Scandinavian Movies

This moving, finely-wrought portrayal of legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist was directed by his son Carl-Gustav Nykvist -- a noted filmmaker himself. Spanning from long forgotten kiddie flick in 1945 to Woody Allen's Celebrity (1997), Nykvist's career came to an abrupt end when he was diagnosed with a rare disorder that affected his speech. Though the film explores Nykvist's upbringing and turbulent private life (an ugly divorce, the suicide of one of his sons, an affair with Mia Farrow), the emotional heart of the film is his celebrated collaboration with auteur Ingmar Bergman, with whom Nykvist made some of his most enduring work, including Winter Light (1962) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973). As Bergman recalls his own career, he notes, "I don't miss making films, but I miss the collaboration with Sven." ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

A lonely night watchman finds love but comes to regret it in this offbeat comedy from Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. Koistinen (Janne Hyytiainen) works as a security guard at a shopping mall in Helsinki, where he keeps an eye on the place after hours. Koistinen is a quiet nebbish who doesn't have much luck with women, and the closest thing he has to a girlfriend is Aila (Maria Heiskanen), a woman who runs a sausage cart Koistinen frequents after work, though he doesn't realize she carries a torch for him. Koistinen is killing time in a shabby café when he meets Mirja (Maria Jarvenhelmi), a beautiful blonde who appears to be interested in him. Koistinen is immediately smitten and is willing to marry her even before they have their first date, but what he doesn't know is Mirja's interest in him is not sincere -- she's working with Lindholm (Ilkka Koivula), a career criminal who has hired her to get some security codes from Koistinen so they can stage a heist at the mall where he works. However, even after Koiskinen is betrayed by Mirja and becomes the leading suspect in the robbery, he still loves her and can't bring himself to tell the police what he's learned about her. Laitakaupungin Valot (aka Lights In The Dusk) received its world premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Lumière brothers' first films, filmmakers Sarah Moon and Philippe Poulet challenged 39 renowned international directors to each complete a 52-second film using the original Cinematographe camera under the conditions endured by the brothers. The result of the project was this film, Lumière et Compagnie. The film stock used was homemade from a slightly altered version of the Lumières' recipe. No synchronized sound was allowed and only natural lighting was permitted. The participating directors included John Boorman, Costa-Gavras, Peter Greenaway, Lasse Hallström, Spike Lee, David Lynch, Liv Ullmann, and Wim Wenders. Among the actors who performed in the films were Liam Neeson, Lena Olin, Aidan Quinn, and Alan Rickman. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

Three years after his "experimental" phase wrapped with the jarring, iconoclastic Container, Swedish enfant terrible Lukas Moodysson returned for this sprawling, ambitious social drama. Echoing Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel and featuring two Hollywood A-listers as his leads, Mammoth also marked the director's premier English-language project. Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal co-star as Ellen and Leo, New York marrieds; she's an emergency-room surgeon, he's a listless, vaguely dissatisfied Internet game designer. They have a family, albeit an unconventional and dysfunctional one: seven-year-old daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) is practically being raised by a 24/7 Filipino caregiver, Gloria (Marife Necesito), who dotes on her incessantly. This provokes the envy of Ellen and the resentment of Gloria's two geographically estranged sons, Manuel (Martin Delos Santos) and Salvador (Jan Nicdao), who repeatedly phone their mom from Manila and plead with her to come home. Gloria's mother grows so distressed by this behavior that she attempts to show Salvador just how easy his life is in comparison to that of others, which leads to unanticipated tragic consequences. Meanwhile, Leo teams up with a shifty associate, Bob (Tom McCarthy), flies to Thailand, and encounters a freewheeling, laid-back working mother named Cookie (Run Srinikornchot). Step by step, the actions that Leo takes while abroad create a domino effect and alter everyone's lives in irreversible ways. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

The politics of slavery and the follies of nation-building highlight Danish director Lars von Trier's thought-provoking follow-up to the director's 2003 drama Dogville, featuring The Village's Bryce Dallas Howard in the role originally played by Nicole Kidman, and shot in the same stage-bound style as its predecessor. Shortly after leaving Dogville, Grace (Howard) and her father (Willem Dafoe) wander into a gated Alabama community still operating under the tenets of slavery. Appalled to stumble across a brutal scene in which a white master is viciously lashing his slave (Isaach de Bankolé), Grace hastily intercedes and pleads with the abusive man to treat his workers with respect and dignity. When merciless matriarchal plantation owner Mam (Lauren Bacall) dies shortly thereafter, the remaining slaves, who have never tasted freedom and only known life under "Mam's Law," implore the sympathetic Grace to help ease their turbulent transition toward democratic rule, with disastrous results. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Director Erwin Leiser is most known for this documentary that borrows the title of Hitler's rantings in book form, to present the true story of his rise and fall. (Leiser himself had to flee Germany to escape Nazi persecution.) Using film clips of the result of Nazi atrocities in the death camps and previously unseen footage from the Warsaw Ghetto, Leiser has put together a devastating picture of barbaric inhumanity. He leads up to the outcome of Hitler's insane policies by using still photos, newspaper excerpts, and newsreel footage to detail the German dictator's rise to power. The documentary leaves one major question: how could this homicidal lunatic have been left unchecked to lead the world into the worst conflagration it has ever known? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Metal By Metal offers the viewer ten heavy-metal songs from a variety of artists. The release includes bands like Morgana Lefay, Edge of Sanity, Memento Mori, and Lake of Tears. Songs presented include "Maleficium," "Sweet Tragedy," "Black Tears," "To Isengard," and "Ravenland." ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

