hjemmefra Reviews

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

Some deal, man..

[6/10 · 2 February 2024]

Some deal, man, 23 quid for commerce, then she 180's with scissors (1975) Hailed as the greatest film of all time by Sight and Sound, this stylistically impressive movie handsomely employs Yasujiro Ozu's «tatami shot» style of static camera, low-angle framing. On content however, the movie could do with a coupla hours trimming. Or a script with something more than a far too long setup for a one-note punchline of a simpleminded screed of a «feminist statement». Almost 3,5 hours of tedious (but beautifully composed, mind you) minutia in the life of a stay-at-home whore who just barely musters the energy to stare blankly at nothing just off camera in every shot, (most everybody else in the movie stares right into the lens, by the way) while sleepwalking through her daily routine of buying food, making food, drinking coffee, sending her son off to school, whoring, (just one customer per day and weekends off, as this is not a very ambitious whore) and then, after 3+ hours of cinematic shallowness she happens to have an orgasm with one of the pathetic men she exploits, momentarily waking her from her comatose life and in the epiphany that sometimes comes, you know, when you come, she realizes how devoid of joy and meaning her life is. And as this is now close to the end of the movie and as this flick is made by a woman, who is also a feminist, WE DO NEED A MESSAGE!!. .Our whoring heroine is of course not going to learn anything from her cumming, is she? She is not going to mend her ways and take responsibility for her life, is she? Maybe try an honest days work? Helping her son learn to respect women, by not raising him in a brothel, sustaining him on prostitution? No?

No, she's the messenger here and the message is clear; she is the «victim». Which she proves by stabbing her customer to death with a pair of scissors. The movie ends then, true to form, nicely framed with 10-15 minutes of her emptily gazing at nothing just off camera. Profound...

Oppenheimer (I) (2023)

Strauss

[5/10 · 27 July 2023]

How one can make a 3 hour movie about the man running the Manhattan Project, about the brilliant complex physics, technology and the earth-shattering moral dilemmas entailed in putting it to use; and end up mostly making a political soap-opera is at least surprising and at best a missed opportunity.

How about not making yet another movie about McCartyism and the plight of the persecuted left? Of what comparative relevance is there in centering the movie around the petty politics of a political nobody like Strauss?

Where were the Germans and the Russians? What about the Japanese? And how about trying not to dumb down the physics, but meet the challenge and enlighten the viewer? This could have been a riveting complex story about one of the most deciding periods in modern history and an opportunity to make use of Nolan's uncanny ability to visualise conceptual ideas; as he did to great effect in movies like Inception, Interstellar and Tenet. There is ample opportunity for cinematic brilliance in all the physics discussed in this move, but all we get is scribbled numbers on blackboards and slo-mo explosions. Would this be very much different if made by Michael Bay?

Tulsa King (2022– )

Ulcer Thing

[3/10 · 28 December 2022]

What happened to the master Taylor? After three great and one decent seasons of Yellowstone and an even greater season of 1883, this just does not compute. Syntax Error. I read an interview recently where Taylor Sheridan worried he is spreading himself too thin with all his projects. May be. Is he churning out some of these newer efforts using OpenAI? This here godawful mess of a show, with Stallone's ulcerous moaning about all things the young'uns are up to, while mafioso-menacing a whole town Sleepy Joe Biden style, just does not convince. Here's hoping forthcoming 1923 gets the laser-focus it deserves from Sheridans brilliant talent.

Utopia (I) (2013–2014)

Got the shot yet?

[10/10 · 16 August 2022]

Brilliant show, insightfully written, artfully shot and directed about a recurring transgression against humanity and eerily close to what we've all been forced upon the last, going on three years now.

Severance (2022– )

Irrelevance

[5/10 · 17 April 2022]

The premise is an Alphabet/Apple-like company, Lumen, not merely asking for a non-disclosure contract of their employees, but requiring them to have brain-surgery, installing mind-controlling hardware. Making the employee not remember anything from work after leaving the companys premises at end of day, but picking up again upon return next morning. A Severance. (A riff on Elon Musks projected Neuralink).

