A Somewhat Gentle Man (2010)

☻ ☻ ☻ A Somewhat Gentle Man (2010). In Norwegian with English subtitles.

Like many before him, Ulrik (Stellan Skarsgård of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [2011]), discovers that going straight isn't easy. Twelve years in the slammer isn't the half of it. Determined to stay out of jail, Ulrik asks little from life, preferring to be gentle and make as few waves as possible. Nevertheless, his landlady and her brother have other plans.

Needless to say, he's not considered a suitable influence on his grandchild-to-be either.

Thanks to Pandora and her box, there's always hope.

Speaking out:

  84%/71% rottentomatoes.com (6 Jan 2012*)

  6.1/10  imdb.com (6 Jan 2012 *)

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Note

* Date of web access.

Margin Call (2011)

☻ ☻ ☻ Margin Call (2011). "Inspired by real events", this is the fictional mechanics of the 2008 so-called global economic meltdown.

I quite enjoyed hating these people who knowingly engineered the disaster then set others up to take the fall.

Victim of the latest round of corporate lay-offs, the last thing Risk Manager Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) does is hand a data key to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto, the evil Sylar from Heroes), a low-level analyst, with the instructions to check things out - carefully. He does, and the ensuing events separate the wheat from the chaff.

Sullivan's superiors, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) one of the Horrible Bosses) and Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), shed crocodile tears in their vague attempts to stay on the right side of ethical behaviour. However, once the big guns arrive in the shape of John Tuld (Jeremy Irons, recently of The Borgias), the writing is on the wall.

Speaking out:

  86%/75% rottentomatoes.com (6 Jan 2012*)

  7.2/10  imdb.com (6 Jan 2012 *)

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Note

* Date of web access.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

☻☻☻The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) is good, but doesn't measure up to the original 2009 Swedish version.

Based on the first book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), an anti-social computer hacker with a photographic memory and a terrible personal history comes to form a bond with Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a disgraced journalist, that will eventually lead to the uncovering of the political scandal that spawned the series.

This first instalment entails a cold-case investigation of the disappearance and presumed murder of Harriet Vanger (Moa Garpendal), niece to retire industrial magnate Henrik (Christopher Plummer, recently viewed in Beginners [2011].


Although I enjoyed the film, I found the lack of consistency in portraying Swedish-language material annoying. Either show the documents in Swedish or in English, but don't flip-flop, depending upon how important it is for the audience to understand the contents.


With Stellan Skarsgård (recently in A Somewhat Gentle Man [2010]) as Harriet's suitably evil cousin, Martin Vanger. Yorick van Wageningen plays the slimy Bjurman, whom I didn't recognize from his drug-addled character in The Way (2010). 


PS The tattoo is also better in the Swedish version.

Speaking out:

  86%/90% rottentomatoes.com (6 Jan 2012*)

  8.2/10  imdb.com (6 Jan 2012 *)

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Note

* Date of web access.

Pina (2011)

☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ Pina (2011). In 3-D. For those who love dance in gorgeous locales.

Wim Wenders' homage to the late choreographer, Pina Bausch and her Tanztheater Wuppertal, is a mashup of dance film and documentary.

With such a mix of languages, there will always be subtitles.

With no hint of the luscious settings to come, the beginning of the film is sparse, and took me a while to become enmeshed. Once I did, however, I was hooked.

Visually stunning.

Speaking out:

  94%/83% rottentomatoes.com (3 Jan 2012*)

  7.6/10  imdb.com (3 Jan 2012 *)

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Note

* Date of web access.

Submarine (2010)

☻ ☻ ☻ Submarine (2010). A teenager's take on life as he sees it.

Oliver's small world is his oyster.

Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is 15. He does his best to put things right, such as fixing his parents' (Noah Taylor and An Education's [2009] Sally Hawkins) breaking marriage and helping his girlfriend Jordana (Yasmin Page) get over her mother's death by cancer, only to learn that life is a work in progress.

Co-written and directed by the IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade. 


Dark, but funny.

Speaking out:

  87%/80% rottentomatoes.com (3 Jan 2012*)

  7.3/10  imdb.com (3 Jan 2012 *)

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Note

* Date of web access.

The Way (2010)

☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ The Way (2010). A widower travels to France to collect the remains of his son and decides to take a holiday.

Killed on his first day in a storm in the Pyrenees, Daniel (Emilio Estevez) will never complete the Camindo de Santiago, the Way of St James. Intrigued the cast of characters lining up to begin the pilgrimage Santiago de Compostela, his father Tom (Martin Sheen) puts his medical practice on hold and sets out to finish the journey his estranged son had barely begun.

Tom (Martin Sheen) goes for a little walk.

Like Chaucer's group before him, Tom hooks up with a bunch of pilgrims and comes away with more than he bargained for. You will too.

With James Nesbitt (TV's Monroe) as Jack, the guy with the writer's block and Yorick van Wageningen an Amsterdamer with a drug habit masquerading as a weight problem.

Speaking out:

  80%/81% rottentomatoes.com (3 Jan 2012*)

  7.3/10  imdb.com (3 Jan 2012 *)

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Note

* Date of web access.