The Animal Kingdom

Leslie Howard stars in this film as Tom Collier and I (Gunnar) remember him from my childhood or adolescence from different roles, not least 'The Scarlet Pimpernel', 'Pygmalion' and 'Pimpernel Smith' but also from many other films.

In this film he is a rather selfish and egocentric man who has a relationship with Daisy (Ann Harding). Everyone finds them being the 'perfect couple' but the day he decides to marry, he marries another woman, Cecilia (Myrna Loy).
He is soon bored with his life, not least his 'social duties' being connected to the fact that he is a best selling author. The problem is however that he writes books people want to read but not the books he wants to write.
In his home he has an old friend working as a butler, the friend having had problems with alcohol, or rather still having problems with alcohol. He is also a very rough and rude character, not pleasing neither Tom's wife nor the guests. Cecilia wants him fired.
At this point Tom is longing for Daisy again as he realizes that she was the woman for him but Daisy reacts in a quite different way from what he had expected. She leaves in order to protect both him and Cecilia and this causes some problems.

The story in itself is rather dull and not very imaginative but what saves the film is of course the acting and not least from Leslie Howard's side. He incarnates the intolerable individual very well and this is perhaps the ingredient making the film tolerable.

Les neiges du Kilimandjaro

We don't get to see much of the snow of Kilimandjaro but it plays a certain role in the film anyway.
This is not the film 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' from 1952 with Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward and Ava Gardner but the one from 2011 directed by Robert Guédiguian.
It's inspired by a poem by Victor Hugo; 'Les pauvres gens' ('The Poor People'. Did he depict anything else but the poor and 'Miserables'?).

In the principal role as Michel we see Jean-Pierre Darrousin, as a man working in a factory and also being a fervent representative for the trade union. His married to Marie-Claire (Ariane Ascaride, in real life Guédiguian's wife) since 30 years.
Michel and 20 other workers loses their jobs when hard times hit the company and he is responsible for a sort of lottery system, where one randomly draw those who must leave the company.

After leaving his job, his colleagues organize a party to celebrate his and his wife's 30 years as a married couple and it's during this party Kilimandjaro becomes the topic. They have raised money and bought a ticket to Mount Kilimandjaro in Tanzania for the couple. They also sing a song by Pascal Danel called "Les Neiges du Kilimandjaro", thus the title of the film.
Up til this point, everything is fine but during an evening with their best friends Raoul (Gérard Meylan) and Denise (Marilyne Canto), playing bridge, some men burst into their apartment and brutally rob them of their money.
This traumatize not least Denise, who becomes psychologically unstable and insecure.
Some time after this, Michel discovers two children reading a rare comic book, also being stolen at the same time and by following them, he discovers that it leads him to their older brother, Christophe (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), one of the workers being discharged the same day as Michel.
Now the film take another turn, as Michel is having feelings of guilt after having reported Christophe to the authorities, leading to his arrest and imprisonment. Raoul doesn't share his feelings, on the contrary, he thinks that Christophe has been mildly treatened. This is very understandable as the robbery made his wife become terrified, traumatized for life perhaps.
What bothers Michel's wife Marie-Claire, is the children, the two younger brothers of Christophe. Without knowing it, they both start to arrange for them.

Robert Guédiguian's film takes on questions about guilt and responsibility, of moral on different levels.
When the workers where dismissed this was done by drawing lots and even though Michel saw to that he himself became one of those having to leave the factory, the process in itself might have created a lot of anger and disappointment with those being 'selected'.
On the other hand, the primary anger was directed towards the responsible managers at the company but as so often with people prefering the collective, they didn't dare to rage against those being outermost responsible, instead they hit against people being almost in the same situation as them. So common among cowardly people.
Christophe later in the film argues with Michel (when the latter visits him in prison) meaning that Michel is leaving a bourgeois life, the former leftist and unionist. This is more or less true as Michel - as most people being a part of what I (Gunnar) call the 'chic leftists' - is living a rather good life, though not being rich.
On the other hand, this doesn't justify Christophe's actions, as he doesn't strike against the 'power' but the lower parts of the hierarchy in the enterprise. This not least as he and his friends are using an exaggerated amount of violence, depriving Michel and his wife of the little money they have.
This is of course what the politicians and decision makers, including the heads of different enterprises want: Let the 'populace' fight each other, that way we are left alone. This approach doesn't change the conditions in society on a profound level but this is of course what our politicians want.
The acting is however excellent and the story is engaging in many ways. Than, we all side with either Michel and Marie-Claire or Raoul and Denise, tend to understand - or not - the way Christophe acts but perhaps all of us, pity the children whose mother (Karole Rocher) is an irresponsible person with not empathy for her children.
Perhaps are we able to see each and every side of this story, thus being able to understand every character to a certain extent?









(Photo poster copied from: http://www.avoir-alire.com/IMG/jpg/les_neiges_du_kilimandjaro_grande-2263d.jpg)
(Photo Jean-Pierre Darrousin et Ariane Ascaride copied from: http://www.cinemovies.fr/images/data/photos/21238/les-neiges-du-kilimandjaro-2011-21238-1278497139.jpg)
(Photo Jean-Pierre Darrousin with a gun to his head copied from: http://www.le75011.fr/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/jean_pierre_darroussin_les_neiges_du_kilimandjaro.jpg)

El Topo

El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky) is not a particularly sympathic person, to say the least. On the same time he is a mystic and mythic individual, claiming himself to be God. He is not the first and not the last.
He is a mixture between a classic gunfighter à la Wild West and a samurai à la Wild East.