The Severance-procedure splits your conciousness into two completely separate identities; two minds inhabiting the same body in turn. The regular old you, as the «outer-person» outside the workplace; and the newly created you, the «inner-person» knowing only the workplace. The «inner-person» retains all inherent and learned traits, but somehow no identity-related or inter-personal memories. How? Sci......fantasy fiction. Fair enough.

From the very beginning one wonders about the ethics of someone willing to have this done to themselves and sign away all control and responsibility for any and every actions their other self may perform for the duration of every work-day. Such a person must be either be extremely irresponsible or an absolute monster to allow themselves possibly (probably) becoming an unknowing, unwitting tool for nefarious activities. The show however is not very interested in this most ovious question, as it rather spends several episodes framing stylish minimalistic exteriors, endlessly looping the same people walking down the same white corridors and doing meaningless tasks at terminals while being repeatedly bullied by management; all being amazingly slow on the uptake as everything is to be very mysterious. It takes six episodes to get around to questioning the morality of the «outer-person» not caring how the «inner-person» might fare. But not one of the Severed, even after years seems to care if they are possibly being used as tools for the vilest depravity, crimes against humanity or whatever else necessitating total memory loss after clocking out. This omission is so glaring, as to poison any satirical nuance the show may try to offer on work-place politics. Every Severed employee sheepishly accepts being locked up against their will and treated like children, performing task they find unintelligible year on end without question, seemingly without any need for more human contact than platonic relationships with a handful of collegues.

Dilbert by Scott Adams did a much better an more poignant job of exposing office politics, in an entertaining way. Without the boring pretentions.

Not sure I will follow this into a second season, as this show is just too shallow and meandering.

This first season might have worked better if tightened a bit, by about 8 episodes, as it has just enough meat on the bone for an episode of a show like Twilight Zone or Black Mirror.

The Signal (2014)

The Simple

[4/10 · 22 February 2022]

Starts kinda interesting. Good chemistry amongst the three leads on a roadtrip,but about 1/3 in the plot turns onto the area 51-highway of overused clichés. Unimaginative.

Nobody (I) (2021)

Noddy

[5/10 · 20 October 2021]

If you really like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and you want to see a great vigilante movie,-my tip is to hunt down the original Death Wish with Charles Bronson.

Or the Denzel Washington triple-threat of Man on Fire, The Equalizer and The Equalizer 2.

Or the boldest, baddest vigilante-movie of them all, Triers Dogville.

But if you've seen them all and feel like going trippel-meta with something somewhat entertaining and derivative of the silly Death Wish-parody, John Wick; you may want to see Odenkirk in this Noddy-version of the same.

No Time to Die (2021)

No Time to Lie

[7/10 · 8 October 2021]

Culture mostly evolves as a natural, benign process. Organically validated through time, by merit and ability. And sometimes not. Sometimes the will of a malignant few powers through. The Will to Power by any means as there is no patience for context,reason or nuance in a cultural revolution. Or for compromise. There is only the purge. As Chairman Mao purged any opposition, destroyed historical artifacts, art and burned books. As Pol Pot killed the educated, the scientists . As authoritarian religion always wills their uncompromising vision through history. And purges.

And so the narrow minded few, with their inane and insane identity-politics purge our culture now. With laser-focused pettiness. And Bond, as yet another effigy in the pathological hallucionatory lie of «The Patriarchy»-, had to be purged.

Dune (1984)

Dune that. Both chapters in 117 minutes.

[5/10 · 27 September 2021]

Better than the 2021-version. Manages to tell twice the story, with 20 minutes to spare.

Dune (2021)

Drab (2021)

[4/10 · 26 September 2021]

I have to confess I never got around to reading Frank Herberts Dune-saga. But I did see the Lynch-version when it came out in '84 and remember it as a somewhat creative, but ultimately underwhelming snooze-fest. Then a few years ago I saw Jodorowsky's Dune, the absolutely brilliant documentary featuring the enthusiastic titular directors account of the first attempt at realizing a film-version of the books . Jodorowskys vision of Dune is presented here with imaginative story-boards and beautiful conceptual art from artists like H. R. Giger, Chris Foss and Moebius.

And to top it off, Salvador Dali was to act in the 14-hour epic for a fee of a million dollars per minute of screen-time.

It was however ultimately an overblown, underfunded vision; and the project ended up as «The greatest film that never was».

