9. Frances Ha (2012), Director - Noah Baumbach

Frances Ha focuses on Frances, a 27 year old dancing apprentice living in various shared apartments in New York. The movie begins with a montage of Frances and Sophie, her flat mate who Frances constantly refers to as “the same person with another haircut”. They are college friends and tell each other stories about how they will conquer the world, only things are starting to happen for Sophie, but not so much for Frances.

This is a very naturalistic film. It felt like a piece of someone’s life laid out in front us and is more character driven than plot driven. A coming of age story for the struggling artists out there, and for everyone approaching 30 without a clear path forward.

Frances, while quirky, never feels over the top, and Greta Gerwig injects a lot of vulnerability and even some self distance into the performance. While Frances makes impulsive decisions and at times seems to shoot herself in the foot she still maintains her optimism and she keeps finding a way forward. The characters around her add to the naturalistic style, although the view of New York you get is one that is full of artists with rich parents or ridiculously successful youngsters - probably much like Frances sees it. One exchange between her and friend Benji (with rich parents) has him calling her out on her self-proclaimed poverty. “You are not poor. It’s insulting to real poor people”, and while he has a point it also shows his lack of compassion when it comes just moments before he talks about getting a maid in “It’s not very expensive. Like 400 dollars a month”.

The film is shot beautifully in black and white. Other than one excruciating dinner party scene, it is also an easy film to watch, that carries you through at a good pace, with some scenes lingering whilst others rush past, like Frances’ visit to her parents over Christmas, a hilarious montage that still feels realistic and warm. In the end this movie has a lot of love for its characters, particularly Frances, and it conveys that love to us.

Fraser and Paula have always had a rift over the “bad things happens to bad people”-genre, but here we agree that neither of us like to see bad things happen to nice people, and we were both eager for Frances to turn things around and reach some sort of happy ending.

Will it make it into the cupboard? Yes

8. L’écume des jours (2013), Director - Michel Gondry

This movie was a complete mind-bender. Michel Gondry takes us on trip (an LSD trip possibly) through the absurd side of his mind in order to tell us a story. The story is simple enough - a man falls in love with a woman, they marry, the woman falls ill and the man turns his life upside down trying to cope with the emotional trauma and crippling costs incurred by his wife’s ill health - but it is its execution that makes it stand out.

The film starts at such an intense level, hurling absurdities and oddities at you at an insane pace - bells that turn to cockroaches, television chefs who hand ingredients out through the screen, unnatural human contortions and, rather disturbingly, eals that come out of taps, to name but a few - that it can feel a little overwhelming. Fraser also found it difficult to absorb all the details at the same time as reading the Swedish subtitles! When the absurd slows down it is easier to find it fun and amusing, but we were still left wondering about the choice of style. It was only really after taking a breath that we could see it for what it was. As the mood changes, so does both the colour palet and the intensity of the abstract, and the fantasy of our leading man gives way to an uncomfortable reality.

While your brain feels like it needs a holiday at the end of the hour and a half, we have here a moving, intense and well executed film. The effects are fun and the ‘50s soundtrack sets a great mood. The actors perform well to provide real characters in an upside-down world - Audrey Tautou, of Amelie fame, obviously revels in the surreal, and Omar Sy is the charming emotional core of the group as chef Nicolas. Somewhere on this journey you start to really care and the subject matter becomes poignant. The darker images in the second half of the film creates strong and moving metaphors for a situation that a lot of people could relate to. The illness of Chloë (Audrey Tautou) is typically strange - a water lilly in the lung - and this lack of a specific condition means the audience focusses on the situation and not the disease. A clever choice and a justification in itself for the crazy style.

In these days of #oscarsowhite it’s worth noting that this is one of the more diverse films we’ve seen on this list so far, even though the two main characters are still white. It is refreshing to see a diverse cast mix and mingle naturally without racial slurs as in Gangster Squad and without trying to kill each other like in The Revenant.

L’écume des jours is a good film. It’s had a strange slow burn effect, as the more we reflect on it, the more fondly we look upon it. Will it make it past the next cut? Who knows, but for now:

Will it make it into the cupboard? Yes

7. Killer Joe (2011), Director - William Friedkin

Wow. This was a hard one to sit out. Not because it’s a crap film, but because so many of the scenes are incredibly uncomfortable to watch.

