Norwegian actress Noomi Rapace pictured starring in this Swedish crime genre story with a twist known internationally as The girl with the dragon tattoo but as with those with basic linguistic skills might be able to decipher is titled Men that hate women in the original.
This story is the first of three novels by Stieg Larsson that has taken [...]
Män som hatar kvinnor
Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick
Finnish born Maria Heiskanen pictured in this piece about a working class family in Malmö, southern Sweden. The backdrop of labour disputes and temperance societies sets the scene for Maria discovering a camera which she learns to operate with the help of a local photography shop owner Sebastian Pedersen (Danish actor Jesper Petersen) who basically sponsors [...]
Drottningen och Jag / The Queen and I
Nahid Persson Sarvestani (left) on the Seine with Empress Farah of Iran. This is a story of a journey made by the director of this film as much as anything else. In the reconciliation between the somewhat softened hard left attitudes of her youth where she in part blames herself for the death of her young brother at [...]
Mammoth
Marife Necesito pictured in Mammoth, directed by Lukas Moodyson, which had some worthwhile performances but seemed like a less successful remake of Babel, to which it pales in comparison. Also took substantially from Lost in Translation. I saw this Saturday night at Filmstaden in Göteborg I wish I had seen Wallander at BioPalatsen instead which would have [...]
Lucia di Lammermoor
Anna Netrebko who has a fantastic set of lungs as well as an amazing voice in this opera by Donizetti conducted by Marco Armiliato broadcast from the NY Metropolitan Opera on HD to a packed house in Birmingham where I saw it this evening. The duet at the end in the higher octaves with a [...]
Doubt
Viola Davis (pictured) who plays the mother of the boy who is in the clutches of the priest played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman that the Nun played by Meryl Streep suspects. This is a tight psychological drama echoing the societal upheavals taking place in the early sixties, placed within the microcosm of a Catholic school [...]
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Rhona Mitra (pictured) who I have seen in Skinwalkers and Doomsday and who has some obviously redeeming features might have been the only thing worth seeing in this film that I managed to doze off in and wonder exactly what I was doing in it and promptly left to walk out into the snowstorm that [...]
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Kat Cennings (pictured) plays opposite Arrested Development’s and so much more than that Michael Cera in this story, that I at first thought might be a bit crap, but was underplayed very well and actually has a pretty cool event towards the end of the film and some quite real type moments.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0981227/
Valkyrie
Carice van Houten (pictured) plays loyal wife of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (played by Tom Cruise in case you didn’t know), proving that he had redeemable qualities in this epic about the last of many attempted coups against Hitler. I don’t know if not knowing the story makes the film better or not. I happened [...]
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Rebecca Hall (pictured) as Vicky (who I now think I remember from Chamomile Lawn and definitely from Frost/Nixon) in this crazy little thing about love directed by Woody Allen, with Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansen, and lastly Patricia Clarkson as Judy Nash who tries her best to convince Vicky to go for it instead [...]