But great it's influence certainly was. Though never near celluloid, the brilliant remains of the stillborn beauty metastesized through the pop-culture, mushrooming into groundbreaking projects such as Alien, The Terminator, Star Wars and The Incal, to name a few.

Upon hearing Villeneuve was to helm this latest attempt I was cautiously optimistic, as he had amongst other good efforts made a decent sequel to Bladerunner. Only worry I had was his sustained teal-palette from that movie. Making for great stills, but a somewhat underwhelming near three hours of blue-greens inn mostly moist conditions-. But still a visually impressive spectacle. Also his earlier sci-fi excursion The Arrival, although cerebral, did not bode well visually.

Dune deserved more.

So, I had my misgivings.

I've seen it now. And the good news is; there's not much teal.

But Villeneuve definitely loves his color-coding and here he digs his way down the color-chart, tunneling into the earthier palette of umber,ochre and sienna. -Or drab, as it is.

And a very diciplined 2,5 hours of visual drab it is, as you sit there ostriched down in the dusty browns and dirty yellows, contemplating ticket-prices.

As this is a science fiction movie and the year supposedly is 10.191, you might hope to see some interesting stuff from 8000+ years of innovation. Some inspired ideas and designs, maybe? Forget it. Most everything they wear is H&M desert-chic and the «futuristic stuff» is what «futuristic stuff» always look like. You even have a guy using an umbrella with absolutely no design-improvements from 8000 years prior. Every room is barren, even the rich folks' digs are as unfurnitured as the gaze of the protagonist. And the warring races with all kinds of high-tech veaponry (All of it shrouded in dust and dirt, so as not recuiring much effort or talent for prop-design)still almost exclusively fight with knives. So we get battles as humdrum,boring and underwhelming as you've seen a thousand times before.

I will not comment on the plot, as there is not much of it. Villeneuve seem to have barely gotten past the first few pages in the first of six books.

And then there is the inane «Sandwalking». I get the Sandworms just dig the beat. But if you need to walk or run arythmically, you can do so in a straight line, varying lenght of step and speed. -Easy.

«Sandwalking» like a spastic with a vily smokers leg, painting half-circles in the sand with your toe every few steps might help rid your sandal of some accidental turd, but as an effective means of locomotion I suggest conserving energy. Get to where you're going, -then dance.

And then there's the Spice-harvesters. When the circling drones detects Sandworms approaching, the enormous thumping Spice-harvesters have to be periodically shut down,rescued and airborne. Quite a lot of time,manpower and energy must be spent on this and we have a scene showing the inefficiency and danger of these rescue-operations. Then right after we se everyone using practical bowlingpin-sized «Thumpers» to attract or distract the worms, to great and immediate effect. Would it not be more rational to use these to lure the worms away from the harvesters,too?

Safety Protocol (revised): Drones detect incoming worm and signal harvesters to turn off engine. Drones shoot thumpers into the sand, leading worm away from harvesters. Problem solved. Much safer,cheaper and less downtime.

All in all; there is a sense of cohesiveness here though. As the unimaginative script and visual drabness is supported by novocained actors and scored by a tonedead soundtrack of droning base-notes, pathological wailing and prologed wheezing through "indigenous instruments».

This is well thought through.

Like tastefully bland IKEA-art. Hung on the Wailing Wall.

The level of sustained unimagination showcased here makes Villeneuves Dune a true epic. On every level of drab.

Patterns (1956)

Business Ethics 101

[10/10 · 18 July 2021]

Rod Serling, the incomparable vending-machine-of-dreams behind The Twilight Zone, wrote the screenplay for this brilliant morality play, Patterns.

The film opens with Fred Staples (Van Heflin) arriving at his new job on the board of a corporation. He is well received at the posh offices overseeing Manhattan and soon befriends his nearest superior and vice-president, the older and amiable Bill Briggs (Ed Begley). Staples does well but soon finds himself in an ethical dilemma as his boss, Walter Ramsey(Everett Sloane) ruthlessly hounds Briggs to make him quit and grooms Staples to replace him.

The three leads here do excellent work but Everett Sloane especially shine in a role that easily could have been softened in a lesser actors hands. Sloane trusts the strong script and comes off as a man with the intelligence and the integrity to stand his philosophical ground as a capitalist. Walter Ramsey could very well had been an industrialist-character in a book by Ayn Rand.

