Movies

[Rusty]

58 - Buddy (2003) - 7.5/10 - Kristoffer is a 20 something who lives with his best friends Geir and Stig Inge. They mess around quite a bit and Kristoffer keeps a video diary of their escapades. Their lives change when the video diaries get featured on a popular talk show and they become famous. There's humor, but the film is more about the relationships with some romance as well.


59 - Herman (1990) - 6.5/10 - Herman is an 11 year old boy who loses his hair. Herman is a bit of an odd boy even before the hair falls out. He gets harassed by some of the other boys in his class and there is one girl that he is friends with. I liked the second half of the film more than the first half.


60 - Kitchen Stories (2003) - 5.5/10 - A Swedish efficiency expert in the 1950s travels to Norway as part of a study of how men use their kitchen. The person that he is assigned to wants little to do with him at first. This was mostly dull and not all that interesting.


61 - Reprise (2006) - 6/10 - Two friends who have known each other since they were really young are each aspiring writers. They send off their first manuscripts at the same time with one being published and the other rejected. Success isn't all its cracked up to be, though. I understand the use of the narrator here, but it didn't do much for me. The story is mildly interesting, but the characters were fairly dull and less interesting.


62 - The Man Who Loved Yngve (2008) - 7.5/10 - Jarle is a high school student who plays in a band with his best friends and has a really nice girlfriend. Things are going pretty well until he meets the new guy in town, Yngve, and realizes that he has feelings for him. There is a lot of good music and the acting is decent, too.

Pachyderme (2022) (11 minutes)
Ninety-Five Senses (2022) (13 minutes)
Letter to a Pig (2022) (15 minutes)
Island in Between (2023) (19 minutes)
The ABCs of Book Banning (2023) (27 minutes)
The Barber of Little Rock (2023) (35 minutes)
The Last Repair Shop (2023) (40 minutes)

[Rusty]

63 - Rustin (2023) - 7/10 - This biopic focuses on civil rights activist/organizer Bayard Rustin, mostly with his organizing of the March on Washington in 1963. Rustin was gay and thus had two strikes against him in some parts of society. He was also an effective organizer and was friends with Martin Luther King. This is a good film, though perhaps a bit heavy handed at times.


64 - 20 Days in Mariupol (2023) - 8/10 - Journalists visit Mariupol at the beginning of the recent Russian invasion and film the devastation and destruction during the first 20 days of the Russian attacks on the city.


65 - Golda (2023) - 5/10 - Helen Mirren plays Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and its aftermath. It's not really all that interesting a film.


66 - Vingarne / The WIngs (1916) - 4.5/10 - A sculptor sees a young painter and wants him to pose for his Icarus statue. The sculptor later adopts the painter and makes him his heir. The film is based on a novel which also served as the basis for a later Dreyer film. Unfortunately, I didn't think the acting was very good here.


67 - Thomas Graals bästa film (1917) - 6.5/10 - A screenwriter falls for his secretary, but his advances lead her to run away. He writes the screenplay of a film for her and gets the studio people to look for her. She has a few secrets of her own. I liked the parts with Bessie a lot more than the parts with the screenwriter.

The After (2023) (18 minutes)
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023) (40 minutes)
Knight of Fortune (2022) (25 minutes)
Invincible (2022) (30 minutes)

Snakes and Ladders (1980) (31 minutes)
The Flicker (1966) (28 minutes)

[Rusty]

68 - Roland Hassel (2012) - 5/10 - A retired police detective and his friends are somewhat obsessed with the 1986 murder of the Swedish Prime Minister. They do quite a few re-enactments and Hassel tries to access police documents as part of his effort to solve the case. This film is a continuation of a series of tv movies that started in the 1980s and is not really all that interesting.


69 - Barnförbjudet (1979) - 6.5/10 - A little girl wants a party for her birthday the next day. Her parents seem to fight a lot, though, and she isn't sure that it is going to happen. This is a strange film, but is also pretty entertaining at times, perhaps more for the unusual costumes and settings than the story. The daycare center has some interesting color schemes and furniture. The apartment the family lives in seems kind of spartan, though there certainly are a lot of empty bottles of alcohol to walk around.


