Jesper Langberg Movies

In this slick Danish thriller, a mysterious traveler arrives at the Copenhagen airport and the city is soon thrown into darkness. When the lights are turned back on, the stranger is rushed to a hospital suffering from bizarre Ebola-like symptoms. Soren (Ole Lemmeke), an ambitious junior virologist, is convinced that these symptoms portend an epidemic, and he risks his job to go to the apparent source of the disease: the backwaters of Romania. Accompanied by his medical student girlfriend (Kirsti Eline Torhaug), he searches Europe's impoverished netherworld hoping to gain the secret of the virus, and he soon becomes involved in grave-robbing and murder. Meanwhile, Interpol is pursuing occultist Vincent Monreau (played by the incomparably weird Udo Kier), who reportedly is responsible for firebombing a hospital in Bucharest and who appears to have some dark connection to the disease-stricken stranger. Monreau is convinced that the virus is of supernatural origins, presaged by the appearance of Stella Mala, a supernova supposed to appear at the beginning of Armageddon. Soon Soren's faith in reason is shattered when he is confronted by a plague that cannot be comprehended through science. In a similar vein to Lars von Trier's The Kingdom (1994), director Anders Ronnow-Klarlund uses disease as a metaphor for how the irrational and uncanny seep through the cracks of the ultra-modern societies of late 20th century Europe. This film was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

In this drama, the story of the 1944 Alf Sjorberg film Torment is taken up many decades afterwards. In the original film, based on an enormously well-known book by Hans Scherfig, a sadistic schoolteacher is shown wreaking havoc in the lives of his charges, though he eventually dies in what appears to be a quite innocent way, by choking on a piece of candy. In this new film, the boys the schoolmaster tormented so badly are all grown up and have settled into their lives. Some are even quite successful. At a reunion, they recount how each of them was treated by this man whom all of them hated (shown in flashbacks), and it becomes clear that they organized to punish him. Eventually, it begins to appear that one of these boys arranged to poison him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Ole Ernst plays Peter von Scholten in this historical film biography. Appointed by King Frederick VI (Henning Moritzen) as governor of the Virgin Islands, Peter fights for the education and liberation of the island's black residents, former slaves, while keeping a black mistress on the islands and a wife at home in Denmark. Peter establishes schools for the children and avoids a bloody insurgence from locals bent on violent overthrow of the government. The former governor is charged with treason and dies a dejected man soon after the unfair charges are overturned. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Tre Engle Og Fem Loever follows after the children's movie Kidnapped, with the same irrepressible Uncle Georg (Otto Brandenburg) leading his nephews and niece off on an adventure once again. This time some art thieves are foiled when Uncle Georg exchanges their stolen "Three Angels" masterpiece for little Oscar's oil painting of five lions -- and the chase is on, this time through the famed Copenhagen Tivoli Gardens. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Tired of being left alone by her children who are too caught up in their own lives to pay her much attention, Mrs. Maage (Tove Maes) decides to perk up her isolated existence by offering a 100,000-kroner award (money she does not have) for Felix, her lost Persian cat (she has never owned a cat). The response is truly beyond her wildest dreams -- but at the same time, her son knows all this is a great fraud and instead of seeing her act for what it really was, he is convinced his mother has to be institutionalized. Mrs. Maage is not sure how to get out of that predicament when another senior comes to her rescue, a sleuth in true Hollywood style by the name of Hovard Hansen (Poul Bundgaard, of the Olsen gang movies). Between his trench coat and his Bogart impersonation, he has enough inspiration left over to find the missing Persian cat. The cat, however, is missing from its owner, Dennis the Gangster (Leif Sylvester Petersen) who may not take too kindly to a forced adoption out of his family. Given the activity she has generated by her ad, Mrs. Maage may soon be wishing for a little of the peaceful isolation of her pre-Felix days. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This Danish film explores the same vein as the very similar movie, The Office Christmas Party, and concerns the shenanigans and misdeeds of a crew of otherwise straitlaced factory workers and their bosses during their once-a-year summer picnic at Copenhagen's Deer Park. After an increasingly riotous and strenuously drunken day, miraculously, everyone shows up for work the next day none the worse for wear. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide