Film Freak Central

The Green Butchers (2003)

De Grønne slagtere
**½/****
starring Line Kruse, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Mads Mikkelsen, Nicolas Bro
written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. There's nothing groundbreaking about Anders Thomas Jensen's blessedly non-Dogme The Green Butchers, the latest movie to mine the consumption of human flesh for laughs (even the title suggests a cheeky allusion to Soylent Green)--but for a comedy, that most culturally-specific of genres, the Danish production travels remarkably well. Credit a skillful subtitle translation that preserves the wit of Jensen's repartee, not to mention the chemistry between stars Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who, as chronic perspirer Svend and pothead Bjarne, respectively, transcend language like some nouveau Ren and Stimpy. (That being said, they're occasionally too redolent of Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro for this writer's comfort.) Proprietors of the new butcher shop in town, Svend and Bjarne face early foreclosure until an electrician accidentally freezes to death in their meat locker, inspiring a desperate Svend to turn the corpse's thigh into fillets he promptly dubs "chickie-wickies." These cutlets catch on with the locals, natch, and the desire to stay popular transforms Svend into a serial killer, with Bjarne acting as his reluctant but too-stuporous-to-resist accomplice.

TIFF '12: A Royal Affair

En Kongelig Affære
***/****
directed by Nikolaj Arcel

by Angelo Muredda A Royal Affair isn't exactly Barry Lyndon, but as period pieces go, it's surprisingly robust, the rare costume drama that takes a genuine interest in how the unruly personalities of rulers and politicians determine a nation's political outcomes as much as the ideologies they represent. It doesn't seem so promising at first, beginning as it does with a title card that sets the scene with ominous overtones. "It is the Age of Enlightenment," we're told in the tasteful font of "Masterpiece Theatre", and while the rest of Europe has gone through a massive philosophical and ethical shift with respect to its perception of peasants and landed gentry, Denmark has remained an outpost of the old, thanks in no small part to the conservative court that pulls the strings of mad young King Christian (Mikkel Følsgaard, Best Actor winner at Berlin). Enter his blushing new Welsh bride and our narrator, Caroline (Alicia Vikander), a revolutionary intellect--her book collection doesn't pass the Danish board of censors--who flounders in the country she now rules until things are livened by Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), a German doctor and secret pamphleteer of the Enlightenment sent to bring sense back to the erratic King.

TIFF '12: The Hunt

Jagten
**½/****
directed by Thomas Vinterberg

by Angelo Muredda The Hunt hinges on a misunderstanding, a nasty story born of a child's bruised ego and happily seized by a pack of overeager concern trolls calling themselves adults. But there's a whole other story about misunderstanding to be spun from how the film will surely be received in different quarters as either a devastating portrait of small-town life or a grim black comedy. That one is all on director and Dogme 95 cofounder Thomas Vinterberg. While it's always dicey to ascribe authorial intent, Vinterberg seems to waffle between middlebrow tragedy and scattershot satire not out of some postmodern commitment to walking the edge of irony, but because the script can't really sustain a further push in either direction. That makes The Hunt a provocative film, sure, but also a bit of a lazy one--a conversation starter without much follow-through.

Animal Kingdom (2010) + Valhalla Rising (2010)

ANIMAL KINGDOM
***½/****
starring Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Luke Ford, Guy Pearce
written and directed by David Michôd

VALHALLA RISING
****/****
starring Mads Mikkelsen, Maarten Stevenson, Gordon Brown, Andrew Flanagan
screenplay by Roy Jacobsen & Nicolas Winding Refn
directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

by Walter Chaw David Michôd's Animal Kingdom respects its audience, a rare commodity during the best of times. The film flatters us by leaving exposition and backstory to our knowledge of anthropology--in fact, Animal Kingdom is best indicated by its unwavering reserve--a reluctance, almost--to say too much when slow, fluid tracking motions and static, medium-distance establishing shots may suffice. Consider a frankly gorgeous tableau late in the film as three people meet in Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria: framed against an open space, Michôd allows an extra beat, then another, before continuing with his family gothic. The story isn't an afterthought, but the dialogue, however minimal, seems to be. The picture's told through its actions and its images and, in that way, reminds of a Beat Takeshi film, of all things, what with its focus on criminality and its enthralling slowness. If there's another indie demiurge to which Michôd pays obeisance, it's Michael Mann--and the success of the picture (as shrine to masculinity, as introspective character study) suggests that cribbing from Kitano and Mann, if it's as successful a larceny as this, can be successful in no other way.