The movie is tightly written, economically directed and the ending packs a punch like few.

Truly inspiring stuff.

The Gunfighter (2013)

Perfect

[10/10 · 16 July 2021]

This is the best short film I have seen. Absolutely brilliantly written, cast and narrated. Hilarious!

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Nadir: Crap of hog

[2/10 · 8 July 2021]

Herzog and Kinskis tempesteous sadomasochistic, creative relationship mostly seemed symbiotic. But it's also quite obvious Herzog exploited Kinskis mental disorders.

Kinski was drafted by the Polish army at the age of sixteen, forcing him to leave his mother and sister, both to whom he had sexual relations. During his short stint in the war Kinski spent his time trying to wave down american fighter planes, begging them to shoot him, before going AWOL.

Diagnosed with schizophrenia,delusions, psycopathy, depression and anti-social personality disorder he forged a somewhat career with his intense stage-presence and gained ever larger roles in cinema with his raw, unrestrained persona. After several suicide attemps he broke into his psychiatrists home and tried to strangle her.

It's when he met Herzog his career took off with Aguirre: The Wrath of God.

Herzogs method of making this movie; going on wildly disorganized, underfunded treks into the wilderness with his crew and adding further lability with Kinski,-and then using the mess as promotion worked like a charm.

Isolated and under harsh conditions, the crew had to suffer Kinskis stark raving psychoses, and Herzog exploited it to the hilt during the later promotion by mythologizing Kinskis «maaaadness».

Herzog brought Kinski along on later excursions, amongst them Fitzcarraldo, as he perfected his machiavellian method.

It's a career-making formula, as for going on fifty years now Herzog has used every opportunity to dispense petty anecdotes on the madness of Kinski to anyone who asks him a question on any subject.

I saw him in a recent documentary where he traveled around, knocking on the doors of homes where Kinski ostensibly had lived several years prior. The unsuspecting tenants let the famous director in and he had at least two trivial stories of Kinskis maaadness per room. «...and hier in ze bathroom Kinski locked himself inside, screaming FOR FOUR WHOLE HOURS!!...he was madd....and when he finally opened ze door and came out-, do you know what he said to me?....» and so on.

Well. Now to the movie.

Klaus Kinskis acting here, as the character Aguirre is pretty much how «evil» usually was portrayed in the silent-film era. As the bad guy in a Chaplin short, maybe. -All baleful oogling and bug-eyed scowling. This film unfortunately do have sound however, so we're left to suffer the grating monotony of the few lines he has.

And we're to believe him a visionary,strong leader?

How realistic is it that they all would be persuaded by this incoherent little goblin with the presence, vision and leaderhip-skills of a deranged old bag-lady?

This project, released in 1972, could have been great! -If directed by Terry Gilliam scripted and location-scouted by Palin/Jones starring John Cleese as Aguirre and Graham Chapman as the jesuit priest. Maybe with a song or two and a dance-number by Eric Idle. And Connie Booth could be the sleepwalking maiden. But then, of course, this would be too coherent,intelligent and competently made to make it in the arthaus-circuit.

The other «actors» in this misbegotten mess drones their lines like hostages reading at gunpoint. As they more or less actually were, with Kinski shooting somebodys finger off in a fit between takes. There are however one or two intentional shots too in this movie, but the overall style of direction seems to be "anything goes" , the cuts between scenes are often jarring and the soundtrack is abysmal. I do get that the movie has it's cult-credentials down;-with stories of how tough it was in the making, the low budget, the love/hate-drama between actor/director and that they had an unhinged star to contend with-, but it's a silly stinker nonetheless...

So for weeks they are rafting through the jungle, eating tadpoles and rationing rice, slowly starving to death....whilst on a river full of fish and with monkies running between their legs..

And the two females they bring along are through it all perfectly made up, with fresh blow-dryed hair and crisp, white dresses. They even die noncommittaly. Uninvolved and unflustered like window display mannequins.

It inevitably ends as expected,though. As incoherent and un-persuasive as the character of Kinsky is, -it pretty much mirrors Herzogs direction.

Maybe the two of them should have just fessed up, gotten a room and left the rest of us out of it?

Dragged Across Concrete (2018)

Hard-boiled and smart

[9/10 · 29 November 2020]

The brilliant team-up from Brawl in Cellblock 99 does it again. Writer/director S. Craig Zahler once again brings Vince Vaughn,Jennifer Carpenter and Don Johnson along for another smart, tightly plotted character-study from the shady side of mean street. Where hard men make the wrong decisions for the right reasons. Mel Gibson makes his best tough-guy appearance since Payback,only this time with more heart. The petty 1-star reviews here are just the marching morons of the thought-police, as the well-written dialogue in this instant classic sometimes riffs on the woefully woke. This is great movie-making.

Dark (2017–2020)

Dark love

[10/10 · 16 September 2020]

Strange Things keep comparing this to the silliest of shows, but this masterfully written and executed series is the rarest of breeds; mysterious and creepy, yet coherent and intelligent. Like a mad scientists' brew this amalgates strange, disparate elements and heretofore unheard of-,emerges. Half a beakers worth of Donnie Darko; turn the bunsen burner slowly up, stir in the T2 as it simmers. Add a pinch of Les Revenants´small-town doom and gloom. Pour in petri dishes worth of inspired plotting,cast,visuals,music with alchemical storytelling and distilled mastery evolves over ten episodes.

Warning: Your perception of time will disjoint,expand and stretch to an eternity between seasons.

Update: After just now finishing these three seasons of deepening brilliance I am almost tongue tied in awe. This show starts off as a mystery methodically evolving, kaleidoscopically unfolding and poetically blossoming, bursting your mind and your heart as great art do. This is hands down the best tv-series ever made. Pure art. -Now to watch it again.

Brightburn (2019)

A bright movie.

[10/10 · 1 January 2020]

A real surprise! This movie rips open the ribcage of superhero-movies and shows you the beating heart of the genre. In an era of superhero-blockbusters, where we more or less get the same formulaic action-movie hollywood has peddled since the eighties, only now with long johns, it is refreshing with gems like Brightburn. All too few writers and directors in this genre, in my opinion,really understands what the defining characteristic of this genre is: the awe-inspiring wonderment in the discovery and exploration of god-like supernatural powers. And, here to boot, an idea of what kind of a psyche might go with such powers. The story is unsentimental,tight and extremely effective. The effects are kept to a brutal minimum with no flashy crap. This is brilliant filmmaking.

The Irishman (2019)

Notflix

[5/10 · 24 November 2019]

Notflix proudly presents yet another bland MacMovie. But this time churning talented participants into the mix, helping them make all the wrong decisions. In this hairy burger you will encounter very few under the age of fifty, (spare a token child or two) but other than that, anyone a bare fiftyfive or so are regularly referred to as »Kid». The main characters are approaching eighty, so to make them look younger, even the non-speaking parts are senior-citizens. With the use of digital technology Notflix are able to make aged but distinguished familiar faces look uncannily waxy-young with old eyes, and we also pad their great-grandfatherly frames out with «muscle-shirts» so their stooped,crabby bodies look ungainly fat while of course retaining the charming stiff, doddering movements of geriatrics. Wince in awe at these actors mobster-menace, with their hesitant movements and unfocused gaze and marvel at the sheer patience of having a two-hour story directed and acted at the tempo of octogenarians, rambling on for 3,5 hours in the telling. Notflix; making notmovies not in a cinema near you.

Tommy (1975)

Growing up in the sixties/seventies; the concept album.

[7/10 · 20 October 2019]

Hop on the groovy-train with Tommy, the pinball-trubadour and get hooked on Tina Turners Acid Queen, dazzled by Elton Johns Pinball Wizard and worship at the formica-altar in the Church of Marilyn Monroe-. First two thirds of this rock opera is a coherent series of sometimes insightful, oftentimes brilliant pop-art coming-of-age tableaus well worth experiencing.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)

Jesse on the road

[8/10 · 13 October 2019]

Breaking Bad is in my all-time top ten tv-series.(as is Better Call Saul) Jesse Pinkman however, was never a favourite of mine. So I was a bit hesitant about this movie being about him. Barely five minutes in I'm hooked, of course. Vince Gilligan again raises the bar, much as he did with Saul in BCS, and brilliantly fleshes out and adds to the character of Jesse in a way that at least makes me appreciate him much more this time around. With trademark strong character-arch, brilliant plotting and all the visual Gilligan-flair we've come to expect, what's not to keep falling in love with?

Joker (I) (2019)

Toker

[3/10 · 10 October 2019]

Here again Phoenix does his go-to awkward,loner-stoner schtick. But this time he surely must get the nod from the Academy for the sheer effort of heavy makeup, scrawnyer than usual body and the gargantuan artistic achievement of forcibly sucking in his stomack in all but every scene. In fact, Phoenix's stomach is a concave testament to character-building at it purest, as the vacuum at the center of his body is the vacuousness of this entire airheaded one-noted whine of a movie. Every plot(?)-point is so derivative and contrived as to inevitably turning into a game of spot the reference. Here is mostly steals from Taxi Driver and King of Comedy but also bits from Fight Club amongst others. But with none of their flair in writing and direction, and their note-perfect timely commentary dumbed down here to blunt confusion; a doddering senile «these are the times we live in,now..». The films protagonist is chased through the movie by the most inept pair of detectives outside a cartoon and the Toker himself is portrayed as so feeble-minded as to be utterly improbable as the eventual master criminal, The Joker. So what is this mess, really? Yet again, one more in the endless parade of hateful Hollywood-fantasies of violent,nihilistic murder and mayhem towards anyone who dares to disagree with the losing left. The protagonist is a catalyst for societal rampage by masked hordes of clowns rioting, burning and pillaging in the streets. They are of course stand-ins for Antifa and Occupy Wall Street. Wayne, the caricatured politician, calling his possible constituents loser-clowns, is of course a stand-in for Trump. So the writers get to shoot him, too. Petty? You bet! Who was it again that during election made an ongoing talking point of the peaceful transition of power?

Exit (2019–2023)

Patric Batemans entourage

[9/10 · 27 September 2019]

Great show! Watching the first two episodes, really whets the apetite for more psychological mayhem from brilliant writer/director Øystein Karlsen. (Also, for showcasing sheer range, check out his other mini-series One Night. A charming, smart emotional rollercoaster ride of an extended 24 hour first date)

Confessions of a Serial Killer with Piers Morgan (2017– )

Sociopath vs. Narcissist

[1/10 · 20 September 2019]

If you want to watch a show about vile narcissism and megalomania feigning compassion, Fierce Moron is a fascinating study. He also talks with serial killers.

Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones (2019 TV Special)

Stemming the tidal wave of bull

[10/10 · 3 September 2019]

Seldom in comedy has there been a more well-timed and obvious watershed moment than this comedy special. This is comedy at its grandest, pioneering societal change. In a rising tide of BULL such as our current PC-culture, this is a charter for the brave aiming true to navigate out of foul SJW-swamps and troubled waters.

Another Life (2019–2021)

Piiigs in Spaaaaaace......

[1/10 · 25 July 2019]

It starts with a UFO coming to earth, shaped as an infinity symbol...cause thats like a powerful symbol,-all mysterious, like an enigma, ya knaawww? Pretty silly symbolism, as though the Infinity symbol is a part of the universal language of mathematics, -its design is completely incidental to earth. As for instance Pi 3,14 is universal, but the symbol for Pi is not universal. So it would not mean the same to extra-terrestrials, and would also extremely ulikely be used for purely practical reasons. A few minutes later in, dark matter in space is depicted as a sort of black cloud...! A cloud you can not travel through, as then «you would travel blind»!! Yikes! How about reading up on some very basic physics before making a scifi-show? And the silly captain on the ship and the Kardashian-school-of-acting crew...Preening emo SJW-airheads that know absolutely nothing about credibly portraying real people. Bitching and eye-rolling, smirking and being triggered. And, of course with all the standard lazily written clichéd identity-group characters present, this ticks off all the boxes for being green-lit at Netflix. I could go on, but will suffice to warn you that in the vacuity of this show, no one will hear you groan.

Chernobyl (2019)

The left and their lies

[6/10 · 14 July 2019]

A stern warning of a show about the horrors of a nuclear meltdown in the Soviet regime and how it was brought about by the idealistically driven dishonesty and collectivistic propaganda of the far left. Wherein the writers shoehorn in their propagandistic Mary Sue-character Khomyuk. The left never learns.