Fallen Leaves (2023)

I had never seen a Finnish flick before. My dad and I decided this was one of the more promising entries in the AFI European Union Film Showcase. A runtime of 81 minutes may have contributed to that assessment.

In Helsinki, Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) both have trouble keeping jobs and making ends meet, Holappa because of his alcoholism, Ansa more from bad employers. After a couple happenstance encounters, they quickly develop an interest in each other. But for reasons that are unclear to me, they don't exchange names, which makes connecting a little difficult when they get even less lucky. Ansa also considers heavy drinking a dealbreaker.

Flee (2021)

I was not aware that a nearly fully animated feature with voice actors not all playing themselves could be called a documentary, tho some have come close. Waltz with Bashir may have been the first I saw that truly qualified. Anyway, I watched Flee partly to complete another year's worth of Academy Best Animated Feature nominees and partly because, on a flight where I had trouble hearing the dialog through earbuds, subtitles came in handy.

Amin (not his real name) lives in Denmark for quite some time without telling anyone, even his fiancé (not fiancée), what his life was like before. As the trauma interferes with his conviction to marry, he finally opens up to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen about how his family of six had to get away from the rigors of wartime Afghanistan and then Soviet Russia when he was a teen. For most of the story, they were not all together.

Black Widow (2021)

While my mom enjoyed Wonder Woman and Black Panther, she was only half-interested in this woman-led superhero feature. If Dad and I had decided to go to the theater instead of using Disney+, she wouldn't have watched. Hey, it has only a marginally better reception than Captain Marvel at present. But I still didn't feel like waiting any longer to see it.

I knew this was a prequel, but I didn't realize that most of the plot took place in the wake of Captain America: Civil War, when Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding from the U.S. government for being among the rebel Avengers. She's not actually the only "Black Widow," just the most public; there's quite an army of thusly dubbed hitwomen trained from childhood under General Dreykov (Ray Winstone). Yelena (Florence Pugh), a Widow who had basically been Natasha's foster sister for a few years, finally makes contact again out of desperation: Dreykov has been controlling the Widows' actions via a chemical compound, but a special gas in a small supply of vials can counteract the effect instantly, completely, and indefinitely. To distribute the gas as needed, Natasha and Yelena will need to learn the location of the base of operations, known as the Red Room, with help from their past ersatz parents, Melina (Rachel Weisz) and Alexei (David Harbour). Of course, they'll be up against a lot of similarly skilled women, including an intimidatingly armored elite whom Wikipedia identifies as Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko).

A Woman's Face (1941)

Once again, George Cukor directs an MGM feature with a feminine focus in the title and a nasty role for Joan Crawford. This one has a tighter plot and is set in Sweden, thanks to the play on which it's based. (OK, I'm having trouble finding good info on the play, but there was a Swedish adaptation in 1938.)

Blackmail ringleader Anna (Crawford) has spent most of her life with burn scars on the right half of her face, aversions to fire and mirrors, and misanthropy, especially toward beautiful people, tho she makes an exception for seductive Torsten (Conrad Veidt). When she unexpectedly meets a great and charitable plastic surgeon, Gustaf (Melvyn Douglas)...well, see how Crawford usually looked on screen in those days. Anna's a lot less bitter once people admire her appearance, but wickedness doesn't dry up overnight, especially if you've been keeping wicked company. In particular, Torsten hopes she still has what it takes to serve as a governess to his four-year-old nephew, Lars-Erik (Richard Nichols), only to bump him off to secure Torsten a bigger inheritance from Uncle Magnus (Albert Bassermann).

Frozen II (2019)

I had planned to see this in a theater but put it off too long. Maybe I was too afraid it would be...not bad, but far below its predecessor, which I loved. It did get pretty mixed reviews. Still, I doubted that Missing Link deserved a Best Animated Feature nomination more. Maybe one piece set in 19th-century snowy Scandinavia was the Academy's limit.

A few years after the last events of Frozen, things have cooled down, as it were, in the pseudo-Norwegian kingdom of Arendelle. Not much has been happening for our heroes, except that Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) has had trouble proposing to Princess Anna (Kristen Bell), while her older sister, Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel), despite getting to be sociable again, retains a life dissatisfaction apparently connected to her growing ice powers -- which helps explain why, when only she can hear a mysterious distant singing voice, she warms up to the idea of following it. Her pursuit leads to something out of an account she heard from her dad (Alfred Molina) in childhood, involving agitated spirits of the classical elements who threaten both Arendelle and the pseudo-Norwegian Northuldra tribe. At the advice of a troll elder (Ciarán Hinds), she sets out for an enchanted forest for a solution, accompanied by Anna, Kristoff, and Olaf the living snowman (Josh Gad).

Klaus (2019)

Wow, a brand new Christmas movie in the IMDb top 250. Has that ever happened before? And how long can we expect it to stay up there? There seemed no better choice for me to watch on Christmas itself.

The setting appears to be 19th-century Scandinavia, in an alternate timeline where the Santa Claus legend hasn't started yet. Jesper (Jason Schwartzman) is in a postal academy out of sheer nepotism and wants to flunk out and return to a spoiled life without obligation, but his father will not oblige him so easily. Instead, he is assigned to the far-northern, remote island town of Smeerensburg, where he must deliver 6,000 letters in one year or be disowned. The unfriendly citizens are caught up in a clan feud and have no desire to write to anyone. Jesper is about to give up when he accidentally delivers a kiddie drawing to hermit Klaus (J.K. Simmons), who has made many unused toys and decides to press Jesper into delivering one to that kid. Jesper spreads word among the children that letters to Klaus result in nighttime toy deliveries, and the legend begins to take shape.

