Hawaii, Oslo

 

Hawaii, Oslo 2004

• Director: Eric Poppe
• Based on the book: no
• Cast: Trond Espen Seim, Jan Gunnar Röise, Evy Kasseth Rösten, Stig Henrik Hoff, Silje Torp, Petronella Barker
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• None of them
• Why? The title
• Seen: 13 September 2022      

       This is really a case of having no idea what to expect. A Norwegian film I’ve never even heard of. But that title, I’ve just got to see it.

       It’s the hottest it’s been in Oslo for a long time. Leon (Röise) is terrified of meeting his old girlfriend Åsa (Rösten) after eleven years. Vidar (Seim), his mentor at the mental hospital supports and encourages him. Then we have Frode (Hoff) and Milla (Torp) who have just had a baby with a fatal heart defect with a tiny chance to survive if they can raise thousands and thousands for surgery in a private American clinic. Then we have two boys, their suicidal mother, a romantic ambulance driver, a brother in prison for armed robbery…

       The stories and characters weave together. Words like ‘heart-breaking,’ and ‘heart-warming’ come to mind but they’re too trite. Aren’t they? But that’s what this film is. It’s a real gem. I hope you can find it and see it. 

4 ½* of 5   

 

 

 

 

Layer Cake

 

Layer Cake 2004

• Director: Matthew Vaughn
• Based on book: no
• Cast: Daniel Craig, Sienna Miller, Michael Gambon, Sally Hawkins, Tom Hardy, Jamie Foreman, Burn Gorman, George Harris, Colm Meaney, Ben Wishaw
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Daniel Craig – Knives Out, James Bond etc, Defiance, The Golden Compass, Infamous, Road to Perdition, Hotel Splendide, Elizabeth
• Sienna Miller – High-Rise, Stardust, Factory Girl, Alfie
• Michael Gambon – Victor & Abdul, The Hollow Crown, The Casual Vacancy, Quirke, Quartet, Harry Potter etc, Doctor Who, The King’s Speech, The Book of Eli, Cranford, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Gosford Park, Longitude, Sleepy Hollow, Mary Reilly
• Sally Hawkins – The Shape of Water, Maudie, The Hollow Crown, x+y, Great Expectations, Made in Dagenham, Never Let Me Go, An Education, Happy-Go-Lucky, Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky, Vera Drake
• Tom Hardy – Venom, Dunkirk, The Revenant, Legend, Mad Max Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Inception
• Jamie Foreman – Hustle, Doctor Who, Sleepy Hollow, Elizabeth, Nil by Mouth
• Burn Gorman – Imperium, Pacific Rim, The Dark Knight Rises, Bonekickers, Colour Me Kubrick
• George Harris – Harry Potter
• Colm Meaney – One Chance, Parked, The Van, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain, The Last Mohican, The Commitments
• Ben Whishaw – James Bond etc, London Spy, Suffragette, The Zero Theorem, Cloud Atlas, Richard II, The Tempest, Bright Star
• Why? The cast
• Seen: 12 September 2022      

       XXX (Craig) is a businessman who just happens to deal in cocaine. He’s successful, and rich, and he’s going to retire after his next deal.

       That’s what he plans but things rarely go according to plans.

       What makes this run-of-the-mill bad guy drug film is seeing the pre-Bond Craig, Hawkins in a small roll as a gun-toting druggie, Whishaw as a wimpy wannabe tough guy, Harry Potter’s fellow magician from the Ministry of Magic, aka George Harris, as a nasty powerful drug deal middleman, not to mention Dumbledore as a sleazy zillionaire.

       Other than that, it’s definitely not my cup of tea. Yawn. For these actors only 

2 * of 5   

 

 

Z for Zachariah

 

Z for Zachariah 2015

• Director: Craig Zobel
• Seen by this director: 3 episodes of The Leftovers
• Based on book by Robert C O’Brien
• Cast: Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chris Pine
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Margot Robbie – The Suicide Squad, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Mary Queen of Scots, Terminal, I Tonya, The Wolf of Wall Street, About Time
• Chiwetel Ejiofor – Doctor Strange, The Martian, 12 Years a Slave, Dancing on the Edge, 2012, Children of Men, Kinky Boots, Serenity, Love Actually, Dirty Pretty Things, Amistad
• Chris Pine – Wonder Woman, Into the Woods
• Why? Robbie and Ejiofor
• Seen: 11 September 2022      

       Ann (Robbie) lives alone on the family farm in the mountains. Her family has left to find survivors after a nuclear apocalypse. John (Ejiofor) shows up, contaminated, but he has medication, and she brings him back to health. Together they work to expand the farm. She is a devout Christian, he is a scientist, an atheist, but this does not prevent them from becoming very close.

       Then Caleb (Pine) shows up. Also a devout Christian. A decent man. Maybe.

       It’s an unusual post-apocalyptic film. Low-key but suspenseful. Tension grows. Two Christians and an atheist. Two men and a woman. Two whites and a black (though this plays no real part in the drama). Three humans surviving.      

       Robbie and Ejiofor live up to my high expectations. Pine isn’t bad. The film’s weakness is that it’s too much love triangle and not enough post-apocalypse. But it’s still worth seeing. 

3 ½ * of 5   

 

 

Walk Hard - the Dewey Cox Story

 

Walk Hard – the Dewey Cox Story 2007

• Director: Jake Kasdan
• Seen by this director – Orange County
• Based on book: no
• Cast: John C Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Tim Meadows, Raymond J Barry, Margo Martindale, Honeyboy Edwards, Kristin Wiig, a glimpse of Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory), Jack Black appears uncredited as Paul McCartney
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• John C Reilly – Kong Skull Island, A Prairie Home Companion, The Aviator, Chicago, The Hours, The Good Girl, The Gangs of New York, Georgia, Dolores Claiborne, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
• Margo Martindale – many films
• Kristin Wiig – The Martian, Paul, Flight of the Conchords
• Why? Music
• Seen: 10 September 2022      

       For some reason I was expecting a normal film (I hadn’t realised until now that it’s the same director as the dreadful Orange County). I began to suspect that I was mistaken when little Dewey slices his brother in half with a machete and the upper half told him that now he had to do something doubly great for the both of them.

       It’s a spoof on Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, the Beatles – Jack Black as Paul McCartney is brilliant; the Beatles episode is the only good one really. Some bits are amusing but it’s mostly just ridiculous. John C Reilly sure can sing though. 

2 ½ * of 5   

 

Kriget (A War)

 

Kriget (A War) 2015

• Director: Tobias Lindholm
• Based on the book: no
• Cast: Pilou Asbaek, Tuva Novotny
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Pilou Asbaek – Ghost in the Shell, Lucy
• Tuva Novotny -Annihilation, Jalla! Jalla!
• Why? Possibly interesting
• Seen: 29 August 2022      

       Claus Michael (Asbaeck) is a Danish soldier in Afghanistan. His wife Maria (Novotny) is home in Denmark raising the three kids. They speak briefly and irregularly and frustratingly on the phone.

       What’s the point of this film? War is hell? War is meaningless? Bad decisions lead to the deaths of soldiers and civilians? Soldiers suffer guilt and trauma from killing? It’s hard to judge who the enemy is? Wives and kids at home have it rough too?

       Don’t we know all this?

       Maybe we need to be reminded. The film is well done with good acting and no frills. It’s a good film, just not the kind that moves me, a life-long pacifist and peace activist. 

3 ½* of 5   

 

 

 

Jurassic Park

 

Jurassic Park 1993

• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Seen by this director: Ready Player One, BFG, War of the Worlds, Catch Me If You Can, AI, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Schindler’s List, Hook, The Colour Purple, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Sugarland Express, The Duel
• Based on the book by Michael Crichton
• Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Ariana Richards, Samuel L Jackson, Wayne Knight
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Sam Neill – Blackbird, A Long Way Down, Skin, Little Fish, The Piano
• Laura Dern – Big Little Lies, Star Wars the Last Jedi, Wild, The Fault in Our Stars, I Am Sam, October Sky, Citizen Ruth, A Perfect World, Wild at Heart
• Jeff Goldblum – Mortdecai, Igby Goes Down, Independence Day, The Fly, Silverado
• Richard Attenborough – Elizabeth, Hamlet
• Bob Peck – Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Surviving Picasso, Macbeth
• Ariana Richards - Tremors
• Samuel L Jackson – Glass, The Hateful Eight, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, 51^st State, Django Unchained, Jumper, 1408, Star Wars, Kill Bill, Changing Lanes, The Red Violin, Jackie Brown, The Long Kiss Goodnight, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Jungle Fever, Mo’ Better Blues, Sea of Love, Do the Right Thing
• Wayne Knight – Hail Caesar, Third Rock from the Sun, JFK, Dead Again, Born on the Fourth of July, Dirty Dancing
• Why? A classic
• Seen: Once before. Now 8 September 2022      

       It will be interesting to see if this dinosaur film is as good as the more recent British series Primeval which I liked very much. I’m quite sure I’ve seen Jurassic Park, but I don’t remember it at all, which doesn’t really bode well, does it?

       You probably know the story. If not, Google it. A park with live cloned dinosaurs is owned and run by an eccentric zillionaire (Attenborough), who invites sceptical scientists (Dern, Neill and Goldblum) to visit and endorse it. There are kids and murderous dinosaurs and cute dinosaurs and a human villain.

       My question is why in the world does almost every review on IMDb give it 10* or at least 7*? The characters are uber-annoying. Even Samuel L Jackson is lacklustre in a nothing role. It’s not even exciting. Most of the time I was surfing on my mobile.

       My advice: see Primeval instead. I like Sam Neill, though, Richards is good as the girl and the dinosaurs are well done, so instead of 1* it gets     

 2* of 5   

 

 

 

Save the Last Dance

 

Save the Last Dance 2001

• Director: Thomas Carter
• Seen by this director – Swing Kids, TV series
• Based on book: no
• Cast: Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick Thomas, Kerry Washington, Fredro Starr, Terry Kinney, Bianca Lawson
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Julia Stiles – Silver Lining Playbook, Mona Lisa’s Smile, O, Hamlet, 10 Things I Hate about You, Wide Awake
• Sean Patrick Thomas – Honeydripper, The Fountain
• Kerry Washington – Django Unchained, The Miracle at St Ana, The Dead Girl, The Last King of Scotland, Ray, The Human Stain, The United States of Leland, Bad Company
• Fredro Starr – Clockers
• Terry Kinney - Devil in a Blue Dress, The Last Mohican
• Bianca Lawson – The Feast of All Saints, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Why? Dance
• Seen: 7 September 2022      

       Sara Johnson (Stiles) auditions at Juilliard’s dance school on the same day her mother is killed in a traffic accident. She moves to Chicago to live in a squalid flat with her musician father (Kinney) and is enrolled in a nearly all-black school where she is completely out of her depth. With the help of Chenille (Washington) and her own lippy attitude she starts finding her way. Her dancing skills and Chenille’s brother Derek’s (Thomas) willingness to teach her street dancing don’t hurt.

       It’s a teen film with all the expected clichés and stereotypes and some viewers hate it with a vengeance. Why? It’s flawed, yes, but it’s good. It deals with racism and sexism credibly. It’s fun at times and I like the dancing.

       It’s no Billy Elliot, but almost! 

4* of 5