Sandra is fired and everyone else will get a bonus salary. Or Sandra is allowed to keep her job and they won’t get anything extra. The choice is theirs. As the movie begins, there’s already been a voting, where the outcome was that Sandra would be fired. Because of some issue with the voting, it’s been decided that she’ll be given a second chance. A new voting will take place. And we get to follow Sandra as she tries to persuade her colleagues to vote differently this time.

Surprisingly exciting
This is a concept that unavoidably makes you think of 12 Angry Men, where also a man with only words as his tool tried to talk an entire group over to change their unanimous decision. What makes it different is that it doesn’t take place in a closed room where the group is assembled. Since it takes place during a weekend, Sandra has to look them up one by one in their homes, confronting them individually. Another difference is that Sandra isn’t particularly eloquent in the way she presents her case. She just asks everyone pretty upfront to let her stay and refrain from the bonus and leaves the choice to them.

Whether Sandra succeeds or not is in the spoiler territory, so we won’t go there. But I can say as much that it was surprisingly exciting to follow her in her mission. You could easily imagine that it would be a little bit repetitive to watch someone putting the same question over and over again to different people. But somehow it never gets dull; you’re always curious about what the response of the next person will be.

In this way it reminds of the last Dardenne movie I watched, The Kid with a Bike. At a quick glance, both of the movies are small and quiet. But at the same time they’re full of big human issues, in this case about your obligations as a human being towards yourself and your closest family and towards others. How much do we need? At which point is it time to share? When is not sharing an option? It raises all those questions, but refrains from providing all the answers and refrains from getting preachy, examining the choices of the individual from a morale standpoint rather than a political. It’s only 95 minutes long, but still manages to provide a lot of food for thought.

Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2014) My rating : 4/5

My more disciplined fellow bloggers write about the films they watch right away after they’ve seen them. Some even take notes during the screenings, just so they won’t forget any detail. I have a more laidback, not to say lazy attitude towards movie blogging: I write when time and enthusiasm are available in equal measures. And here’s no particular order in my writing. I write about whatever comes to my mind. Sometimes it’s the movie I watched yesterday. Sometimes I watched it months ago.

The Guardians of the Galaxy is one of those movies that have been scrambling around in my to-write-about-list for far too long. And now I barely remember a thing about it. And actually this fact per se, probably says something about what impact it had on me. Which is none.

There are a few things about it that I remember:

• Explosions
  As I remember it there were lots of them. Too many if you ask me. I love science fiction and I love movies that take place in space, but only if they come with cool, mind bending ideas. If it’s all about explosions, it’s not much of science fiction to speak of. Not in my world.
• “I am Groot”
  There was a character who had the form of a tree, a midge version of an ent, who kept delivering this one line over and over and over again. Thinking about it, it was probably the only line he had. Somehow it stuck with me and it gave me some giggles. I assume the actor did a good work in the timing and delivery. If you only have one line you can put your energy into performing it well, I guess.Hooked on a Feeling. Oh, that song brings so much nostalgia for someone who grew up in Sweden in the 70s. Björn Skifs made it to the top of the billboard back then, and now he’s apparently done it again. He’s not my favourite artist by any means, but he seems to be a genuinely nice guy and hearing the song again makes me smile.
• The struggle to stay awake
  I know there are a lot of fans of this movie out there; basically I’m the only one who didn’t fall in love with it. It must sound ridiculous to all of you, but I need to be honest with you: I was bored and disengaged to the extent that I was close to falling asleep throughout the movie. I had to slap myself constantly not to. That’s something I usually only have to do with slow, bloodless art house movies. It shouldn’t happen watching this kind of film. But it did. Not a good sign.

Since my memories of it are so scarce and vague I’ll refrain from giving it a proper grade. But it’s not an overly wild guess to say that it wasn’t for me. If it had been, I should have remembered something more about it shouldn’t I?