Headhunters (2011)

I had not heard of this until Dad rented it, and he couldn't remember where he heard of it. Neither of us knew before the opening credits that it was foreign—Norwegian, to be exact. The only other film from Norway I recall seeing is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and it figures that this one makes several shout-outs to the series. Yet Headhunters set a national record for widespread distribution.

There's a bit of wordplay in the directly translated title. The protagonist, Roger Brown (yes, he's Norwegian), is a corporate recruiter who does an esteemed job, but if his clients knew what he was up to, they wouldn't appreciate him: His interview questions make it easy for him to sneak into their homes and replace their valuable paintings with forgeries, with help from a corrupt employee of a security company, Ove, who takes a share of the sales. Their troubles begin in earnest after stealing from Clas Greve, executive, former soldier, and different kind of headhunter....

Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013)

The entire Department Q trilogy was on a list of favorite Netflix screening options. I took care to start with the first, not The Absent One (2014) or A Conspiracy of Faith (2016). They all have similar IMDb scores. Perhaps I should have noted that their Rotten Tomatoes scores get progressively much higher.

Somewhere in Denmark, impulsive policeman Carl has botched a raid, leaving his partners out of commission and himself needing months of recovery. Afterward, no one else on the force wants to work with him, so the chief invents a Department Q, populated by Carl and assistant Assad, for sorting files of closed cases. But before long, Carl gets suspicious about a woman's reported suicide: Why do that on a cruise with her heavily brain-damaged brother? He and Assad investigate further, taking a trip to Sweden, despite the chief's consternation. As you've no doubt predicted, they're right.

Day of Wrath (1943)

Ah, Carl Theodor Dreyer, it's been a while. When you're not dabbling in artistic horror, I can count on you for some sort of religious message. This film, based on a play, is more drama than horror, but it seemed appropriate for my October lineup due to a focus on witches.

It's set in 1623 small-town Denmark, which apparently had the same problem as 1692 Salem. Early on, a woman begs Rev. Absalon to get her off the hook for alleged witchcraft, as he did for his eventual mother-in-law. He shows concern only for her soul, not her life, even when she threatens blackmail if not a posthumous curse. The thought weighs heavily on him after her execution, but it's rather incidental to his most immediate problem: His young wife, Anne, who apparently married him for convenience and not love, falls for his son from a previous marriage. What's more, Absalon's mother has suspected from the get-go that Anne takes after her mother in wickedness.

My Life as a Dog (1985)

Although the Netflix summary mentions only summer, I recalled from what little I had already seen of this movie that it gets snowy -- not a surprise for Sweden. It turns out that we hear the characters preparing for Christmas near the end, so I was not remiss in my timing of this viewing.

Not that the mood is especially upbeat. A slice of life based loosely on the writer's real life, it follows preteen Ingemar during his mother's severe illness and beyond, which he first understands as a nervous breakdown from having to deal with him and his older brother fighting. Each brother is sent away to extended family; their dog Sickan (no pun intended, I presume) is said to go to a kennel, but Ingemar grows increasingly suspicious of her fate. At his most frustrated, he has his own sort of breakdown, exhibiting canine behaviors that explain the title, albeit not for much screen time.

Ordet (1955)

The British Film Institute's favorite films include quite a few artsy numbers that do next to nothing for me. Taking a suggestion from the list, especially one that I'd barely heard of elsewhere, was pretty chancy on my part. I did enjoy The Passion of Joan of Arc and found Vampyr at least pretty interesting, so another Carl Theodor Dreyer hit would seem safe -- only I hadn't looked up the detail before. From the look of the title, I had assumed French, not Danish.

It means "The Word." If you guessed a religious connotation, congrats. The story concerns a Lutheran farm owner with three sons: Anders, who wants to marry a woman from a slightly (but too significantly for their fathers) different religious background; Mikkel, a bitter agnostic who nevertheless loves his wife Inger; and Johannes, who, having studied Kierkegaard, proclaims himself the second coming of Christ. When Inger has complications in giving birth, the philosophical focus rests almost entirely on whether faith can move mountains long after biblical times.

Play (2011)

A Meetup group on international cinema invited me to this entry in a Ruben Östlund festival. I would not have come otherwise, and not just because of the bland title (which works a little on a few levels). Force Majeure looked more promising but had a less convenient showtime. Still, director Östlund himself recommends Play most strongly -- as his most provocative.

In the Swedish tradition set by Ingmar Bergman, this is not an entertainment film. It will irritate you if you ever faced bullies or thieves, so I hope you don't mind anger at fiction. Mostly it's five teenage boys harassing three sixth-grade boys (mostly just intimidation with feigned innocence and mockery) for hours until the latter surrender their valuables, far from home. I knew better than to expect justice. What I didn't readily know was the point -- or the several points.

After the Wedding (2006)

Netflix ventured almost a full five stars in suggesting this to me, probably because that's what I gave The Hunt. Both are recent dramas, take place (mostly) in Denmark, and star Mads Mikkelsen. But that's about where the similarity ends.

The action in AtW begins in India, where protagonist Jacob has been an orphanage manager. He doesn't miss Denmark, because it has a lot of rich people, whom he resents despite having to persuade some to give to his cause. One rich man, Jørgen (Rolf Lassgård, who resembles Gérard Depardieu with a stronger bass), offers a big donation on rather bossy conditions that bring Jacob not only back to Denmark but to the wedding of Jørgen's daughter, Anna.