70 - Miss Julie (1951) - 7/10 - Julie is the daughter of a Count and was raised to be independent by her mother. Julie falls for her father's manservant, but that relationship is frowned upon by society. The film looks nice and the story and acting aren't bad.


71 - Skammen / Shame (1968) - 8.5/10 - Jan and Eva used to be violinists, but now live on a remote farm on an island as a way of avoiding the ongoing civil war in their country. They don't have a working telephone or radio and live somewhat in isolation, hoping the war will just leave them alone. However, it isn't long before trouble arrives for them from both sides of the conflict.


72 - Jalla! Jalla! (2000) - 8/10 - Roro and Mans are best friends who work for the park service. Roro's family wants him to get married and has arranged for him to meet (and marry) a girl named Yasmin who will be sent back to Lebanon if she doesn't marry. Roro is in love with a girl named Lisa, but is afraid to introduce her to his lively family. Mans has been having his own issues with love for a few weeks. This movie was a lot of fun and I found myself laughing quite a bit.


73 - Lilja 4-ever (2002) - 8/10 - Lilya is a 16 year old Russian girl who is excited about moving to the United States with her mother and her mother's boyfriend. Then her mother abandons her, leaving Lilja behind under the authority of an aunt who doesn't care about her. Thus begins a downward spiral. This is a very good movie, though not a happy one most of the time.


74 - Napoleon (2023) - 6.5/10 - Visually the film is excellent. I think it is lacking narratively, though. It felt like a Cliffs Notes version of Napoleon's story at times. I wasn't that impressed with Phoenix as Napoleon.

[Rusty]

75 - Bobi Wine: The People's President (2022) - 7.5/10 - This documentary covers several years in the life of Bobi Wine, a musician/politician in Uganda who tried to dethrone the President of Uganda who has been in power since 1986. There's plenty of corruption and strongarm tactics employed against Bobi Wine and his supporters.


76 - Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) - 8/10 - The story of the Osage Murders from the 1920s is told here in what I thought was a very good film, but one that was longer than it needed to be. The film started to lag a bit around midway through. It wasn't bad, but just not quite as compelling as the first 90 minutes or so.

[Rusty]

77 - Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) - 7.5/10 - There is plenty of action and I like Hayley Atwell's character here. The story is decent, but not as entertaining as some of the earlier entries in the series. Still, it is a fun movie.


78 - The Creator (2023) - 7/10 - Set 40+ years in the future, the U.S. is at war against AI and are pursuing the last holdouts in Asia. One of their agents is out to find and destroy 'The Creator', an AI that poses a big threat, but this agent is also searching to see if his wife is still alive. The agent ends up escorting a young AI girl while being pursued by both sides. The visuals are great and the acting of the agent and the girl are pretty good, but the story is a little dull and feels kind of like a missed opportunity. I still liked the film, though.


79 - A Respectable Life (1979) - 6/10 - Drugs and alcohol play a large role in this documentary. It's occasionally interesting, but I didn't really care for any of the people in it apart from Kenta.


80 - A Swedish Love Story (1970) - 8/10 - Annika and Pär are young teens who fall in love with each. We get to follow the couple from when they first notice each other at a picnic, through their hesitant steps toward meeting and getting to know one another, and then the time they spend with each other while their parents go on with their generally unhappy lives. The two young actors who play Annika and Pär do a great job and the whole relationship feels very real. This is a very nice film, though I did find it kind of funny how much smoking the teens and their friends did.


81 - And Then We Danced (2019) - 7/10 - This film takes us inside the National Georgian Ensemble where a young man named Merab has hopes of making it big in the world of dance. His life changes when another talented young man shows up and the two are attracted to each other. The first hour is probably the strongest part of the picture. The acting is pretty good overall and the story is decent. I did like the ending as well.

[Rusty]

82 - Children's Island (1980) - 6.5/10 - Reine is an 11 year old boy who doesn't like his mom's boyfriend. He rebels against being sent away to a summer camp by pretending to go, but instead wandering around Stockholm, meeting a variety of people and having a few adventures. The kid is also obsessed with holding his breath while under water. The film was okay, but only occasionally interesting.


