Halvar Björk Movies

To the eleven-year old boy in this movie, his big, jovial father (Rolf Lassgård) is a sort of hero or a god. As he grows older, he begins to see the darker side to his womanizing and drinking. He ultimately realizes that his old man is a human being, with all the flaws and memories that go with that condition, and forgives him for that. This serio-comic memoir is based on the experiences of scriptwriter Magnus Nilsson. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Written by pantheon Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Sunday's Children was directed by Bergman's son Daniel. This intensely autobiographical film takes place when the elder Bergman was a child of eight. In a near-cathartic fashion, the story illustrates the strained relationship between young Ingmar and his minister father, and the understanding (not always a warm one) between them. Though Daniel Bergman pursues his own visual style, this is his father's film through and through, and as such should be given an honored place in Ingmar's body of work. Sunday's Children is, to date, the best of the recent "retrospectives" penned by the far-from-retired Ingmar Bergman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The maker of the highly symbolic sex drama I Am Curious (Yellow) returns to the screen with this highly symbolic "love mystery." Professor Larry Pedersen is kind of foggy about what happened the night before, but wakes up quickly when he discovers a student he had rescued the night before from her abusive boyfriend lying dead in his apartment. We never discover exactly what happened, but rather join the professor as he views his collection of photographic slides and allows his fantasies to overtake reality. Apparently, he has a very sexual take on the creation and continuance of the universe. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish expatriate who became one of Hollywood's greatest stars, and Ingmar Bergman, one of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers and Sweden's most honored director, worked together for the first and only time in this intensely personal drama about the troubled relationship between a mother and daughter. Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) is an acclaimed concert pianist who is visiting her daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann), the wife of a parson in a rural community, for the first time in seven years. While Charlotte and Eva struggle to be civil, there is a deep emotional gulf between them. Eva resents her mother for not caring enough for her as a child, feeling that Charlotte was more interested in her career and her other daughter, Helena (Lena Nyman), who is severely handicapped and can only communicate through inarticulate noises. Charlotte, on the other hand, is uncomfortable with the fact that Helena now lives with Eva, and she is still coming to terms with the emotional devastation of her husband's recent death. Herbstsonate, released in America as Autumn Sonata, earned Ingrid Bergman some of the most enthusiastic acclaim of her career; she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and she won the same honor from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. It was also her last theatrical release; she would appear in only one more project, a TV movie about the life of Golda Meir, before her death in 1982. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This is the second installment of the Swedish epic which began with The Emigrants. Nybyggarna is a chronicle of the life and times of the Swedish immigrants in Minnesota, covering the time period up to and beyond the Civil War. Even though they did not come to America to become Americans, they are gradually drawn into the culture of their new country. Father Karl-Oskar Nilsson (Max Von Sydow) and his wife Kristina (Liv Ullman) battle the elements and political changes in order to survive. The family members have little contact with their neighbors, and because they know so little English, they have difficulty buying things from the nearby general store. Robert (Eddie Axberg), Karl's younger brother, wants to find gold and travels westward with Arvid (Pierre Lindstedt), the Nilsson's strange and skittish farmhand. The two lavish epics, The Emigrants and The New Land were the two most expensive films made in Sweden up to that time. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This routine romantic drama by Norwegian director Erik Lochen moves through its sequences as though in slow motion, ultimately detracting from the story since it progresses at a snail's pace. A combination of mental ruminations heard out loud and direct asides to the camera also are at odds with the thin tale of a husband's best friend trying all he can to betray his buddy by sleeping with his wife. Without the psychological depth to involve the protagonists in meaningful interactions, [#Jakten comes across like an abstract work expressed through one-dimensional characters. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide