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fredrik-josefsson
Reviews
Hell's Kitchen (2005)
Could have been interesting
I sometimes find myself watching the show. I am HOPING that the episode will be an interesting one. But every time it is the same thing. This stupefied overly dramatic setup. They get comments from the chefs who all have smart comments such as "I seriously thought they would FIGHT!", "it was SO sick!", "he was CRAZY!". Various soap drama. All with this high tense music that is supposed to make us all excited and anxious.
But actually, little real action happens. They have edited the show so heavily to make it appear that something exciting happens but it is just the same old petty jealous gossip and backstabbing. The producers thought that they take Gordon Ramsey, call the program Hell's Kitchen, and make something completely WILD. But it's the same setup as we have in Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmare. They edit in every time Gordon gets angry about something and throw in lots of comments from the chefs who often have below-average intelligence.
In any normal job, Gordon's behavior would have been deemed unacceptable and he'd get fired. But OK, it's a show. Will you learn anything from it? Yes I supposed you might get a glimpse of how it can be to work as a chef and of how many ways there are to fail. That's it.
The show would have been much better if they had let their fingers off the editing board a bit and just show what really goes on in the kitchen.
Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006)
Could almost have been made in Hollywood
That is what I thought when watching this film. I have never watched a Bollywood film before but judging on the shorts snippets I have seen of such films, in TV-programs etc, this must be a far way from the ordinary Bollywood film. Actually I am convinced that a similar plot could easy become a successful Hollywood film. All the elements are there. There is the unhappy crook who falls in love, and to get his girl he has to pretend he is something he is not. There is the crook's comical and not to bright side-kick who supports him through thick and thin. There is the pretty and intelligent girl. And there is the ancient wisdom, here manifested in the holy Mahatma.
And then there is the typical life-changing plot. The crook tries to become a better man and at the same time succeeds in making the world a better place.
Yes I really liked it. There were a couple of musical numbers that I thought were well made and made sense. And the acting, writing and directing were all professional. Several times I laughed out loud at the comical points.
Suxxess (2002)
Decent, but lacking in some areas
Suxxess is about the initially friendly and sociable company Omduville (This is Swedish for "Ifyouwant(e)"). The company gets a new boss in the shape of Robert Mattson (played by Göran Ragnerstam). Robert turns out to be virtually emotionless and soon makes many drastic changes that he thinks will improve efficiency, including firing several loyal members of the workforce. The employees become more and more enraged, leading up to a climax, where suddenly the tables are turned. But once that happens, it turns out that being a boss is based on more than personality: it is a position that takes its man.
There are some good things about this film. The actors are, in general, skilled. The boss, played by Göran Ragnerstam, plays very well and, as the award section for this film reveals, it rendered him a "Guldbagge", the most important film award in Sweden. Lennart Jähkel (who played James) was nominated for the same award, and it was well deserved too. The main character also acted very well, although he wasn't nominated for any award.
The scenery was superb. It is interesting to note how the interior changed from the beginning of the film when it was warm lightening, soft furniture, colorful paintings, etc; compared to the end of the film when the lightening was sterile, the furniture were modernistic, metallic and hardly any colors. Related to this, the photography was also very good.
Now for some flaws. First of all the script has difficulties. The whole meaning of this film is probably to show that power corrupts, but it could also be a story of guilt, because there are several deaths in the film, each one leading to a change of events. It could also be viewed from a class-perspective: the ruling class is destined to suppress the workers. This confusion is not good for us viewers. Furthermore, all main characters are selfish in their essence. It would have been good to have one character with whom the audience could relate to.
Apart from the drawbacks, it is a nice and simple little film. Without any extravagance, it tells its story in an efficient and gripping way.
The Pledge (2001)
Slow-paced drama, not my cup of tea
This film was labeled a "thriller" when it ran on a television channel recently. Seeing Jack Nicholson in a thriller, I looked forward to a good time. But it was not so.
The plot evolves around a pledge that Jack Nicholson (Jerry Black) made to the mother of a murdered child: he would find and convict the child's murderer. The police catches some guy who is (all too obviously for us) not guilty, and Nicholson (Jerry Black) decides to locate the real killer. It starts out well with some action, but then the drama starts.... drama, drama... And I wondered: when will something happen, so this film can finally end? I identified three major flaws of this film that were prominent all the way through: (1) Flat characters (2) Uninspired directing (3) Slow-paced script.