83 - Clara Sola (2021) - 7/10 - Clara is a 40 year old woman who lives in a remote area of Costa Rica with her mother and niece. Clara is a bit odd, simple in some respects, but in touch with nature. Clara's spine is curved, but her mother refuses to let Clara have surgery to correct it, even though it is free. Clara is treated in many respects like a child. This is a slow watch, but interesting at times.

[Rusty]

84 - Eat Sleep Die (2012) - 7.5/10 - Rasa is a 20 year old who works at a factory and lives with her father. Her father has a number of ailments and doesn't speak Swedish nearly as well as his daughter so she looks after him as well. When the factory lays off a number of employees, including Rasa, she has a hard time finding a new job. The situation isn't helped by her not having a driver's license. It was pretty realistic and Nermina Lukac did a nice job as Rasa.


85 - Force Majeure (2014) - 6/10 - A family of four is at a ski resort when an incident at the resort's restaurant leads the wife to question how her husband reacted to the situation. The film had some nice scenery when it was outside, but the story (and the repetitive nature of it) didn't do much for me.


86 - Il Capitano (1991) - 5/10 - A man with psychopathic tendencies travels around the country with his girlfriend. He eventually murders a family after stealing a bike. I didn't really care for this much at all.


87 - Man on the Roof (1976) - 8/10 - A police officer is murdered while a patient at a hospital and a detective is assigned to the case. He discovers that the police officer was known for brutality, but that it was covered up. The film takes a turn from police procedural to thriller when a sniper using a high powered rifle starts shooting policemen from the roof of a downtown building. It was pretty entertaining throughout.

[Rusty]

88 - The Adventures of Picasso (1978) - 6.5/10 - This surrealist comedy about the life of Pablo Picasso seemed kind of dumb at first, but I soon started to enjoy it and found a number of the antics amusing. It went on too long, though, and I started losing interest in it, though some of the gags did land.


89 - The Simple-Minded Murderer (1982) - 7/10 - Sven has a hare-lip and doesn't speak very clearly so he is thought to be simple minded and is often treated as such. The film starts with Sven and a woman on the run in a Rolls Royce. After they stop at an old house, the film flashes back to tell the events leading up to this point, starting with the death of Sven's mother and his being sent to work for the wealthy, but cruel master Hoglund.


90 - Sebbe (2010) - 7/10 - Sebbe has a pretty miserable life. He seems to be fairly bright, quiet, and sensitive, but has no friends. He is bullied regularly by a neighbor boy and two others. He only has his mother and she isn't much help. Things keep piling on until Sebbe seeks some way to break the cycle. It is pretty well acted and not a very pleasant story.


91 - Girl with Hyacinths (1950) - 7.5/10 - A young woman named Dagmar commits suicide in her apartment one night. She played the piano, but was kind of a loner and had nobody really close to her. One of her neighbors decides to investigate and try to find out why she committed suicide. He asks people who knew her about what they know of Dagmar. The story rolls out in flashback for the most part as each person tells their tale. It's a pretty good film overall.


92 - Gubben i stugan / The Old Man in the Cottage (1996) - 7.5/10 - The movie starts briefly in a city, but soon retreats to a home deep in the wilderness where an old man goes about his daily chores. It's winter, but time passes and soon spring arrives, then summer, and finally fall, when it is time to get ready for winter again. There is minimal dialogue, most of what there is comes from brief bits from a radio. It's a fairly peaceful portrait of the man's life.

[Rusty]

93 - American Symphony (2023) - 7/10 - Jon Batiste works on composing his American Symphony while also supporting his wife who is undergoing treatment for leukemia. He also has his job as a tv bandleader, the Grammys, and more. The music, people, and story are all interesting, but I thought the pacing and editing were off at times.


