Tim Burton’s lovely portrait of the bizarre director Ed Wood comes to life with an amazing Johnny Depp in the leading role and Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi. I don’t know if everything in this film is the truth, but it sure is very convincing and enjoyable, much thanks …

Richard Gere in his best role as the rebellious Mayo. He goes through one of the toughest military educations and meets the love of his life in the meantime. The story combines heartbreaking romantic sequences with the almost sadistic way the soldiers are treated by their superior officers, and …

Pedro Almodovar has been called the greatest spanish director since Luis Buñuel. In my opinion that title would go to Julio Medem, but I still think Almodovar is great and especially this enigmatic film about strange people. As always in the films of Almodovar, he is not afraid to …

Jim Jarmusch’s first color film since his debut feature Permanent Vacation is a strange story about a couple of people in Memphis, Tennesse. It begins with a japanese couple coming to the city to check out Elvis’ grave. The second story is about a generous and easily fooled italian …

This cult-rated romantic comedy was the very first of a long series of similar films, all starring Meg Ryan as practically the same character. When Harry met Sally was directed by the talented Rob Reiner (even though he wasted his talent at several occasions in my opinion), and also …

Short Cuts is a film by Robert Altman that tells a complex story including several different people. These people’s lives are connected in some way, which they audience are unaware for most of the film. It’s very similar to the later film Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson. I don’t …

A classic film about the race between USA and the Soviet Union about who was developing quickest in space science. This is a Hollywood film and therefore seen through an american’s eyes, but I don’t think it shows only the good sides of america, it’s no propaganda.
The story focuses …

One of three Bergman films that won an academy award for best foreign film. It takes place several hundred years ago in Sweden and tells the tragedy of a young girl who is raped and killed by criminals. Later on her family encounter these people and face the dilemma …

A swedish “action” film about a team of bank robbers and how their actions finally lead to death. I am thrilled to see this kind of garbage from the swedish film industry today. This is probably the worst piece of junk I’ve ever experienced in swedish cinema. The whole …

Perhaps one of Ingmar Bergman’s most underrated film from the late 1960s, as usual by that time with Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow in the leading roles. It’s very uncharacteristic for Bergman as it deals with the atrocities of war, and this loving couple who are slowly driven …

After almost ten years of films that didn’t speak to me the Coen brothers finally created something interesting again. The Man Who Wasn’t There is something of a homage to the old great noir films like The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon. In the center stands Billy Bob …

In the late 1980s, Wim Wenders went back to Germany after working in Hollywood for a number of years and made The Heaven Above Berlin that has been acclaimed as a masterpiece by certain people. It tells the story of an angel, played by the great Bruno Ganz, who …

I’m not sure exactly how I managed to live my life without seeing this particular film, but I have. Upon having seen it, I am glad I have. It was an enjoyable film, the scene when the first girl is killed is quite startling (in my opinion …

Ok, the first A Nightmare on Elm Street was an interesting movie with an interesting premise. Never seen the second so I can’t comment on it, but the third one is just, well, silly.
The plot is essentially the same, except now there are more kids involved. And …

Stephen King adaptation by Brian De Palma. One of Stephen King’s most horrific stories about the young girl with a madly religious mother who proves to have supernatural powers. Carrie is mocked at school by all the others teenagers, but one day she will claim her revenge. The tension …

A film set in the 1920s America when Al Capone ruled the criminal world. Elliott Ness, an FBI agent, sets out to stop the mob boss, and finds help from a patrol officer and an upcoming young FBI agent. Together they dig deeper and deeper into the swamp of …

Wim Wenders was a part of the german new wave in the early 70s along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog for instance. The opinions of Wenders are very divided, and I personally think his later films are very overrated, but back in the 70s and 80s he …

A most mysterious film by french experimental filmmaker Alain Resnais. It’s a film that deals with the human memory. What is the memory and why do we have it? Why do we remember some things and forget others. The narrative is very complex and leaves room for a million …

Kurt Russell portraits the hero Snake Plissken in this cult rated science fiction film by John Carpenter. Manhattan in New York has turned into one giant prison and surrounded by a wall the authorities keep all the scum inside there. Something causes Air Force One to crash in the …

A horror film by Joel Schumacher about a company of young vampires on motorcycles who attack a young man and his brother. It has reached cult reputation by some people who grew up in the 1980s when it came it, but personally I just found it a very long …

Dziga Vertov’s documentary-like film from the 1920s has been acclaimed as one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, and I can do nothing but agree to that. Vertov’s uses his camera in such imaginary ways, showing the people of Moscow through every possible angle and style. He wanted …

The greatest japanese director of all time is Akira Kurosawa if you ask me. Dersu Uzala was his second color film, made in Russia when the master director was out of money and needed to look for investors abroad. The story is about some russian soldiers with a captain …

A hypnotic film with Viggo Mortensen about him coming home after a long time to take care of his younger brother. The Reflecting Skin is the closest thing to cinematic poetry I have ever seen. The boundaries between dream and reality is completely erased here and the only thing …

One of John Carpenter’s earliest attempts of a science fiction film takes place in a space shuttle that is attacked by a mysterious thing having the shape of a big ball. This thing is trying to kill the crew of the space shuttle one by one and finally take …

Another film from a novel by Stephen King, this one considered as one of the most successful. The story is about a writer who’s involved in a car accident and seeks refuge at a woman’s house. She turns out to be a complete psychopath who is obsessed with this …

A documentary film that tries to find out the mystery of the death of music legend Kurt Cobain. It was told Kurt committed suicide, but this documentary presents a series of evidence he was actually killed by his girlfriend Courtney Love.
This could well be the most speculative and idiotic …

Lasse Hallstrom, a swedish filmmaker, has spent most of his career in Hollywod, and Gilbert Grape is probably his most successful film next to The Ciderhouse Rules and Chocolat. Johnny Depp appears as Gilbert and Leonardo DiCaprio as is austistic younger brother. They have a hard life out in …

The swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson debuted with the incredibly successful A Love Story back in the late 1960s. His next film Giliap was very criticised and that made Roy heartbroken, so he stopped making feature films for almost 30 years. Then came World of Glory and Something has happened …

The screenplay of this film was written by Quentin Tarantino, but it was directed by Tony Scott. The result of this got better than I personally would have expected, as it is an amazingly intense action road movie with a lot of graphical violence and a list of quality …

Billy Wilder was one of Hollywood’s most successful and original filmmakers during the golden era. He is most famous for masterpieces like Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity and Some like it hot, but The Lost Weekend is just an important film as those ones in my opinion. It’s the story …

Michelangelo Antonioni’s film about the desolated american youth and the influence of narcotica. A couple of rebellious young people escape from the big city out to the desert and runs around there for a while. Meanwhile they are suspected for criminal activities and chased by the police. That is …

In what is said to be a true story, Johnny Depp appears as the police officer who infiltrates a mafia family as Donnie Brasco. He manipulates a man called Lefty, who believes Donnie is a stand-up guy he can trust. Al Pacino as Lefty and Johnny Depp as Donnie …

Milos Forman’s powerful film about the legendary composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It’s a very colorful and moving portrait, narrated through the eyes of one of Mozart’s competitors during this time, who was only mediocre in comparison. Forman uses an epic style to tell this story, and that works very …

Michael Mann’s depiction of the story Red Dragon with Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecter. This film was actually made before The Silent of the Lambs, the second film from the same novel series. Manhunter is made in a completely different style, very close to that colorful look of the …

A crazy scientist is creating an army of freaks in this supernatural horror film by David Cronenberg, perhaps one of the most disgusting films I ever saw in this genre, but also one of the most overwhelming. The tension is slowly built up and culminates in a macabre final …

For the first time in film history, the legendary american actors AL Pacino and Robert De Niro face each other in this intense action film by Michael Mann. This filmmaker is a rare case of a someone who actually makes intelligent films within the action genre, because his films …

Aguirre is a film by the german visual master Werner Herzog, and features the astonishing actor Klaus Kinski in one of his major roles. The story is about the explorer Aguirre and his team a couple of hundred years ago who went to South America along the Amazon river …

One of Ingmar Bergman’s less known films from the late 50s includes most of his regular acting squad with Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephsson in the frontline in a story about a magician and his helpers travelling around the country to entertain rich people. When he …

Sergio Leone created a whole new style of western films back in the 1960s with the so-called dollar trilogy. I am a big fan of these films, and in courting to most people The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is the most important of these films. Leone used …

This was Michael Moore’s first political documentary, here focusing on his hometown Flint and the way politicians took it out of business on several different levels. Although I more than often agree with what Michael Moore says, I think he uses a cheap and manipulative way of convincing his …

Tim Robbins does an amazing job in this film as an american war veteran who suspects the government is trying to hide something for him. He suspects that he and other soldiers where affected by some form of drug during wartime and he desperately tries to prove this, but …

Clive Barker is known as the artist of flesh, shocking the world with this horror film from the late 1980s. Actually, Barker decided not to follow this up, even though it was both successful among the audience and critically acclaimed. The story is about a family moving in to …

Cronenberg’s cult rated film features James Woods as a man being consumed by media, psychologically and physically, in perhaps the most bizarre way ever seen. It begins as what seems like a very serious and slowly paced film, but ends up as a plain horror film with loads of …

David Cronenberg’s remake of the classic 1950s movie with Vincent Price. Jeff Goldblum is the eccentric scientist who accidentally is transformed into a giant fly. Cronenberg uses a lot of horrific special effects here, and the difference between this and his great Dead Ringers is huge considering the tone …

This film was directed by David Cronenberg, an american underground director who mostly combines a lot of violence and supernatural themes with intelligent and artistic vision. Dead Ringers is considered as his first and greatest leap into a more “serious” style, and it tells the story of two twin …

Michael Winterbottom is a british filmmaker who has a very extensive production on his resume the last 10 years. The critics have been very positive about all of these films that include 24 hour party people and Welcome to Sarajevo. He often uses a documentary-like style and focuses a …

After his masterpiece The draughtsman’s contract back in the early 1980s, the expectations on Peter Greenaway where enormous on my account. He created some very impressive pieces of work through the remaining 80s that included the puzzling Drowning by numbers and the macabre The cook, the thief, his wife …

An english costume drama set in the early 1900s about a young woman who’s having trouble chosing her partner. The film was directed by James Ivory, most well-known for his film The Remains of the day with Anthony Hopkins in a brilliant performance. As with that film, A room …

I have just returned from seeing the long-awaited Narnia movie (”The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” based on the novel by C.S.Lewis). The movie was excellent!! They didn’t change any of the story, the casting and acting was great, and the computer-generated characters were real and believable. The …

One of Bunuel’s less known films tells a story about a couple of mexican crooks hijacking a street car in Mexico City. It takes place in one whole day and these crooks experience a number of different things they would never had expected. It feels a lot like a …