His goal is to confront a number of warrior Masters in order to reach a higher state of consciousness and on the same time fight those demons having haunted him for so long.
However, the journey starts with him taking his 6 year old son (Brontis Jodorowsky) into the dessert in order to make him bury his childhood totems and thus become a man.

El Topo later arrives in a village where bandits have slaughtered most people and now want to rape the young woman belonging to their leader. El Topo intervenes and avenges the massacred villagers, taking the woman as his.
Her name is Mara (not Rooney Mara but Mara Lorenzio). He rides away with Mara and leaves his son with some monks who also had been harassed by the bandits. El Topo's son becomes totally devastated but his father doesn't care less.
El Topo now confronts one after another among the Masters and by using foul tricks he is able to conquer them all.
Through this special 'catharsis' he is gradually tranformed into a more wise and self-reflective person, building a society of believers who in him see a - or - 'The Saviour'. He is by other men seen as a crazy fool, as so often with people claiming themselves having a special gift and not least if it's a spiritual one.
In the end his son will get his revenge too.

For those of you not familiar with Jodorowsky, this is not a regular Western or 'action' film, nor is it a straight forward spiritual journey. Jodorowsky combines all of this genres and aspects and from this he creates his own special aesthetics.
It's not a master piece in all its details but it's a very interesting genre-crossing experience, in which you can find interesting questions about life and death, violence and non-violence, the evolution or decline of human existence.
In short, it's a very personal film and I recommend it to those of you not necessary wanting a linear story and a totally transparent plot.

Mission Impossible 4 - Ghost Protocol

Another Mission Impossible, always turning out not to be impossible and this time with a Swede as the 'villain': Michael Nyqvist.

An IMF agent - Trevor Hanaway (Josh Holloway) - is killed by an assassin, Sabine Moreau (Léa Seydoux) and a team, lead by Jane Carter (Paula Patton) with field agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), help releasing Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his source Bogdan (Miraj Grbic) from a Moscow prison.
A bomb destroys the Kremlin and the Russian agent Sidorov (Vladimir Mashkov) arrests Hunt as he thinks the latter is responsible for this catastrophy. He is not however as his mission was to infiltrate the Kremlin archives in order to identify 'Cobalt', a code name for a person Hanaway was looking for before being killed.
The Russians call this an "undeclared act of war" and the US president activates "Ghost Protocol", a black operation contingency aiming at disavowing the entire IMF.
If Hunt and his associates take the blame for this attack, they will be allowed to ecape and track down Cobalt but before Hunt escape, the IMF's secretary (Tom Wilkinson) is killed by the Russian security forces, leaving Hunt and intelligence analyst William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) on their own, together with the two others.
Cobalt is identified as Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) a Swedish-born Russian nuclear strategist who believes that the weak must die in order to let the strong survive. To reach his goal he plans to start a nuclear war, in order to initiate a higher level of human evolution(?). Really? How?

Well, from now on the action is on and we follow this team leading them to achieve things becoming more and more dangerous, like climbing on the outside of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the climbing done by our 'super hero' Ethan Hunt of course.
The film contains the usual clichés and Michael Nyqvist is not to impressive as a dangerous madman, trying to fight against Cruise's Hunt.
For those of you enjoying explosives, fights and all the other ingredients in an action movie, be my guest.
For the rest of us there are some humour involved in all this, not least thanks to Simon Pegg.
The theme with a mad scientist and also coming from Russia felt as if we had been transported back to the Cold War era and the US-Russian conflicts. Of course there are conflicts between these two nations today too but it didn't strike us as particularly innovative to use these ingredients.

Director: Brad Bird.

Kalde Spor/Cold Tracks

This is a Norwegian film directed by Arne Skouen, one of the most renowned Norwegian directors.

We meet Oddmund (Toralv Maurstad), a man who during WWII served as a guide for twelve refugees trying to reach Sweden. The year was 1944.
When we now meet him, fifteen years later, he is back where it all happened in a cabin far north in the Norwegian mountains. Why?
When trying to help the refugees he ordered them to stay and wait for his love, Ragnhild (Henny Moan). This made them lose a lot of time and time was something they didn't have.
When she, two days later, arrived she didn't have the strenght to continue when they decided to move on. The storm increased and when Oddmunds rival Tormod (Alf Malland) came to help Ragnhild, Oddmund sent the refugees ahead before him, leading to their death.
Now he has returned, driven by his bad conscience, trying to relive the events and finding peace of mind, if possible.

We are being cast back and forth between now and then and gradually we get to see why things ended the way they did.
Is actually Oddmund fully responsible for what has happened or do they all (Oddmund, Ragnhild and Tormod) share the responsibility for the tragedy.
It's a film where one can feel the ice cold winter under the skin, also shaping the feelings of the different characters.
On the same time we know that many Norwegians made heroic efforts to help people who tried to escape the Nazi 'Wahnsinn'. Sometimes it worked out well, sometimes it didn't.
In this case the question is if purely personal feelings of jealousy was responsible for the death of these refugees. Judge for yourselves.