There are some good stuff too (I did give it five stars): (1) Nice nature photo -- actually it's a really good camera work overall (2) Good acting, as one could expect of the cast (3) there is a plot.
Let me explain why the characters are flat. Nicholson is supposed to retire from his job at the police. He settles himself down in some remote place and buys a gas station and then he goes fishing every day. This continues for 1,5 years. During that time, there are scattered and very short scenes of occasional intimacy, love and caring. We never learn who Nicholson is or what he has done in his life.
I want to conclude with mentioning how I had waited for the expected ending. I won't tell what kind of ending I expected, but I think most intelligent people could figure out how such a story is expected to end. Then -- a rip-off. The film doesn't really end! For a film called "The Pledge", one should expect a conclusion related to the pledge made by Nicholson, but what happened? I don't know.
Meet the Parents (2000)
Why i didn't like this film
I generally like these type of "silly" comedies. But I didn't like this one.
What makes this movie different from other movies of this genre, is that our main character Greg Focker isn't the typical stupid guy with a good heart that we see in comedies of this sort. Instead, Greg is a real jerk, who takes every chance he can to do something nasty. He displays himself as a coward and a liar -- a rather spine-less person. Incidentally, he is revealed to be Jewish, and perhaps one could say that he fits a stereotypical Jewish movie depiction: whining and full of self-pity.
However, there were actually some surprisingly comical moments in the movie that made me laugh out loud. But the plot was just too stupid. Greg doesn't miss a single opportunity to blow something. In fact, he must have done damage for around 1,000,000 $. But will the father, Jack Byrnes, forgive him at the end? That was what I asked myself during the film: "how will they stitch this all together". I won't reveal the end, but I did find it uplifting compared to the previous hour.
I feel a little sorry for Robert De Niro who had to act in such a silly film. However, he does his part very convincingly, of course.
Total Recall (1990)
Good Sci-fi
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in this film about living the future. It is a clever film which has two great things: good plot and a good sets.
The main plot focuses on Douglas Quaid (or Hauser) as a secret agent on Mars, trying to save the planet. Arnold plays his part very well, as do the other actors.
The sets, both on future Earth and on Mars are also surprisingly believable. As a Sci-Fi fan, I'd say the film is surprisingly good. It requires some thinking too.
A minus is the dialogue, which is often corny. The wisdoms it gives are of the laughable type, in the cliché action-movie style.
En karl i köket (1954)
Light hearted about the rights of the oppressed.
I will write this for any English speaking person.
The movie is a light-hearted comedy called "En karl i köket". This means "A Man in the Kitchen". The plot is about the man Olle Larsson, who has previously worked as a butler, and now wants to buy a hotel. For this he needed 50.000 Swedish Kronor, an amount he has borrowed from an old rich man. But the rich man died, and the note of debt was taken over by an anonymous person who now wants the loan back in eight days. Thereby Olle will not be able to buy the hotel.
Olle smells something fishy. The lawyer (Arwid Stenmark) who represents the anonymous debt note owner, has personal gains from not allowing Olle to buy the hotel, and Olle suspects that it is in fact the lawyer himself who owns the note. This lawyer is a very mean and shrewd business man. Olle meets the daughter of the lawyer (Karin), who is a very nice girl, and she tells him that she will inquire her father about who owns the note of debt.
At the lawyers house, a new maid is needed. Olle visits the mother of the house, and she agrees, somewhat reluctantly, to hire Olle as a Kitchen Help, despite that he is male. The lawyer himself (who is the father of the house) does not know about it! Olle does a fabulous job at housekeeping. He looks after the children Karin and her brother, and cooks good meals, and plays bridge. When the father (the lawyer) gets home, he surely does not find it amusing to see Olle working in his home! Olle, I'd say, is less than disrespectful towards the lawyer, none the less one of his employers.
Now, dear foreign people, I'd like to explain why you might find this film interesting. If you are interested in Swedish culture from this time, here is a good example of constant family feuds in the middle class home. The acting in these scenes are very good, maybe because all the actors had an experience with it.
Number two: we see the worker's demand to set things straight with the unfair oppressor, the morally corrupt employer. It seems that Olle is justified to do what he likes against the lawyer, since the lawyer is such a bad person. The Social Democratic Party has traditionally been very strong in Sweden, maybe that is the reason.
As I said, the acting is good in most parts and the film is intelligently directed and edited. It is also funny. I did however notice that the characters were not consistent in their behaviors, which must be attributed to a somewhat sloppy screen writer. I give the movie 7/10.
American Playhouse: Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (1983)
There are far worse movies than this
This is a pretty amusing flick for sci-fi fans. I like movies with computers and stuff, like Tron and Wargames and Brainscan. So this is far out too. The best thing about it is the story which is very original and creative. There are no totally unlikely stuff like in another sci-fi, if you know what I mean. There are also no plot holes or dumbing down.
Well some bad things then. First, the main actor -- Raul Julia -- is not very sexy really. I think he looks more like a janitor than a computer hacker. Hackers maybe aren't very sexy, but he is none the less not only a hacker. Ok enough of that.
Secondly, it looks cheap, and sometimes it looks idiotic. I don't know why it looks idiotic, it just does.
I give the movie a 5 / 10.
Alla tiders Karlsson (1936)
The Worlds Greatest Karlsson
What do I mean with "The Worlds Greatest Karlsson"? I am referring to the movie "Världens bästa Karlsson", 1974, based on two books by Astrid Lindgren. The title of this movie, "Alla tiders Karlsson", can incidentally be translated to "Great Karlsson". It was therefor possibly an inspiration for Astrid.
The movie follows Karl Magnus "Kalle" Karlsson (played by Sigurd Wallén) and the traveling theater that he is the manager of. Like many comedies of the time this is a farce, so the plot is not the focus here. Instead of a deep plot we get slapstick jokes, some entertaining music, and characters who may not be the smartest, but are happy and at good spirits.
The plot is as follows: Karlsson travels with his nephew Åke Berggren (played by Sture Lagerwall) with a revue show. They have antagonists in a rivaling show consisting of a magician, his female assistant Cleo, and the Strong Man Albin. As it happens the two groups both perform in the same city, and the city isn't big enough for both of them to get an audience.
Karlsson gets friends with the Count Rummel, who thinks Karlsson is a splendid person. The count is splendid too -- he is a real caricature: degenerated, bored and drunk. And also, the nephew Åke has a crush on Cleo.
Fill out with slapstick jokes and comical situation and you have the movie.
Kar de Mumma wrote most of the story, in this his second screenplay according to IMDb. All other crew members and actors were experienced, and often hired in this kind of films at the time.
Looking at the CD-ROM "Den svenska långfilmen", we see that the film critic from SvD praised the film as unusually witty and cultured for a farce. I have to agree with him, I get the feeling the 30's were a happy time when watching this movie. The main characters Karlsson is ever-cheerful, and the tempo is fast and easy going. Karlsson is a round, happy man in his best years, with many bright ideas and a great confidence in himself. (You see why I compare him to Karlsson from Astrid Lindgren's books.) Nothing is taken seriously. Karlsson's song "A little happier if I may ask", summarizes it very well. This is a comedy and nothing else. And it excels at that. Yes, it makes you happy.
Ungdom i fara (1946)
Social realism
This is the drama of the troubles facing young people in the big city. The title is "Ungdom i fara". The international title was the literal translation "Youths in danger". It can also be translated to "Troubled Youth", which I think sounds better. It can be compared to several American movie from the 50's about troubled youths. "Rebel without a cause" comes to mind.
The plot evolves around Wille Nilsson (played by Kenne Fant) who has come from a troubled home. He has no parents and so he had to live with a foster-father (step-father?) whose responsibly was to take care of him, but in fact he beat him up regularly and treated him bad.
This led Wille into seeking out wrong company. He became friends with "Gänget" ("the Gang"), a bunch of no-good crooks. The film begins in a court room, where Wille and a few other of "Gänget" stand trial for auto theft. Wille gets a light sentence. A social worker gets to be his "Assistant". This is like a parole officer who he has to report to.
He is lucky. The Assistant has a positive view on humanity and understands that Willes troubled upbringing hasn't given him much of a chance in life. The Assistant meets Willes girlfriend Karin, a pretty girl who is equally worried by Willes behaviour. As the assistant says "At least we both have one interest in common: Wille". They decide to do their best to improve Willes situation.
The Assistant gets Wille a mechanics job. He also encourages Wille, Karin and their mutual friends to start a club where they can enjoy themselves with music, drawing and discussions. He also provides for Wille to move out of his abusive foster-father's home.
The problem is that Wille is what we today would called depressed. This term wasn't shoved onto kids back then, instead Wille is told to "pull himself together". He complains that he somehow just can't be optimistic, even if he tries. I don't find it surprising that he doesn't feel he belongs to his merry friends. Wille is more of a punk guy, while his friends listen to what's on the radio and want to behave civilized.
The movie is a bit slow at times, but it is straight forward. Style influences are, I think, American gangster movies and film-noir from the 30's-40's. This one has more self-reflection though. The main actor plays the depressed boy very well. The other teenage actors play standard teenagers.
If they wanted to improve it they could have made it a larger production, made the characters deeper and add more feeling to it.
In the 50's, they applied (unsuccessfully) to get the movie deducted from entertainment-taxes (according to "den svenska långfilmen", cd-rom), because I think they felt the film was a important portrait of society. The problem it depicts, according to the CD-ROM, is that many people move in from the country and get lost in the city because they don't know anyone, and then easily get into the wrong company.
Him gok (2001)
Don't Blink for a Second
In Hong Kong the cars are fast, the women are lethal, and nothing is comprehensible -- but it is fast !!
The story is that a rich man has his daughter kidnapped, and wanting her back he hires a professional by the name of Tricky On to free her. When he arrives he gets his briefing, hires a male and a female assassin to assist him, and sets out to complete his mission. But he soon realizes that something is wrong and that he has been fooled. The question is: what is wrong, and who has fooled him.
This is how a great action looks. Don't mind if I was often lost about what was really going on. The pace doesn't slow for a second to look back; this is not for reflective minded person. It is somewhat like "Enemy of the State" (with Will Smith). Several twists in the plot ensures that nothing works out they way it was planned. Or maybe it does?
In the lead parts we have some tough people, all though we won't be learning anything more extensive about them -- there is no time for that -- but it doesn't matter in this type of action movie. The female killer is certainly a sexy thing, yet her performance was in no way breath taking, she was too stiff for that. I doubt she is really an actor, she acts more like a model or a pop singer. The others were not as charismatic like, say, Chow Yun Fat or Jackie Chan, but this story does not focus on any single individual, they are rather a team of commandos where everyone has his/her part, so they play they parts well.
No martial arts. No gore. Many of the scenes are set inside cars since they are driving around a lot, but the scenery and directing was all in all impressive, hardly do we see the same places twice.
Smart, fast and mind boggling. 9 / 10.
Tai ji quan (1996)
Quite good... for a sequel
After seeing it a few times, this is my conclusion. First, there seems to be two plots: one is that some English tuxedo-wearing guys are smuggling opium to China, the other is a boy-wants-girl love story.
One reviewer said it takes place about the year 1900 -- I couldn't have guessed from just watching the movie. Other flaws seems to be that it is unclear where it takes place. "In a village, somewhere in China." Yet there is a nearby town or village where they, unknown to all main characters, are sacrificing children (!) in a seemingly recurrent ritual. How can they not know about this? Later, this incident is never talked of again, and this and several other incidents make me wonder, why there are so many subplots.
Quite a few things don't make sense in the film... Don't understand why it even called "tai chi 2". It doesn't have anything in common with Tai Chi 1 (tai chi master). And the officer to which Rose was engaged is also an enigma: is he good or bad? I felt sorry for him anyways -- he was just trying to do his job and start a family, but everyone seemed to dislike him.
The acting is overall like the others said: decent, but not very spectacular. All though they could have mentioned the mother and father are very enjoyable to watch. Maybe a good thing would be if the story was focused more on the family life. Or focused on, well, *anything*, instead of diverse itself like it did.
Note that the first scene takes place 10 years before the rest of the film. They could have mentioned this. And why why couldn't they have bothered making a decent ending....
Enjoyable little thing though, thanks to its action and humour!! Recommendable!! 7 / 10.
The Big Lift (1950)
Scenery outweighs disadvantages
The shooting of the film on location in Germany is what makes the whole film work and memorable. The story in itself is not really that great, but probably it grasps our attention because of the surroundings: the ruins, the gloomy statues and the simple and down-to-earth life of the common people. Had it been a Hollywood stage production, there wouldn't have been much to it, but once the movie enters Berlin it gets to another level. The same goes for the acting. Acting among the local population with only two brought-in American actors in the cast ( the main characters ) must have been an inspiration.