Jan Blomberg Movies
- 1993
Goran thought the house he was buying was a pretty good deal. Little did he know that it was the sort of good deal that would consume all his money, time and energy in repairs and expenses, and alienate his wife and children so much that he would lose them. Now that they're gone, he still has his house, lucky man that he is. On top of that happy burden, he discovers that burglars are very interested in getting into his junkpile house to look for something. Now, if only he can keep them away from the place while he finds whatever they were looking for, maybe it was something valuable... This comic tale of domestic disasters was a big boxoffice success in Sweden. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bjorn Skifs, Suzanne Reuter, (more)
- 1992
Scripted (but not directed) by Ingmar Bergman, Best Intentions is a multilayered backwards glance at the courtship of Bergman's own parents. Henrik Bergman (Samuel Froler) is a struggling theology student in the year 1909. His intended, Anna Aakerbloom (Pernilla August, who married director Bille August while the film was in progress) is from a well-to-do family. Despite the expected class differences and personality clashes, love-or at least mutual understanding-prevails. But after a harsh, spare few years as the wife of a clergyman, Anna yearns for the more bountiful pleasures of her family home. Bergman writes himself into the proceedings as a mewling infant. The current three-hour theatrical version of Best Intentions (original title: Den Goda Viljan) was simultaneously prepared as a six-hour TV miniseries, which ran in Europe, Scandanavia, and Japan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Samuel Fröler, Pernilla August, (more)
- 1989
This big-budget animated feature from Sweden, drawing upon some of that country's best known performers, is a children's adventure story with a cautionary ecological theme. The director drew his inspiration from such diverse sources as The Tempest by William Shakespeare, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, and Machine Island, by ules Verne. In the story, Prospero has been exiled from his home, and is living on the island of Melonia with his daughter Miranda, an albatross named Ariel, and a fruit-monster called Caliban. Just as Caliban has finished creating something called "power soup" from the emanations of a local volcano, a crew of ne'er do wells crash-lands. They are from Plutonia, a polluted industrial planet given over to entirely to making weaponry, and they have come to steal Caliban's creation. Their plan is to take over the world Melonia is on and make it just as ugly as their own. Prospero and his kin band together to rescue the children on the industrial planet, who have been enslaved to work in the munitions factories, and at the same time put a stop to the evil plans of the Plutonians. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Allan Edwall, Robin Carlson, (more)
- 1984
Pettersson (Stellan Skarsgård) and Bendel (Allan Edwall) (the latter a refugee from a Polish dictatorship, the former a confirmed amateur capitalist) get together in the big city to see what they can skim off the top and are successful until their luck changes and the two men are back on the bottom of the barrel again. One of the difficulties with this film is that it swings from restrained comic interludes to tragic events, and back -- while hewing to a predictable plot. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stellan Skarsgård, Allan Edwall, (more)
- 1974
Consumed by self-doubt, a middle-aged writer and scholar (Jan Blomberg) cannot settle his mind about his political beliefs or his marriage and attempts suicide. He survives but is soon brutalized by a group of thugs for his previous political stances. Thrown into a state of hallucinogenic reverie, he encounters figures from Dante's Il Purgatorio and moments from it are reenacted, such as Count Ugolini's eating his own children. He has increasingly meaningful encounters, including the poem's Beatrice (Inger Jalmert Moritz), and toward the end of the film it looks as if both his physical and his psychic health may be restored. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1964
What is so rare, and cherishable, as an Ingmar Bergman comedy? All These Women concerns the sexual misadventures of cello-playing Jarl Kulle. Amidst his many romantic pursuits, the egotistical Kulle endeavors to get his life story published, "bribing" a writer by agreeing to perform the latter's musical compositions. Bergman regulars Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson and Bibi Andersson costar in All These Women, while the screenplay was cowritten by another stalwart member of the director's stock company, Erland Josephson. Originally titled For Att Inte Talla om alla dessa Kvindor, All These Women is better known in English-speaking countries as Now About All These Women. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bibi Andersson, Carl Billquist, (more)
Satan sends his newest most seductive minion back to the earthly plane to search for new recruits in this horror compilation from an unsold Swedish television series No. 13 Demon Street that stars Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Devil. Each of the beautiful hellcat's victims dies in interesting ways, including the one who sent her to hell in the first place. He too becomes a worker for the big-D, who gives the couple the formula for nuclear weapons with the instructions that they are to pass it around. They do so and soon Hell is filled to the brimstone with tormented souls. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