To all of you out there who loved it – and I know there are many of you, basically everyone except me – congratulations on a fun, exhilarating movie going experience!

I was bored. [takes cover]

Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) My rating: ?

The main movie theatre chain in Sweden gives it the following description on their website:

“Thomas wakes up locked into a gigantic labyrinth. He’s not alone and the only chance to get out alive is to collaborate and put together the clues they find, which appear to lead to an organization called “W.C.K.D”. The movie is directed by Wes Ball and based on the bestselling book by James Dashner.”

I had no idea what I was in for as I watched it, but I totally expected to get a full story. Imagine my surprise when it suddenly ended, without any conclusion or closure. We were almost as confused as we’d been throughout the movie about the purpose of the labyrinth and the greater picture of this world and its inhabitants, although at a slightly higher level.

We’re used to see this kind of cliff hangers in season finales of TV series. But when you go to see a movie you’ve got different expectations. You expect a movie to have a clear end, and if it doesn’t, you’ll know that on beforehand. The first Spiderman movie works perfectly well on its own. The first Hobbit movie doesn’t, but it was so clearly announced before that this was one book that would be made into three movies, that I don’t think that it can have escaped a single person in the audience. If you went to see it, you knew what you were up for: a three-part series. And yet – the first Hobbit movie is more of a finished story than The Maze Runner is.

Have they done this on purpose? Are they deliberately deceiving the audience, luring them into watching what they think is a movie, to then leave them hanging a third way into the story, so that they have to see the sequel to make any sense at all out of the first movie?

I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that it’s more about sloppiness than calculation. They assumed that everyone already knew that this was yet another three-part adaptation of a young adult book series. But they were wrong. Everyone didn’t know.

The Maze Runner on its own is about as finished as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and they should be more transparent about it. A correct title of this film should be: “The Maze Runner: Part 1”.

Cliff hangers as such are acceptable in movies as in TV series. But we should be able to make an informed choice before throwing ourselves into an entire series of films.

Refreshingly free from love
After this little rant it’s time to say something about the movie. The Maze Runner operates in the same field as The Hunger Games and Divergent: young adult fiction about teenagers fighting to survive in a competitive environment in a dystopian world. I would describe it as a crossover between The Hunger Games and Cube, with a bit of a Lord of the Flies vibe.

Funny enough, considering how much I’ve complained about the lack of resolution, the movie is better the less we know about what’s going on. The initial mystery intrigued me; the hints about the explanation towards the end of the film not quite so.

What I also liked about the film is the look of it. It didn’t come as a surprise when I learned that the director has a solid background in the art direction department.

The characters are a little too many and a little too thin for me to keep them apart from each other. For some reason (not explained) there are only boys who are brought to the labyrinth. With one exception. Following the pattern from the previous franchises in this genre, I would have expected some kind of love drama to appear around this one girl. I was so happy when this didn’t happen. This film is refreshingly free from love triangles. (Apparently it deviates from the book in this aspect, so I’m not too hopeful that future installations in the series will remain love free).

All in all it’s a nice popcorn movie for all of us who think that The Hunger Games and Divergent are entertaining rather than terrible. A little bit on the thin side, a little bit forgettable, but thrilling enough to keep my attention throughout the film and perfectly ok within its genre.

The Maze Runner (Wes Ball, US 2014) My rating: 3,5/5

My sister. I need to see my sister!”

The thought keeps coming back at me as I watch The Skeleton Twins. I laugh a lot, I cry even more and I keep thinking about my sister who lives 700 km away, the one I only see a couple of times a year, the one that is too busy making a career and raising three children to have time for me.

Sister, do you hear me? For a moment I think she does before I remember that we’re both rational people who don’t believe in such things.

Sister, let’s run away, let’s get into a fight, let’s get drunk, let’s make up, let’s talk all night about our dirtiest secrets and let’s hug up together in the darkness, as if we were the last people on Earth, waiting for the stars to devour us!

