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Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Mr. Smithee’s advice for your DVD rental queue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Get ready to adjust your Netflix queue. Arriving today on DVD is Susanne Bier’s wonderful “After the Wedding,” a thoroughly involving and often surprising Danish film starring the equally wonderful Mads Mikkelsen (for you non-foreign film aficionados, he was the villain in “Casino Royale”).
Nominated for this year’s foreign film Oscar (it lost to “The Lives of Others”), “Wedding” is a drama about family secrets. And like in so many Danish films, when those secrets peek out, hold onto your armchair.
So many movielovers prefer French films, but I’m a sucker for the Danes. There’s a consistent thread of intelligence in their films and the story often seems so indelibly fused with the art of filmmaking.
Here are a few other great Danish films (I’ve intentionally left out “Babette’s Feast” because so many have already seen it):
1. “Open Hearts” (2002). Bier’s best film, it involves a couple devastated by a tragic street accident and the doctor (Mikkelsen) who steps in. 2. “Reconstruction” (2003). One of the best movies ever about love and its frailty. 3. “The Five Obstructions” (2003). This is textbook Lars von Trier; a documentary unleashing his diabolical genius on a fellow filmmaker. 4. “The Celebration” (1998). Family secrets will get you every time. 5. “The Idiots” (1998). Von Trier’s experimental Dogma film with cult-like characters playing out their individual inner spaz.
Oh, and about that Mikkelsen. If you want to see him at his finest, check out the edgy, vicious and heartbreaking drug-and-crime drama “Pusher 2.”
Besides, there’s nothing wrong with subtitles. Is there?
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