Quickies #4

Buddy (2003)****


Although it hails from Norway, Buddy is very much a lightweight, American style slacker romantic-comedy, and while that would normally prompt a litany of snotty remarks from this reviewer, the movie is actually quite involving and watchable. Kristoffer (Nicolai Cleve Broch) and Geir (Askel Hennie) are 20-something roommates and coworkers on a billboard hanging crew who relieve the tedium of their jobs by engaging in elaborate and slightly dangerous stunts; all of it captured by Kristoffer on his trusty camcorder. Their tapes accidentally fall into the hands Oslo’s version of Jay Leno, who requests permission from the young men to use the videos in his show. Predictably, Kristoffer and Geir become minor celebrities in Norway, but soon find that success can bring unexpected complications, as well as the resurfacing of problematic relationships from the past. The film is fast paced without being breathless, and everything works out pretty much the way it should.

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Tony Takitani (2004)**


Jun Ichikawa's brittle lotus of a movie features a technical illustrator as the main character, and every frame here is as deliberately constructed as an architectural rendering. In essence, a film about a control freak, apparently made by a control freak. Sadly, the results are a kind of cinematic suffocation.

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Rendez-vous (1985)**


By the time Andre Techine's bohemian anti-romance is over, you will likely have lost any marginal interest in any of the characters. Perky Juliette Binoche plays the archetypal young woman who flees the provinces for the big city to pursue an artistic career and the attendant sexually liberated lifestyle. Along the way, she gets buck nekkid with several miscreants, all of whom turn out to be shining examples of what utter pigs men can be. But Binoche is no victim, but rather an enabler, as the lack of respect she shows for her own body is mirrored by the men who continuously confuse her for an inflatable party doll. The most disturbing aspect of this dour snoozer is that its a reasonably accurate picture of urban dating life in the 1980s. It's a miracle we survived.

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Cold Comfort Farm (1995)*****


Not much grows in the flinty soil of Cold Comfort Farm except a bumper crop of zaniness. Kate Beckinsale is adorable as the London sophisticate who sets about injecting some glamour and romance into the grim, hardscrabble lives of her bumpkin relatives. Joanna Lumley, Stephan Fry and Sir Ian all lend brilliant support as well. Any fan of British humor will find this a lighthearted, screwball comedy that actually gets funnier with repeated viewings. I've been watching this film at least once a year for the past decade, and I love it more each time.
There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. Unabashed silliness too.

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Quickies #4

Buddy (2003)****


Although it hails from Norway, Buddy is very much a lightweight, American style slacker romantic-comedy, and while that would normally prompt a litany of snotty remarks from this reviewer, the movie is actually quite involving and watchable. Kristoffer (Nicolai Cleve Broch) and Geir (Askel Hennie) are 20-something roommates and coworkers on a billboard hanging crew who relieve the tedium of their jobs by engaging in elaborate and slightly dangerous stunts; all of it captured by Kristoffer on his trusty camcorder. Their tapes accidentally fall into the hands Oslo’s version of Jay Leno, who requests permission from the young men to use the videos in his show. Predictably, Kristoffer and Geir become minor celebrities in Norway, but soon find that success can bring unexpected complications, as well as the resurfacing of problematic relationships from the past. The film is fast paced without being breathless, and everything works out pretty much the way it should.

More Info

---

Tony Takitani (2004)**


Jun Ichikawa's brittle lotus of a movie features a technical illustrator as the main character, and every frame here is as deliberately constructed as an architectural rendering. In essence, a film about a control freak, apparently made by a control freak. Sadly, the results are a kind of cinematic suffocation.

More Info

---

Rendez-vous (1985)**


By the time Andre Techine's bohemian anti-romance is over, you will likely have lost any marginal interest in any of the characters. Perky Juliette Binoche plays the archetypal young woman who flees the provinces for the big city to pursue an artistic career and the attendant sexually liberated lifestyle. Along the way, she gets buck nekkid with several miscreants, all of whom turn out to be shining examples of what utter pigs men can be. But Binoche is no victim, but rather an enabler, as the lack of respect she shows for her own body is mirrored by the men who continuously confuse her for an inflatable party doll. The most disturbing aspect of this dour snoozer is that its a reasonably accurate picture of urban dating life in the 1980s. It's a miracle we survived.