I guess most people love their siblings. But when you come from a family that has been dysfunctional in generations, that has weirdness tattooed into its DNA, there’s another dimension to it. There is another person out there who you don’t need to explain the unexplainable to because they already know. No matter how many years that will pass, no matter what different orbits your life choices will toss you into, you’ve got that rubber band between you that can bring you together again, if needed from opposite sides of the universe.

Onion peeling
The Skeleton Twins is a movie about a pair of twins who meet again after not seeing each other for many years. They’re both in a rather miserable shape, but it takes some time before they start acknowledging it in front of each other and to themselves. It’s a case of onion peeling, where layer after layer is exposed. The first one is pretty hard to get through and then we pull them off one after each other, tears falling as we go, until we reach the soft, sweet core, where all pretence and all lies are gone.

This makes this movie sound unbearably sad, so I need to say right away that it’s not. It is definitely deliciously melancholic and touching, but it’s also very funny. As I mentioned before I did laugh a lot, considering how grumpy I am about comedy in movies, that’s quite an achievement.

It reminds me a little of my reaction to another movie a few years ago, Beginners, which I fell in love with right away. It plays in the same genre: movies that make you feel good and bad at the same time, with a strong indie vibe. I know there are people out there who can’t stand that kind of films people who hate quirkiness with the same ferocity as others hate Michael Bay movies. If you know that you’re one of those people, this is probably not for you. But if you’re a fan of the genre, watch it, cry, laugh and enjoy this delicious fusion of sweetness and sorrow. And then go home and give your sister or brother a call straight away.

The Skeleton Twins (Craig Johnson, US 2014) My rating: 5/5

On the screen I can see how the already ugly and scary villain goes through metamorphoses due to an allergic reaction to cheese. His face is twisting and turning into a formless mass that would make Frankenstein look cute in comparison. And yet this is a mild care compared to what’s to come further on. There will be torture. There will be gruesome deaths in front of our eyes. There will be gigantic robotic death machines controlled by evil creatures.

I look around me in the cinema and every child I see looks strangely composed. No one is having a breakdown, no one is sobbing. They even seem to have forgotten about their popcorn boxes. The only sound that doesn’t come from the film is when someone leans a bit in the long direction and falls off the plastic stool they had put on top of the ordinary seat in order to see better. There’s no hysterical reaction whatsoever as far as I can see. And I think to myself: “Children these days! They’ve got guts!”

Stop motion technique
The Boxtrolls is ghastly, grotesque and gorgeously looking movie made with classical stop motion animations, made in a style that makes you think of Tim Burton or perhaps Terry Gilliam.

The story goes like this: Cheesebridge is governed by a cheese loving aristocracy. In the sewers dwells a population of a certain kind of trolls, which like to dress in empty boxes. The trolls are oppressed in the worst possible ways and there’s even an exterminator who is trying to evaporate them altogether. Among the trolls lives a human boy who is trying to save the box trolls by the help of a girl who is the daughter of one of the cheese aristocrats.

As you here it’s not terribly complicated, which is a good thing, especially for a movie aimed at children. Trying to explain the plot whispering in the ear of your clueless child is not a pleasure, neither for the child, nor for everyone around you. In this case there’s no need for explanations. We “get it”.

As opposed to many other movies for young audiences, it doesn’t have “merchandise sales” written all over it. It’s possible that some kind of toys exist, but it-s clearly not the sole purpose for making the movie. It’s not a vehicle.

Some brief final thoughts
Thumbs up: for the uninhibited use of imagination and the craftsmanship and love that has gone into the making of it. You can tell. It’s just beautiful.

Thumbs down: for watching it in Swedish with dubbed voices rather than in the original English. We did it for scheduling reasons, but I hit myself when I saw what actor voices we missed, including Ben Kingsley, Elle Fanning, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. Gah! Don’t do my mistake. Watch the original.

And whatever you do, don’t miss: the delicious little extra scene that comes after the text credits. It’s worth waiting for and made me love this film even a little more.

