Morten Suurballe Movies

With the bleak comedic drama Dark Horse, Icelandic director Dagur Kári reworks several thematic and topical elements from his prior film, Nói Albinói. He also crafts a feature which brings together two trends of Scandinavian cinema in the early 2000s: matter-of- fact examinations of ordinary, working class Scandinavian folks, with intersecting lives and stories, shot in stark black-and-white (typified by films such as Ragnar Bragasson's Born), and the low-key, whimsical, offbeat humor of northern European directors such as Aki Kaurismaki.Dark Horse opens in Copenhagen, where Daniel, a twentysomething young man, makes a paltry living as a graffiti painter, accepting money from Danish residents to create personalized valentines on the sides of buildings. Unable to collect enough from this trade to pay his rent, he is evicted and must approach his father for lodging, but the father refuses, forcing Daniel to sleep in his car. Daniel's friend Roger (nicknamed "Grandpa") works at a local medical clinic that is conducting sleep experiments on volunteers, including a judge; in Roger's off time, he trains as a football referee. Roger confides in Daniel about his discovery of a former model Franc, who works at a local bakery; Daniel and Franc inevitably then become involved, to Roger's consternation, and Roger plots to intervene by attempting to win Franc for himself. Meanwhile, the judge, suffering from pronounced sleep deprivation, has a complete emotional and mental breakdown and flies off the handle, engaging in increasingly bizarre and dysfunctional behavior. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

In 1927, Adrian Palmberg (Lars Simonsen) faces a severe emotional crisis when his wife and child are killed in a fire. Distraught, Palmberg angrily announces that there is no God and proclaims himself immortal. He exiles himself to a basement before being declared insane and confined to a mental institution, where he does frequent verbal battle with a psychiatrist before finally coming to terms with both God and mortality after turning 100 years old. Featuring exceptional black-and-white cinematography by Harald Paalgard, Manden som ikke ville do (aka The Man Who Would Live Forever) was the directorial debut from Torben Skjodt Jensen and was screened at the 1999 Gothenburg Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A man steals a taxi cab to escape paying off a debt to a mysterious mobster in this low-budget thriller. He picks up a gun-toting businessman who wishes to be taken across the country. The two maintain a friendly but low-key acceptance, while each one knows the other is up to no good. A female passenger provides some moments of humor the following day after the two spend the night in a ghost-town hotel. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

This entertaining tragi-comedy looks at the contradictions in a nurse's (Kirsten Lehfeldt) personality and how they work against her. Henriette (Lehfeldt) leaves her boyfriend when he makes it clear that he does not want marriage or children, and she transfers her affections to Leowe (Torben Jensen), a surgeon at the hospital where she works. She is leery of showing her true feelings, hiding them by being a little quirky. Leowe is not exactly a perfect companion either and is not interested in marriage. Soon that relationship starts to spell trouble in capital letters, causing Henry to make some radical decisions. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi