March Films¶
1063 words on Films
This month with Up in the Air, Il Colosso di Rodi, Smukke Dreng, The Ghost Writer and Män som hatar kvinnor.
Up in the Air
Unlike most other people I actually like flying on planes, so I found it tempting to watch Up In The Air [IMDB], despite looking like an overly cheesy George Clooney film. The selling point was that Clooney’s persona is flying around a lot on business – his job being the charming one of firing people when their managers don’t have the balls to do that themselves – and really loves the lifestyle without a home a gazillions of frequent flyer miles.
In fact he’s obsessed with those miles, finally reaching some super-frequent-flyer status with a platinum card or so and even starts an affair with a fellow miles-lover after they showed off their membership cards to each other in a bar. And then comes the cheesy bit: His company wants to do their work on a screen via the internet rather than having their staff visit the affected companies. And it’s made clear that the personal touch is important to make being fired tolerable. Being as charming as he is, you’ll of course be delighted to be fired by Clooney who won’t hesitate to point out all the great opportunities this opens to you. But, seriously, that idea of teleworking mainly means that you don’t get any frequent flyer miles when doing it.
Further cheesy bits come with his sister’s wedding. He hardly knows his family, but still eventually goes there and puts up with them, actually even using his charme to convince the groom that he really wants to go ahead with the wedding, even though he finds the idea ridiculous himself.
I don’t think any of that made particularly much sense. But it was cool to observe the perfectly smooth packing, checking in and passing security controls routine the protagonist had set up for himself.
I was surprised, btw, by the sense of loss and anger people expressed when being fired. In our romantic image of the USA, it’s a country full of entrepreneurs where the hire-and-fire motto is lived fully. I would have expected people to be more used to being kicked out in such an environment. But perhaps debts and a lack of social system just make people less relaxed.
Il Colosso di Rodi
Il colosso di Rodi [a.k.a The Colossus of Rhodes, IMDB, Wikipedia] is a film made by Sergio Leone in 1961 which I saw to get to know his work a bit better after enjoying his ‘dollar’ films recently.
While a few scenes in the film look exactly like they could have been in one of those American films, the general story and drama doesn’t live up to their standards. The story about ancient wars and occupants of Rhodes may have more ‘history’ behind it and the Colossus earned its position as a ‘Wonder of the World’, yet the film is mostly what one would expect from an ancient drama: sandals, circus and an uprising. Not really my cup of tea.
Smukke Dreng
Smukke dreng [a.k.a. Pretty Boy IMDB] is an early 1990s Danish film about a thirteen year old boy, Nick, who doesn’t want to stay at home with his poor promiscuous mother, doesn’t find the friend he wanted to stay with and ends up with a gang of hustlers who have a side business in theft.
While those circumstances are rather unpleasant – as is the impression you get of Copenhagen which is mainly pictured as a city of old guys who dig young boys – Nick doesn’t seem to mind, does his work, looking for father-figures in the process. Eventually he falls for fellow hustler Rene who is actually a tomboyish girl and more-or-less accidentally kills one of his former father figures after his confirmation.
The storyline may be a little weird. Yet, the main attraction seems to be the fact that Nick doesn’t mind the aspects of his life which I’d consider weird, painful or dangerous and is fine going along with it, possibly finding it exciting. And the story is quite consistent at portraying that.
The Ghost Writer
Roman Polanski’s latest film The Ghost Writer [IMDB] features Ewan McGregor as a ghost writer and Pierce Brosnan (does he start looking like Ronald Reagan?) as the former British prime minister whose autobiography he’s supposed to write. Unfortunately the ghost writer’s predecessor in that job died while writing the book and was a bad writer. Hence the Ghost Writer has a lot to do: writing and figuring out why the guy died. He does so thanks to some photos which the former writer hid in his room and the stupid BMW navigation system which leads him to a relevant place – the target his predecessor had set. I found that setup rather lame (why didn’t anybody just turn the damn navigation system off?) but its in a pretty setup with funky architecture and the notion that big politics can be greatly criminal.
Män som hatar kvinnor
Stieg Larsson is a Swedish author writing crime novels which I heard lauded to be a bit more exciting than the usual Swedish crime fare that’s so popular on German television. And there’s a film for his book Män som hatar kvinnor [translated Men who hate women, a.k.a. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a.k.a. Verblendung; IMDB, Wikipedia].
The film is about journalist Mikael Blomkvist who essentially loses his job due to some litigous rich person and goes on to work for Mr Vanger, another rich person to research some family history, specifically the case of his niece Harriet who disappeared decades ago. While on this hopeless job he meets Lisbeth who somehow manages to spy out his Powerbook without him noticing and who’s clever enough to help him shed some light on this case and unveil a bunch of nasty family secrets which lead to both of them risking their lives and, ‘solving’ the case.
But that’s just scratching the surface, there are many side-stories in the film (and people claim the film loses a lot of the book’s detail), each of which touches unpleasant topics like being abused by a guardian or relatives’ Nazi past. Much better than the TV crime film I had anticipated.