94 - Maestro (2023) - 5.5/10 - Bradley Cooper portrays Leonard Bernstein in this biopic which focuses more on the famous composer/conductor's personal life than his professional life. Unfortunately, I found most of the film to be pretty tedious and I was not enamored with Cooper's performance. There were bits here and there that I liked, but mostly it was a chore getting through the film, even though the production values, etc. seemed fine.


95 - Four Daughters (2023) - 7.5/10 - The film tells the story of a Tunisian woman and her four daughters, the oldest two left the family long ago. Actors are used to stand in four the two oldest daughters. The film is kind of chaotic, jumping from one anecdote to another with reenactments to illustrate the family life, including occasional physical abuse as a form of discipline. There is plenty of humor here and the film does come together toward the end, but it did seem kind of messy.


96 - Society of the Snow (2023) - 8/10 - This film about the 1972 Andes flight disaster is pretty well done with good acting and special effects. Surviving a crash high up in the mountains and then having little food while rescuers are unable to find them is pretty daunting. I'm pretty sure that I saw the movie Alive 30 years ago, but didn't remember much from it.


97 - The Teachers' Lounge (2023) - 7/10 - A school in Germany is having problems with a rash of thefts. One idealistic teacher has money taken from her wallet in the Teachers' Lounge while she was with her class and has evidence as to the culprit. Unfortunately, confronting the person leads to numerous problems, including many for herself. The film is well acted and probably deserves a higher grade than I gave it, but I found a number of things somewhat infuriating. This includes how the teacher handles things, including dealing with the main antagonist, the behavior of some of the other staff, the coercion used on students early in the film, and so on. This certainly doesn't look like a school that I would have enjoyed teaching at, even if things did look to be going fairly well in the teacher's class before everything went sour.


98 - En fremmed banker pa / A Stranger Knocks (1959) - 6.5/10 - In 1947, a woman has lived alone in a home near the sea since her husband died during the war. One day, a stranger knocks on her door and says that he has been walking for some time. She gives him some food and lets him rest. This leads to them getting intimate, but there are secrets that may come out and affect their relationship. The first half of the film is kind of dull, but it gets better after that and has a good ending.

[Rusty]

99 - Lars Ole, 5c (1973) - 7/10 - Lars Ole is a grade school boy who uses his mother's credit at the bakery to buy treats for kids in his class to try and fit in. The film is almost documentary style as it follows the kids in class, on the playground, and elsewhere. Some parts are more interesting than others, but it wasn't bad.


100 - Menneskedyret / The Beast Within (1995) - 7.5/10 - This is a pretty strange film. It starts with the baptism of a boy named Frederick and then jumps ahead to when Frederick is in grade school. The father works in a place that butchers cows. The mother works as a masseuse and may have a thing for the boy's teacher. Frederick sees a lot of what goes on around him and when the kids hold a play ritual one holiday where Frederick is to become the human beast, he slowly starts to adopt that role for real. It's weird, but I still liked it.


101 - Weekend (1962) - 3/10 - A group of boorish and annoying people (3 couples and a bachelor) gather together for a weekend getaway near a beach.


102 - Gummi-Tarzan / Rubber Tarzan (1981) - 7.5/10 - Ivan is a young boy who is shy, dyslexic, and not very good at most things. He is bullied at school by a small gang of students and is ridiculed at home by his father. The father is obsessed with Tarzan and wants Ivan to be more like Tarzan. Ivan makes a friend in a crane operator at the harbor who helps Ivan change his outlook. This is a decent kids movie.


103 - Holiday (2018) - 5/10 - Sascha is the young girlfriend of a drug kingpin. They are on holiday in Turkey where they spend time just hanging around or out on the water. There isn't a whole lot going on through much of the picture, though a couple of short scenes have some action. Sascha meets a tourist and they seem to hit it off, but her lifestyle could get in the way. I didn't really enjoy this one all that much.


104 - Honning måne (1978) - 6/10 - Jens meets a woman named Kirsten at the library and asks her out on a date. It isn't too long before they get married and move in together. However, their relationship lacks passion and emotion, perhaps due to how they were raised, and Kirsten falls into a depression which threatens their marriage. The film isn't bad, really, but it is pretty dull through a good portion of it.


105 - Kira's Reason: A Love Story (2001) - 4/10 - A woman returns home after two years in a psychiatric ward. She finds it difficult to integrate back into her family and life, including with her husband and sons. I'm not a fan of the Dogme 95 style and this story didn't do very much for me, either.

[Rusty]

106 - The Ballad of Carl-Henning (1969) - 5.5/10 - Carl-Henning is an immature young idiot who works at a dairy. He always seems to be fooling around and doing one dumb thing after another. The movie isn't really all that great and I didn't care what happened to Carl-Henning during the film.


107 - Beauty and the Beast / Skønheden og udyret (1983) - 6.5/10 - A father and his 16 year old daughter have the house to themselves over Christmas holidays while the mother is in the hospital prior to giving birth. The father starts acting weird and is concerned that his daughter is growing up and is interested in guys. He starts spying on her and checking up on the guys she hangs out with. It's an odd relationship here.


108 - Ang.: Lone (1970) - 7.5/10 - Lone is a 16 year old girl who runs away from a girls home because she can't stand it there. She hitchhikes and steals, making her way first to visit her foster parents and then to keep wandering. She falls in with various groups along the way, eventually irritating them or getting irritated herself and leaving. Lone doesn't seem able to conform or fit in. Amateur actors are used here and they generally do a good job. The soundtrack is also used to good effect at times.


109 - Café Paradis (1950) - 7/10 - The film follows too men who work for a factory. Carlo is a worker and Ester is management. They also each have a drinking problem with Carlo spending many evenings at the local pub with fellow alcoholics while Ester has drinks at business lunches and with dinner and more. Not a film that I'd want to rewatch, but fairly well done. This was co-directed by Bodil Ipsen, one of the two women for which the Bodil award was named.


110 - Fish Out of Water / De frigjorte (1993) - 7/10 - Viggo is a middle aged man who is worried that he is about to be laid off, but has trouble expressing his feelings at home. He likes to argue in favor of trade unions and socialism when his adult son and daughter are over for dinner. His wife puts up with his crap and also likes to research family genealogy. This is a decent comedy and I enjoyed it.


111 - Bænken / The Bench (2000) - 7/10 - Kaj is an alcoholic who used to be a chef, but now lives in a council apartment, works for a public works program for the unemployed, and hangs out with his friends. Kaj is stubborn, gets into arguments easily, and is a mess. One day, he notices that the daughter he hasn't seen in 19 years is moving into a neighboring apartment with her son in order to get away from her abusive husband. Will this be enough to get Kaj to straighten up? The film is kind of up and down, but on the whole I liked it and Jesper Christensen does a nice job as Kaj.

[Rusty]

112 - Silent Heart (2014) - 6/10 - A family gathers together to celebrate Christmas early with the understanding that the elderly mother will be committing suicide after they leave due to her terminal disease getting worse. It's a serious subject, but the film is overly melodramatic and the two daughters are kind of annoying.


113 - Emma's Shadow / Skyggen af Emma (1988) - 7/10 - A spoiled, little rich girl in 1930s Denmark decides to fake her own kidnapping because she feels ignored by her parents. She stumbles into the company of a somewhat simple sewer worker who cares for her after she tells him tall tales of escaping from Russia with people after her. It's fairly entertaining, though probably not all that realistic.


114 - Soldaten og Jenny / Jenny and the Soldier (1947) - 8/10 - Jenny and Robert meet in a bar one night when he comes to her aid. They start to see each other and fall in love, but an incident in Jenny's past comes back to haunt her and threatens their relationship. This was well acted and is a nice film. It won the first Bodil Award for Best Danish Film.


115 - Hvor kragerne vender / Persona non grata (2021) - 5.5/10 - Laura grew up in rural Denmark and had a miserable childhood. She moved away to Copenhagen as soon as she could, changed her name, and never returned. Laura is now Irina and is a pretentious author who finally returns home to attend her brother's wedding only to discover that he is marrying the girl who bullied her when she was growing up. She can't let it go and preaches on it throughout the film. The film feels pretty cliched and while it is somewhat watchable, it isn't really very good.