The Boxtrolls (Graham Annable & Anthony Stacchi, UK 2014) My rating: 4/5

I wasn’t the only one in the audience who watched it as an adult. I was in company with the other bloggers in the Swedish film blogging network Filmspanarna. Here’s what my fellow bloggers made of it (all in Swedish):

Fiffis filmtajm
Har du inte sett den? (blog)
Har du inte sett den? (pod)
Jojjenito
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord

I enjoyed Midnight in Paris, though it was a little forgettable. Next up was To Rome with Love, of which I now remember nothing at this point. There was some opera singer taking a shower on a stage, right? And a tourist pic of a police directing the heavy traffic in central Rome. The rest is blank, sorry. 2013 was a good Allen year again, offering Blue Jasmine with a sensational Cate Blanchett as the leading actress. It ended up in my top 20 of the year.

There’s nothing sensational about this year’s Magic in the Moonlight. It’s another go at the fake wizard/medium/hypnotizer theme we’ve seen in other Allen movies. A pretty woman, a somewhat annoying/distract/egocentric/ male stand-in for Allen. Some fun twists and turns, some charming dialogue with some cleaver lines that give food for thought. It’s set in another beautiful setting in the tourist district in Europe that has the sponsorship this time around. It’s also set back in time, to relief us from the burden of watching ugly cell phones, boring googling sessions or reckless usage of social media. This is classic Allen territory, without any surprises.

Or maybe there was one, I hadn’t expected that I’d feel as cold as I do for the love couple (this is a romantic comedy in case it has escaped someone). Ever since the Pride and Prejudice TV series I’ve been a dedicated fan of Colin Firth. Nothing he makes can be wrong. Nothing. Equally I think Emma Stone is a charming actor, not only a pretty face, but someone who conveys personality and interesting inner landscapes. But as much as I love those actors, I don’t want to see them as a love couple again – ever. It’s not a match. The age gap is huge (and so typical, when will we ever see a movie where the woman is 25 years older than the man?), but it’s not just that. There’s something about the chemistry. I don’t believe in their love and I want him to get back together with his original girlfriend.

If you’re not all that familiar with Allen but would like to be, there are many other of his movies that I’d rather point you to.

If you are a fan like me, well then you’ll see it regardless. It’s an Allen after all. And I’m already longing for next year’s movie. Following the every-second-pattern, we have a great one incoming.

Magic in the Moonlight (Woody Allen, US 2014) My rating: 3,5/5

Within a short period of time I’ve seen two movies where usage of social media is an essential element of the plot.

In Frank Twitter and YouTube was used to build an audience for a rock band. In Chef social media basically rule the world. That’s where careers are built and ruined and if there’s anything you can take away from this otherwise lacklustre film, it’s the crash course in how to handle Twitter and Vine.

Two examples aren’t enough to call something a trend, but I suspect they’re not the only ones we’re going to see this year. And I must say that I’m a little conflicted about it.I can see what they’re trying to do there: be relevant to a young, contemporary audience. There are hundreds of thousands active Twitter accounts in Sweden alone, which is a very small country. 54 percent of the population is on Facebook. Of course social media matter and why wouldn’t they matter to the characters appearing in your movies, provided they’re not hobbits or elves living in a fairy tale land where messages are sent by magical orbs or butterflies.

The traps
But for how understandable it is that you include them, I think it also is a little risky.There are traps to fall in if you don’t beware.

One is that a middle-aged screenwriter may have an idea about how different social media work, but isn’t necessarily an expert user. It’s so easy to get some detail wrong. I’m not necessarily thinking of the actual mechanic of it, such as how long a tweet is or how people respond to or forward certain messages. That’s fairly easy to make a quality check on. What can be a bit trickier is to make it believable. Is it likely that a such and such tweet will catch fire in the way it does in the movie? Is the tone right? Does it spread at a likely pace? Or is it obvious that it’s sprung out of someone’s idea about social media rather than coming from their own experience? If you get it wrong, you’ll rub all those young expert users the wrong way with your clumsy attempts to be modern.

Another risk is that you’re tempted to make too much of a deal out of the social media. If it starts to dominate the movie rather than being a part of people’s everyday life, it gives the movie a silly, unbalanced feel. And it also signals: “hey, I’m a middle-aged person who just discovered social media, isn’t this a remarkable thing?” Very uncool.

A strong timestamp
But the biggest problem, of course, is that it sets such a strong timestamp on the movie. The development in this territory goes at a crazy speed and within a year or two so much can happen that the movie you had spiced up with that magic social media ingredient now all of a sudden looks hopelessly outdated. If telephones an computer design age quickly, it’s nothing compared to what social media does. And the question is: does it age with charm, the way that old cars or space pyjama suits from the 60s do? I can’t know for sure yet, but I suspect not.

My suspicion is that the filmmakers are perfectly aware of this danger, but it’s not such a big deal. They’re not aiming for making a new Brief Ecounter, which can be enjoyed by generation after generation of film lovers. They have their box office race running over a few weekends, and under that brief period their chosen social media isn’t likely to go anywhere.

I’m curious to see what we’ll think about today’s movies with social media in fifteen years. Will they have aged the way that You’ve Got Mail has? And if so, will they likewise have charm enough to make up for it?

photo credit: kelly.sikkema via photopin cc

Something happened today as we put the ashes of my grandfather into the ground, almost a year after his funeral.

This time there were fewer of us present, just my aunt, me and a caretaker from the crematorium, dressed in a cheap and badly fitting costume.

The caretaker insisted on carrying the gravestone that we had brought from our car trunk to the spot in the memorial place where he would lie. As he bent over to put it right, we heard a loud sound of fabric being ripped apart. His hands went behind his back and he looked terribly embarrassed when he apologizing confirmed what we suspected. His trousers had ceased to be trousers. They were now two separate legs, hold together only on the front. We laughed a little before we reassured him it was a perfectly fine or even appropriate incident, since my grandfather surely would have found it hilarious. But we apologized to him that helping out with our stone had cost him a pair of trousers. “Oh, it’s actually something that I’ve hoped would happen”, said the caretaker, smiling brightly at us. “I’ve asked for a new costume for years, but they haven’t wanted to give one to me. Now they have to!”

We didn’t sing, we didn’t read poems, we didn’t perform a ritual. We just poured the ash into the hole that was dug and that was it, the aftermath to a 96 year long life that finally had ended. Somehow the trouser incident helped to clear the air. Whatever complications that lingered in our family history, whatever shadows my grandfather had cast over us, it was all gone by now, swept away by the everydayness of the situation. Here we were: three people, a jar of grey dust and a pair of newly diseased trousers in a small pocket of stillness before life would proceed to its normal routines.

Sorry, I know this is a winded way to introduce a movie. I’m already at 1 500 characters and I haven’t mentioned its name! We’re not even close to a theatre; I’m leaving you hanging in a memorial park out in nowhere. But it is related, I assure you. Stay calm!

What I’m doing here is to try to put us in the right mood to talk about Still Life, which is a lovely little movie about death, loneliness and what it means to be human. Who knows what else you’ve been reading before getting to this post? Maybe your thoughts are still lingering at a rant you read about the latest blockbuster. A brief stop at the scene at the graveyard can serve as a bridge over to facts of life that we rarely think about for too long: that we die alone and that we only leave every so few traces behind us. In a hundred years, it’s unlikely that there will be anyone remembering, talking or caring at all about this person who once existed.

The story
It’s probably time to say something about the story. The main character (perfectly portrayed by Eddie Marsan) is a man who works for the council in a small, godforsaken office. His job is to arrange funerals for people who have died alone. In every case he tries to track possible relatives or friends who might want to attend. This is a time-consuming job and one day the council has had enough and fires him to make those lonely funerals into a quicker, cheaper and more rational process. He’s allowed to finish his last case though. And this is what the film is about: how he tracks the footsteps of a man who died alone, talking to people who knew him. Apparently he feels a connection to the diseased. He’s a loner too. He doesn’t seem to have any family or friends. It could be him.I don’t want to say any more about where the story goes. But I say as much as that for how slow and quiet this movie is (some of the scenes remind indeed of still life paintings), it never gets dull. It’s thoughtful, beautiful, bittersweet, sad and believe it or not – actually quite funny

The end
I’m pretty certain there are people out there who will have objections against how the movie ends. Let’s put it this way: it does bring things in a direction that at least I hadn’t considered, and in a style that will reveal how much of a cynic you are. I went for it. I can see why others won’t and that’s ok.

You know, in the end we’ll all be dust some day and no one will remember us or our little online disputes about movies. In that we’re all equals, each one locked into their lifeline, born alone, dying alone. All we can do is to cherish whatever little moment in life we encounter for what it is. Even when it’s such a small thing as to share the joy over a new hole in a pair of trousers with a caretaker.

Still Life (Uberto Pasolini, UK/IT 2013) My rating: 5/5

We’re looking for signs: “did actor X know that he or she was going to die shortly? Is there Death written all over his/her face?” “Should the film team have known, could anyone have done something to prevent the cause of death?”

We’re looking for messages, something to give us closure. A final line, a last look into the camera, something to wrap up their lives on Earth that ended too early.

When you watch A Most Wanted Man it’s hard to not come across those thoughts, since it’s got Philip Seymour Hoffman in the leading role. Even the title of the movie points right at it: a most wanted man he is indeed, there isn’t anyone who wouldn’t want him to be alive with many, many more movies to come.

So how about the signs, are there any? There are different opinions in the party as we’re watching the film. Some of us think he looks worn out, with difficulties to move and breath, in a terrible shape, foreboding what would come. I disagree, claiming that it really is the role he’s playing and that it doesn’t tell anything about his private person. But we can agree on that the presence of PSH is the biggest reason to watch the movie. His emotional reaction when a certain thing happens – so convincing. Every character he played, he made believable, alive, and this is no exception.

I’m trying to think of this movie without PSH. Would it be as good as it is? I’m doubtful. It does feel a little bleak. Cigarettes are smoked, whiskey is drunk, bands of trust are formed and broken. You don’t quite know who to trust and distrust. It’s a little like watching a version of Homeland after draining it on blood and sweat. Excitement lies in if someone is going to sign or not sign a paper. It’s based on a John le Carré novel and this is exactly how I imagine that his books are. I haven’t read a word by him; I’ve only seen my father reading them. It’s the kind of books that fathers read, isn’t it? You can sense the relationship to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. However unlike the case of that film, I can actually follow the plot this time. It makes me feel if not smart, at least not stupid.

And here I should say something about Hamburg. The reason why I’m posting this right now is that we’re running a theme among Swedish movie bloggers where we’re all supposed to write about movies that take place in German cities. How convenient wasn’t it that I just had watched a movie that took place in Hamburg!

I frantically try to remember how Hamburg was shown in the movie. Was it pretty like Woody Allen’s tourist destination sponsored movies from Europe? Hardly. I remember it as a place painted in various shades of grey, just like the Hamburg I visited when I was 16 and hitchhiked to Hamburg, whilst reassuring my parents that I was on “bicycle holiday” with my friends in Denmark (oh dear, oh dear.)

There is Hamburg. There are conspiracies. But most of all there’s PSH. Not enough PSH. There never can be.

Oh, and the movie is just fine.

A Most Wanted Man (Anton Corbijn, 2014) My rating: 4/5

Here are the posts by my fellow Swedish movie bloggers (in Swedish):

Fiffis filmtajm
Fripps filmrevyer
Jojjenito
Movies-Noir
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord