Watch films made in 43 different countries

Jar City is a good thriller with a twist that could only happen in Iceland. The 90 minutes flew by and I’d happily have watched more.

A murder opens up a bleak trail of long buried secrets and small town corruption for a worn out police detective and his squad.

Tales from the Golden Age

Tales from the Golden Age (Romanian: Amintiri din epoca de aur) is a 2009 Romanian omnibus film. The film is composed of five whimsical yet blackly comic short stories, each one set in the late communist period in Romania and based on urban myths from the time, reflecting the perspective of ordinary people. The title of the film refers to the alleged “Golden Age” (by communist propaganda) of the last 15 years of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime.

Really interesting to see inside this culture during Ceausescu’s regime without the propaganda being all we see.

Let The Right One In

A really stylish and quite unscary horror film (apart from a bit of blood!). Definitely recommended.

We recorded this ages ago and only got round to watching it tonight.
Wish I’d watched it earlier but really glad I’ve seen it now. I’ve no intention of watching the Hollywood remake though.

Troll Hunter

“A group of students investigates a series of mysterious bear killings, but learns that there are much more dangerous things going on. They start to follow a mysterious hunter, learning that he is actually a troll hunter.”

In the same style as Blair Witch Project but based in Norway around trolls. Better plot than BWP. I really enjoyed this film which we watched in Norweigan with English subtitles. Wouldn’t have been the same if we had chosen the dubbed version.

District 9

Enjoyed this film but didn’t want to watch it when it came out as I didn’t enjoy the trailer. The trailer wasn’t really that indicative about the film style and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

It’s not a mindless alien/SciFi film but a really thought provoking film about humanity and apartheid.

Definetly recommended.

Watched Volver tonight. I haven’t watched any Almodóvar for years and really enjoyed this.

“After her death, a mother returns to her home town in order to fix the situations she couldn’t resolve during her life.”

“A girl who thinks she is a combat cyborg checks into a mental hospital, where she encounters other psychotics. Eventually, she falls for a man who thinks he can steal people’s souls.”

Yes it is as odd as that but really well made and quite compelling. Very odd subject choice for a rom com!

Saw Scott Pilgrim tonight. Great fun film to watch.
Wish I had pink hair like Ramona ;) Unfortunately I just can’t do that for work…

Is it a Canadian film though?

Lemon Tree. The story of a Palestinian widow who must defend her lemon tree grove when a new Israeli Defense Minister moves next to her and threatens to have her lemon grove torn down.

This was an interesting film for many reasons. There were quite a lot of unexpected angles and nice touches to the film. I was nicely surprised that an Israeli film was so sympathetic to a Palestinian woman but was fairly unsympathetic to both Israeli and Palestinian men. Perhaps I shouldn’t start watching a film with preconceptions.

In addition, I’m not sure I’ve seen normal day-to-day scenes inside the Palestinian Occupied Territories before and found it interesting for that angle too.

Had a big French film day today.
Still not feeling well but now have enough concentration to watch a film (or three…)

1 – Couscous (aka The Secret of the Grain / La Graine et le Mulet) – interesting but not as great as I’d hoped

2 – Apres Vous – I usually enjoy Daniel Auteuil films but this was too cheesy/cringy to enjoy properly all the way through

3 – Crimson Rivers (aka Les rivières pourpres) – started watching this earlier but realised that hubby would enjoy this more than the other French films I had recorded so stopped part way through and restarted it later on – definitely recommend this and not just because it had Jean Reno in it ;) For me this was the best film of the day.