The Devil's Den (2006)

This is probably a low budget movie and I would include it in the B/rented-VHS class - meaning movies you might watch with your friends to be with your friends and have some (gory) fun. For its class The Devil's Den is quite good: there are some collage segments, some acceptable self-ironic one liners, even some turns of plot unexpected for the class. For me it is quite a revelation that certain techniques penetrated down to this type. It is almost as if you watch a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie with a (post)modern touch.

Skenbart - en film om tåg (2003)

Also knows as 'Illusive Tracks' this one is simply delicious. I had no idea Swedes can have such a good sense of humor. It is amazing how much timing is important to make a good comedy and the actors take their time to get the rhythm just right. The plot is about a train ride from Stockholm for Berlin right after the war and about doing good and being idealistic again. Lots happen during that night. There are no characters, no deep imagery but Peter Dalle's dialog is brilliant for the context. It could be a sort of slapstick with Wittgenstein as a guiding idea. You'll love it.

Esma's Secret - Grbavica (2006)

Nothing extraordinary happens in this film but there is something that makes me feel all the movies to be like this. I also remembered that there are things I will never know. Not because lack of time or resources but simply because I am me and nobody else. It makes me feel generaly alone and appreciate moments when I feel togetherness even if it is over trivial things like asking for a bier and getting the bier. 'Grbavica' won the Golden Berlin Bear in 2006.

Paul und Paula

It's nice. Also it's about GDR. Paula is all feeling and Sehnsucht, and also she's in love with Paul. She has children which she rather accidentally acquired in the search of men before. Paul is very honest and good-hearted, that's why his wife cheats on him. He loves Paula because she never would, but he also loves his son. But he also loves Paula. I liked how laconically and curtly the story is told, especially at the beginning when both their first partnerships are elapsing in the rhythms of some seemingly universal pattern, from which Paula's dreams then fly to surreal places of flower-covered drifting; and how the movie ends, just as laconically, yet warm.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

The movie is about how hard is to get there even when 'there' is nowhere important. I would probably like the movie if it would be less pretentious: there are times when the cheesiest things happen and I am just not there. I know that in 'real life' cheesy things happen all the time and I am fine with that. But this is a movie and I want them to acknowledge that and cover the very obvious morals. I am not the kind of public that appreciates it. Otherwise the movie is almost nice, a normal life type of surreal suffuses the events in spite of the happy end. I would be curious what other people feel/think about it. It won two Oscars one of which for the screenplay - was Babel or El laberinto del fauno or The queen worse than this one? I am not sure. All I can say is that the movie appeals to imdbs.

The City Of Lost Children

Imagine a man that is not able to draem, so he becomes old very quick. That is why he kidnaps children to steal there dreams. This man lives at a platform out in the sea with cloned brothers, Madmoiselle Bismuth and Irvin, the brain (which lives in an aquarium filled with green water with an ovjective, representing his eyes). So sometimes children disapear from the city whom nobody misses, but one day they steal Denrée. His big brother the cyclop(who found Denrée in the garbage when he was a baby) starts to pursue the kidnappers to find out where they bring his little brother. He gets help from a streetgirl , the nine years old Miette, who lives in an orphanage, which is run by two strange and cruel twin sisters. A weard fantasy movie not for children.