Anna Bergman Movies
The third of director Barry Levinson's autobiographical "Baltimore Trilogy" (the first two entries were Diner and Tin Men), Avalon covers nearly forty years in the lives of an immigrant Jewish family. Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) emigrates to Baltimore in 1914, where Sam's brothers Gabriel (Lou Jacobi), Hymie (Leo L. Fuchs), and Nathan (Israel Rubinek) are awaiting his arrival. By and by, Sam meets his future wife, Eva (Joan Plowright). With the introduction of the Krichinsky's grown son Jules (Aidan Quinn), the film ventures into culture-clash country. Unwilling to become a manual laborer like his dad, Jules opts for the life of a door-to-door salesman. Eventually, he teams with his cousin Izzy (Kevin Pollak) to open the first TV store in Baltimore. Thereafter, the disintegration of the Krichinsky family is paralleled by the rise of TV's omnipresence in the American home. Avalon's elegiac and melancholy effect is underlined by Randy Newman's soulful musical score. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Armin Mueller-Stahl, Aidan Quinn, (more)
In this sophomoric comedy, a lusty adolescent British hockey team heads for Holland where they find something far more interesting than tulips and windmills--gorgeous, lusty women. They are so busy pursuing romance that they forget all about their upcoming match. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1984
Ake and His World is a long, lyrical study of a Swedish country doctor of the 1930s. Ake is the doctor's six year old son, from whose point of view this film is told. Ake watches in innocent bemusement as his busy father weighs life and death issues on a daily basis. It's possible that this Swedish film bore a little influence on the 1991 American comedy My Girl (91), in which the young heroine's father is a mortician. Allan Edwall both wrote and directed this film, which was released in its native country as Ake og hans värld. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Martin Lindström, Loa Falkman, (more)
Though he made allusions to his own life in all of his films, Fanny and Alexander was the first overtly autobiographical film by Ingmar Bergman. Taking his time throughout (188 minutes to be exact), Bergman recreates several episodes from his youth, using as conduits the fictional Ekdahl family. Alexander, the director's alter ego, is first seen at age 10 at a joyous and informal Christmas gathering of relatives and servants. Fanny is Alexander's sister; both suffer an emotional shakedown when their recently-widowed mother (Ewa Froling) marries a cold and distant minister. Stripped of their creature comforts and relaxed family atmosphere, Fanny and Alexander suddenly find their childhood unendurable. The kids' grandmother (Gunn Wallgren) "kidnaps" Fanny and Alexander for the purpose of showering them with the first kindness and affection that they've had since their father's death. This "purge" of the darker elements of Fanny and Alexander's existence is accomplished at the unintentional (but applaudable) cost of the hated stepfather's life. Ingmar Bergman insisted that Fanny and Alexander, originally a multipart television series pared down to feature-film length, represented his final theatrical film, though within a year after its release he was busy with several additional Swedish TV projects, and his final work, the 2003 Saraband (also produced for Swedish television), eventually received global theatrical distribution. Oscars went to Fanny and Alexander for Best Foreign Film, Best Cinematography (Sven Nykvist), Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, (more)
- 1982
In 1982, Ingmar Bergman emerged with one of his most singularly acclaimed films - a work that dramatically broke away from much of the moody psychodrama that characterized such earlier motion pictures as Cries & Whispers and Hour of the Wolf. Entitled Fanny and Alexander, and originally intended as the director's "swan song," this epic plunges into the life of a theatrical family named the Ekdahls, in turn-of-the-century Sweden. Bergman filters life through the eyes of the two titular Ekdahl children (Pernilla Alwin and Bertil Guve), as they come of age, lose their father unexpectedly, and must contend with their mother's remarriage to an uncaring, dictatorial clergyman from whom there seems to be no escape. Instantly hailed as a masterpiece, Fanny won a slew of international awards, including four Oscars. Yet curiously, the three-hour theatrical version seen in the U.S. did not represent the full depth and breadth of Bergman's vision. He also prepared a five-hour version for Swedish television, one that ran locally as a miniseries in 1984, in four separate installments. The extended running time gives the director to further develop and flesh out his characters, substories and themes, and will thus strike many fans of the original film as a remarkable discovery. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
- Starring:
- Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, (more)
- 1978
When a brilliant doctor fathers 837 genius sons through an artificial insemination program, it seems like every woman on the planet wants to birth one of the exhausted medico's super smart babies. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- 1978
Agent 69 Jensen (Charley Chase look-alike Ole Soltoft) travels (via stock footage) from Tangiers to Moscow to Beijing, Albania and, of course, Copenhagen in this uneasy mix of hardcore pornography and folksy Danish comedy. None of the well-known comedians (Karl Stegger, Benny Hansen, Poul Bundgaard, et al.) appear in the "dirty bits," which seem to have been filmed separately. Time had run out for this particular Danish pastry, made almost solely for foreign export, and I Skyttens Tegn was the final installment in the "Signs of the Zodiac" series. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gina Janssen, Anna Bergman, (more)
- 1977
An otherwise conservative Danish government removed all censorship on pornography in the late '60s and one of the results was the low-budget Signs of the Zodiac series, of which I Skorpionens Tegn (Agent 69 Jensen In the Sign of Scorpio) was the penultimate installment. Genre-regular Ole Soeltoft plays a secret agent on the trail of a CIA microfilm hidden in one of five women's compacts. Most of the action in this softcore presentation happened between the sheets in a tired plot that stretched from Morocco to Copenhagen but obstinately refused to go anywhere. The film's line producer, Vibeke Windelov, later produced Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi
- Starring:
- Anna Bergman, Gina Janssen, (more)
- 1976
A sexy comedy about the carnal exploits of a cab driver who gets mixed up with gang of jewel thieves. ~ Rovi
- Starring:
- Barry Evans, Judy Geeson, (more)
Directed by Tudor Gates, Intimate Games centers around a group of English psychology students simultaneously researching sexual fantasies as well as fulfilling those of their professor. This 70's piece of British sex-cinema features a performance by George Baker, who later became famous for his role in the television series Ruth Rendell Mysteries, and an uncredited role from future sex actress Mary Millington.
~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
- Starring:
- Peter Blake, Suzy Mandell, (more)
Rating Systems
Blockbuster
BLOCKBUSTER name, design and related marks are trademarks of Blockbuster L.L.C.
2013 Blockbuster L.L.C. All rights reserved.
Portions of Content Provided by Rovi Corporation. 2013 Rovi Corporation.