More Info

---

Cold Comfort Farm (1995)*****


Not much grows in the flinty soil of Cold Comfort Farm except a bumper crop of zaniness. Kate Beckinsale is adorable as the London sophisticate who sets about injecting some glamour and romance into the grim, hardscrabble lives of her bumpkin relatives. Joanna Lumley, Stephan Fry and Sir Ian all lend brilliant support as well. Any fan of British humor will find this a lighthearted, screwball comedy that actually gets funnier with repeated viewings. I've been watching this film at least once a year for the past decade, and I love it more each time.
There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. Unabashed silliness too.

More Info

Gentlemen Broncos (2009)****

Elk fly through the air, firing missiles from their various orifices while a major science-fiction novelist resorts to plagiarism in this wonderfully wacky comedy. Nebbishy Michael Angarano (you may not know the name, but you’re sure to recognize the face) stars as a high school student named Benjamin, who has managed to cobble together a manuscript about a partially neutered adventurer named Bronco (Sam Rockwell) and his heroic attempts to regain his purloined genitalia.


Angarano enters the story in a contest where it comes to the attention of a famous Sci-fi writer named Chevalier (the always funny Jermaine Clement). Suffering from writer’s block and with a lucrative deadline looming, Chevalier finds Benjamin’s submission just too tempting to resist, and soon a thinly-disguised version of Bronco is climbing the best seller list. Clement captures the egotistical author’s affectations with a goofy, outsized accuracy while an outraged Benjamin launches a Bronco-like quest to unmask Chevalier as a fraud.


Angarano also has a number of funny scenes with his Mom (Jennifer Coolidge, who seems to get stranger in every movie she’s in), a designer of new-age themed frumpy smocks. Their home is a plywood covered geodesic dome, and I’m sure Buckminster Fuller would be delighted to discover one of his creations being inhabited by such a loopy crew.


The story moves at a brisk and amusing pace, interspersed with dramatized scenes from 3 different versions of the novel because, as it turns out, a local video outfit is making their own embarrassingly bad, low budget Bronco epic. Director Jared Hess somehow keeps all this colliding silliness on track, and we eventually reach a pleasing and just conclusion. Gentlemen Broncos is a wild and wooly outing, with just a touch of juvenile grossness, and the perfect rental for those seeking escapist chuckles.

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Gentlemen Broncos (2009)****

Elk fly through the air, firing missiles from their various orifices while a major science-fiction novelist resorts to plagiarism in this wonderfully wacky comedy. Nebbishy Michael Angarano (you may not know the name, but you’re sure to recognize the face) stars as a high school student named Benjamin, who has managed to cobble together a manuscript about a partially neutered adventurer named Bronco (Sam Rockwell) and his heroic attempts to regain his purloined genitalia.


Angarano enters the story in a contest where it comes to the attention of a famous Sci-fi writer named Chevalier (the always funny Jermaine Clement). Suffering from writer’s block and with a lucrative deadline looming, Chevalier finds Benjamin’s submission just too tempting to resist, and soon a thinly-disguised version of Bronco is climbing the best seller list. Clement captures the egotistical author’s affectations with a goofy, outsized accuracy while an outraged Benjamin launches a Bronco-like quest to unmask Chevalier as a fraud.


Angarano also has a number of funny scenes with his Mom (Jennifer Coolidge, who seems to get stranger in every movie she’s in), a designer of new-age themed frumpy smocks. Their home is a plywood covered geodesic dome, and I’m sure Buckminster Fuller would be delighted to discover one of his creations being inhabited by such a loopy crew.


The story moves at a brisk and amusing pace, interspersed with dramatized scenes from 3 different versions of the novel because, as it turns out, a local video outfit is making their own embarrassingly bad, low budget Bronco epic. Director Jared Hess somehow keeps all this colliding silliness on track, and we eventually reach a pleasing and just conclusion. Gentlemen Broncos is a wild and wooly outing, with just a touch of juvenile grossness, and the perfect rental for those seeking escapist chuckles.

IMDB

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Colossal Youth (2006)****

Colossal Youth is a deeply personal, unapologetic art film that isn’t the least bit interested in being entertaining, charming or even mildly fathomable. The film is an oblique glimpse into a few days in the life of a middle-aged Creole man (Mario Ventura Medina) who is being relocated by the Portuguese government from a condemned and hellish tenement into a bright, modern apartment.


But all is not well, for Ventura lives in a world of shadowy memories and gnawing regrets, and he spends much of the film meandering back and forth between his old and new digs, engaging in a series of one-sided conversations with people from his past, both real and imagined. Director Pedro Costa works in tightly controlled, meticulously blocked shots and his characters move with such lugubrious care it seems that a sudden breeze would topple them.


Costa rarely allows his actors to move their heads, which creates an absorbed, yet distant intensity that can be quite unnerving to watch, but is highly effective at creating an atmosphere of deflated remorse. Ventura, who apparently cannot write, attempts to mentally compose a love letter to a mysterious woman shown briefly in the film’s opening scenes - brandishing a pairing knife and bellowing with anger and frustration – and his frequent recitations of this poetic missive sharply contrasts his absurd hopes and with his dire reality.


Despite the squalid grimness, Colossal Youth is quite beautiful to look at. Working mainly with available light, Costa’s characters never stray too far from windows, reinforcing themes of entrapment and powerlessness. Night scenes appear to be supplemented by small lighting instruments, creating focused pools of illumination that render a theatrical, surreal quality.


Anyone wishing to tackle this demanding work would do well to spend a few minutes boning up on Portuguese history, particularly the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution of the 1970s, prior to screening as it will greatly enhance one’s understanding of the film’s subtle complexities. Those who enjoy cryptic and challenging cinema will find Colossal Youth a worthy and enthralling watch. Those who don’t should stay far away.

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Colossal Youth (2006)****

Colossal Youth is a deeply personal, unapologetic art film that isn’t the least bit interested in being entertaining, charming or even mildly fathomable. The film is an oblique glimpse into a few days in the life of a middle-aged Creole man (Mario Ventura Medina) who is being relocated by the Portuguese government from a condemned and hellish tenement into a bright, modern apartment.


But all is not well, for Ventura lives in a world of shadowy memories and gnawing regrets, and he spends much of the film meandering back and forth between his old and new digs, engaging in a series of one-sided conversations with people from his past, both real and imagined. Director Pedro Costa works in tightly controlled, meticulously blocked shots and his characters move with such lugubrious care it seems that a sudden breeze would topple them.


Costa rarely allows his actors to move their heads, which creates an absorbed, yet distant intensity that can be quite unnerving to watch, but is highly effective at creating an atmosphere of deflated remorse. Ventura, who apparently cannot write, attempts to mentally compose a love letter to a mysterious woman shown briefly in the film’s opening scenes - brandishing a pairing knife and bellowing with anger and frustration – and his frequent recitations of this poetic missive sharply contrasts his absurd hopes and with his dire reality.


Despite the squalid grimness, Colossal Youth is quite beautiful to look at. Working mainly with available light, Costa’s characters never stray too far from windows, reinforcing themes of entrapment and powerlessness. Night scenes appear to be supplemented by small lighting instruments, creating focused pools of illumination that render a theatrical, surreal quality.


Anyone wishing to tackle this demanding work would do well to spend a few minutes boning up on Portuguese history, particularly the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution of the 1970s, prior to screening as it will greatly enhance one’s understanding of the film’s subtle complexities. Those who enjoy cryptic and challenging cinema will find Colossal Youth a worthy and enthralling watch. Those who don’t should stay far away.

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Troubled Water (2008)*****

Story wise, this impressive Norwegian import has more layers than a box of smoked salmon and before we are through, director Erik Poppe will have methodically revealed all of them. Troubled Water is at heart a psychological thriller, and is characterized by superb casting, exceptional acting and a brave willingness to confront murky and difficult issues without resorting to easy answers.


Convicted of the abduction of a child, Jan (Pal Sverre Valheim Hagen, in a stunning performance) is granted early parole to take a job as a church organist, in the same small town where he was tried and sentenced years earlier. Jan flourishes in his new environment for awhile but, despite changes in appearance and taking on a different name, eventually the shocking details of his past slowly encircle him, and his attempts to rebuild his life are mortally threatened.


Troubled Water then unfolds with the telling of two stories, or rather two perceptions of the same story, as we become intimately acquainted with the mother of the dead child (Trine Dyrholm, whose work here is breathtaking) and the deep mental trauma inflicted on her by the tragedy. Along the way there is significant collateral damage; in particular Dyrholm’s husband (Trond Espen Seim), whose desperation to spare his wife further pain is both palpable and self-defeating and Anna (Ellen Dorritt Peterson), the beautiful church pastor who will have her rote platitudes about Christian redemption severely tested.


The film tilts slightly toward melodrama in the final scenes, but that is due more to the subject matter than any conscious decision by director Poppe, and he quickly rights the ship. Important questions are raised about the differences between forgiveness and acceptance, and how in some cases the former may be beyond the capacity of human beings, regardless of the depth of one’s religious convictions.


Troubled Water is a small-scale film made with great skill and meticulous attention to detail. Poppe, Dryholm, Hagen and Seim all acquit themselves very well here, and this absorbing drama may well represent a major turning point in their respective careers.

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