REVIEW: Adams æbler [Adam’s Apples] [2005]

“That’s just plain rude” God works in mysterious ways—very mysterious ways. Or at least that’s what Anders Thomas Jensen‘s pitch-black fable Adams æbler [Adam’s Apples] will have us believe. It may just be plain old faith as the mere belief in good and evil sometimes gets you through the tragedies miring your life, dictating that everything happens for a reason. No matter how bad things get, having the faith that you’ll prevail is literally enough to make it true. To have God in your corner is to possess the strength…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Mænd & høns [Men & Chicken] [2015]

“In fact, they hadn’t been dealt any cards” While I’m not familiar with Anders Thomas Jensen‘s solo work, I am with the films he has collaborated on opposite Susanne Bier. So to see images of his latest Mænd & høns [Men & Chicken] with a weirdly disfigured and hair lipped Mads Mikkelsen readying for a badminton strike was to be unprepared for the dark comedy of pratfalls a la Klovn it provides. A perverse genetic-minded fairy tale about family—warts and more warts—its lead duo consisting of one brother who must…

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REVIEW: Hævnen [In a Better World] [2010]

“Not if you hit hard enough the first time” Heaven. Hell. Life. Death. We live within an existence that holds those four words as gospel. We strive to be good in hope for salvation while the threat of eternal damnation lingers just close enough to fear. Wars—whether big or small, on an international scale or a familial one—make us choose sides. We pick allegiances and create enemies where one might never have been. To be good means there is evil; without one, we could never understand the meaning of the…

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REVIEW: Brødre [Brothers] [2004]

“He had a little boy” I really don’t mind Hollywood remaking films, honestly. If a filmmaker really enjoyed something made overseas, I can’t blame him for wanting to expose America to what resonated so well personally to him. However, shouldn’t he then go the route of Tarantino or Scorsese and bring the actual movie over, helping audiences experience the original? Or have we become so self-righteous and elitist that subtitles cannot be bothered with? Are we really that lazy? To be fair, I haven’t seen the new remake Brothers, so…

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