As Marius Holst's family drama Mirush commences, the young Slavic man of the title decides to find and rebuild a relationship with his long-estranged father. Mirush makes a grueling transcontinental journey from Kosovo, Serbia to Oslo, Norway, where the old man runs a restaurant. Father and son do indeed become reacquainted with each other, but as this occurs, Mirush realizes some deeply upsetting and disturbing truths about his dad - including the considerable debt he bears to the Albanian mafia and several pivotal character flaws. As Holst traces the contours of their relationship, he uses it to explore themes of familial estrangement and absenteeism, the indelibility of paternal legacies and the difficulty of making a clean break from one's past, no matter how tortured and dysfunctional. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Mika Kaurismaki's documentary Moro No Brasil features performances by a variety of Brazilian musical artists, intertwined with interviews of every day Brazilians in order to give the viewer a portrait of Brazilian culture. The film includes performances by Silberio Pessoa, Darue Malungo, and Antonio Nobrega. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

To say the working relationship between director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski was often stormy strains the boundaries of understatement. Kinski's tirades against Herzog are the stuff of legend -- Kinski's scabrous autobiography All I Need is Love features a number of venomous rants against the director far too foul to recount here, while Herzog had to threaten Kinski with murder to get him to complete his work on Aguirre, The Wrath Of God. However, the collaboration between these two men, no matter how combative, resulted in the finest, most memorable work of either's career, including Aguirre, Nosferatu, Woyzeck and Fitzcarraldo, before Kinski's death in 1991 ended the partnership. Mein Leibster Feind/My Best Fiend is a documentary by Herzog about his work with Kinski, and portrays the actor with a large degree of affection while making no secret of his volatile nature (an actor displays a scar on his head from a wound Kinski inflicted with a sword, while an outtake from Fitzcarraldo shows him terrorizing a member of the crew). Despite their remarkable differences, Herzog sums up their working relationship with admirable conclusion: "We complemented one another. I needed him and he needed me." Mein Leibster Feind/My Best Fiend was produced for European television, though it did receive a screening (out of competition) at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A lonely apartment-dweller who was recently abandoned by his longtime girlfriend finds his sanity slipping as his friendship with the two mysterious women next door takes a seductively sinister turn in director Pål Sletaune's dark tale of obsession and paranoia. When John's girlfriend walks out on him, he soon begins to form a neighborly friendship with the two women who live in the cluttered apartment next door. That friendship soon takes an ominous turn, however, when one of the women seduces John with a punishing blow to the jaw that sends a series of disturbing repressed memories flooding back into the confused man's swimming head. As John begins to fall into his feral seducer's sadistic trap, gradually finds himself questioning the strange reality that seems to have swallowed him body and soul. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Recent Norwegian history and one of the nation's most notorious scandals are given a playfully surreal spin in this satiric comedy from filmmaker Thomas Cappelen Malling. Arne Treholt was a celebrated Norwegian diplomat who in 1984 found himself disgraced when he was accused of selling state secrets to the highest bidder. Treholt was found guilty and spent eight years behind bars before he was pardoned and freed. Treholt has always insisted he was innocent of all charges, and in Kommandor Treholt & Ninjatroppen, Malling imagines a scenario in which Treholt (played by Mads Ousdal) is a ninja warrior with powers of invisibility who leads a secret fighting force protecting their homeland against Cold War foes, represented by the sinister Meyer (Jon Oigarden), whose sympathies are clearly with the United States. As Treholt and Meyer wage a private war for control of Norway's hearts and minds, Treholt tries to turn slobby slacker Humla (Amund Maarud) into a suitable second-in-command. Norwegian Ninja received its American premiere at the American Film Institute's 2010 AFI Fest. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A man who can't sort out the wreckage of his life wonders what sort of future he deserves in this drama adapted from a novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) is a struggling writer from a successful family who stumbled into bad habits and is soon to be released from a treatment center for drug addiction. Describing himself as "a spoiled brat who (messed) up," Anders has pinned his hopes for the future on a job at a magazine in Oslo, and after being discharged he heads into the city. There he meets up with an old friend, Thomas (Hans Olav Brenner), who has turned his back on drug-fueled carousing and now looks after his children; their conversation makes it obvious Anders isn't feeling comfortable on the outside, and his job interview is little short of disastrous. As Anders wanders Oslo and crosses paths with former friends and acquaintances, most of whom don't seem especially happy to see him, he ponders the future that lies before him and contemplates taking his own life. Oslo, August 31st was directed by Joachim Trier, a cousin of noted filmmaker Lars von Trier; the film was an official selection at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi