daniel-sorensen-1 Reviews

The Charmer (2017)

A love story, and what you will and won't sacrifice for what you think will be a better life

[9/10 · 26 August 2018]

Initially starting with Iranian Ezmail, and his quest to find a key to staying in Denmark (or rather a girl who will sign that they are partners), he then meets a daughter of Iranian immigrants, and things become more complicated. At the same time he also starts to encounter the repercussions of his searching for fake love, and of hiding/ignoring his past.

I watched this movie during the Sakhalin film festival, and got to meet Soho Rezanejad afterwards, who game some insight as to her character, and how she can related strongly. And she highlighted that this is not just a story of an immigrant coming to Denmark, and trying to find a way to stay, but also the children of immigrants, and how they search for belonging.

I definitely recommend giving this a watch.

Winged Creatures (2008)

Too many ideas at once... spoils the broth

[3/10 · 25 March 2009]

This appears, to me, to be a film about how people react to a horrific experience, both during but mainly afterwards. This is a very interesting topic, and has many possible angles and ideas. The film tries to deal with at least five of these at once: the closed, the lucky, the selfish, the denier and the one who would have saved.

These characters are all very deep and complex, and could have - no SHOULD have a film each. I really do not think that an hour and a half is nearly long enough to explore and explain these characters sufficiently, and as such the film ends up leaving me feeling empty about each character, not engaging with them. This in turn means that I become very aware that I am watching a film, and as such start to question and criticize, and not live myself into the film and story.

I am left asking questions that I never get answered (why did Whittaker not just pay them a bit of the 100 grand he made - did he WANT his arm broken?, why did the gunman attack and who was he, what did Bekinsale do after the incident other than visit the doctor after the shooting).

Overall the movie becomes unenjoyable and I become uninterested, and in the final lines of the film, rather than a beautiful thought provoking poem it seems little more than meaningless drivel...

I hope you get more out of it :)