[Rusty]

116 - People Meet and Sweet Music Fills the Heart (1967) - 3/10 - This is a sex comedy about a man who follows a dancer to Brazil. It jumps in and out of role play and fantasies with different characters ending up suddenly in bed. The plot jumps around a lot and is fairly nonsensical. Visually it's fine, but I didn't care for the film.


117 - Midt i en jazztid (1969) - 6.5/10 - A young man in the 1930s seeks romance and hangs out with friends, going on a couple of trips with them. He has some luck, both good and bad. It was okay.


118 - Let's Get Lost (1997) - 6/10 - Julie lives in an apartment and is worried that her boyfriend is having an affair. She is having a hard time reaching him. Meanwhile, she is letting a friend stay on her couch. The friend and two of his buddies watch soccer on tv, make a mess in Julie's apartment, and try to figure out how to raise the money to go to a game in person. It was okay, but not really all that interesting. The choice to film in black and white didn't add anything to the film.


119 - Drabet / Manslaughter (2005) - 6/10 - Carsten is a college professor who is having an affair with his former student, Pil. When Pil is involved with the hit and run death of a police officer, Carsten throws away his family and career to support her. This was okay, but not as good as I was expecting. Carsten's reasoning is definitely open to question and he is way more obsessed that his mistress.


120 - Europa (1991) - 7.5/10 - Leopold is an American who travels to Germany after WWII to work with his uncle as a train conductor. He becomes involved with the daughter of the railway owner. The movie is very stylish and I enjoyed it, though I could have wished for just a bit more engagement with the story itself.


121 - A Hijacking / Kapringen (2012) - 8/10 - A cargo ship in the Indian Ocean is hijacked by Somali pirates. The pirates demand a large ransom from the company and the company responds with a lowball offer. The negotiations continue over a long period of time with the captives suffering some mental and emotional abuse as things drag on. It's a good drama with the Danish cook being one of the focal point as the pirates use him as a middleman at times to try and get what they want.

[Rusty]

122 - The Idiots / Idioterne (1998) - 3/10 - A group of people try to embrace their inner idiot by going out in public and acting as if they are mentally disabled. I didn't like it at all, though I can see why some might.


123 - R (2010) - 6.5/10 - The film starts with Rune being taken to the prison where he is going to be serving his sentence. He is targeted almost immediately by the gang in charge of his wing and made to do their bidding until he comes up with a scheme to take more control of the situation. The film was okay, but nothing special.


124 - Terribly Happy (2008) - 7.5/10 - Robert is a police officer who has been transferred from Copenhagen to a small and rural town as punishment for an unspecified transgression. He finds the inhabitants of that town to be somewhat insular. There is one violent man who stands out from the crowd, though, and Robert soon finds himself involved through that man's wife. I've seen this described as a black comedy, but I didn't find it particularly funny. It is a decent drama which is a bit off kilter.


125 - The Element of Crime (1984) - 5/10 - This was Lars von Trier's first (non-student) feature film and there were things that I did like about it, including the general mood and visuals. I didn't care for the story or for the film as a whole, though.


126 - American Fiction (2023) - 8.5/10 - A black professor/writer hasn't sold very many books because they are too literary. He gets mad and writes a trashy book about the 'black experience' under a pseudonym and is shocked at the book's success. I don't think they quite stuck the landing, but this was a very funny movie with some nice performances from Jeffrey Wright in the lead role and from the supporting cast as well.

[Rusty]

127 - May December (2023) - 6/10 - Natalie Portman stars as an actress who inserts herself into the lives of a couple (Julianne Moore and Charlie Melton) who have been married for 23 years in a relationship that started when the wife was 36 and the husband was 13. The actress stirs things up quite a bit just as the high school graduation of the couple's twins is approaching. The performances are okay, but I didn't really enjoy the film all that much.


128 - The Color Purple (2023) - 7/10 - I liked the songs and generally thought the performances were good. The costumes, scenery, etc. all seemed pretty good as well. However, the songs weren't really memorable and seemed to take away from the strength and impact of the story. I did like the film, but it seemed rather light.