This is a dark, feral drama about a family in free fall, where the son Chris (Emile Hirsch) sets a plan in motion that threatens to destroy all of them. Chris is a small time dealer, and his stash gets stolen by his mom. Enraged and desperate about not being able to pay his supplier back he enlists his father to get in touch with a hit man, Killer Joe, to dispose of the mother and cash out on her life insurance. Joe (Matthew McConaughey) isn’t too pleased about waiting until after to get paid, but decides to claim Chris’s sister Dottie as a retainer.

Dottie seems like she’s balancing on the edge between psychic and mental disorder, and while Juno Temple does a great job of making nonsensical lines come to life, the whole sexy/crazy young girl thing feels a bit done. Her relationship with Joe offers her a way out, but the start of it made us squirm in our seats as Joe orders her to take her clothes off - he turns away to give her at least the semblance of privacy, though the camera lingers. While we do also get to see McConaughey's bottom, this film this film follows the male gaze, often to a degree that feels gratuitous - a stripper at a strip club is filmed for so long that we expected her to have a part to play in the story.

Dottie, especially, is treated very much like an object, and stays in that status up until the very end, where she does, thankfully, regain some sort of agency. The other woman in the cast, stepmom Sharla (Gina Gershon) is put through one of the most difficult-to-watch scenes in the film. Not sure we’ll ever eat chicken again.

But the cast turns out strong, believable performances. Thomas Haden Church is a favourite as the father who stares his way blankly through the film. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and potentially not even a knife at all but more of a spoon, he delivers throughout the film. Both Juno Temple and Gina Gershon shine their way through their scenes with great chemistry between them and the other characters, providing much of the relationship foundations. Gershon also handles her tough scenes with the right level of defiance and vulnerability. McConaughey does his thing and is quite chilling to watch in his measured wrath. Emile Hirsch might be the weakest link of the actors, but his scenes with Dottie provide much needed humanity for his character, as his desperation threatens to consume him.

It’s shot nicely, and the lights and sounds help create a sometimes almost surreal atmosphere.The script is based on a play by Tracy Letts, and some scenes betray that the lines were originally intended for the stage, but that doesn’t bother us. Some funny scenes echo the claim the film made on the box for being a comedy, particularly the scene with Chris’ supplier offers a few laughs, but in general the film is extremely dark, much to the intention of director William Friedkin, who has previously directed The Excorcist and The French Connection. Killer Joe is a good film, but certainly not for anyone with a weak stomach or tolerance for violence. We’ll just call it Game of Thrones set in a trailer park.

Will it make it into the cupboard? No. Because neither of us actually want to watch it again, or risk either of the kids stumbling over it at home in years to come...



We didn't shuffle the films enough when we put them in the pile, and there has been a lot of gangster action so far - but our next few films will break us into a new field.

6. The Singing Detective (2003), Director - Keith Gordon

Dan Dark, the modern day author, has spent the last three months in a hospital, his skin an open sore. Dan Dark, the fictitious 1950s Singing Detective, is dividing his time between nightclub gigs and trying to solve the murder of Nina, a sex-worker who knew too much. Life and art mirror each other as the stories from Dan’s (pretty bad) books seem to come alive. But how much of the fiction is reality, and how much of Dan’s percieved reality is his own frantic imagination?

Robert Downey Jr portraits the warbling private-eye well, but he has the bitterness, guilt and anger of the hospitalized Dark down perfectly. A particularly touching scene has him breaking down and confessing to how great the pain is, only to have it intensified by his tears, stinging his face. His foil and salvation is Mel Gibson’s Dr Gibbon, who sees through Dark’s defences and helps him untangle his past. Stuck with a whore-madonna complex that has shaped him through the years, Dan Dark’s paranoia makes him see the same patterns and conspiracies time after time, and the way the movie utilises the same actors and motifs is both disturbing and amusing.

Here we have a film that could have been a mess of ambiguity, but with a great edit and nice pacing we see a simple yet engaging story unfold. The journey towards recovery is compelling and hopeful. Even though we never quite like the lead character, we still invest in him. After all, we can all relate to feelings of guilt and betrayal and succumb to paranoia. A strong cast (call outs for Robin Wright and Carla Gugino) adds to the quality, and we get some wonderful light relief in the shape of the two useless henchmen (Adrian Brody and Jon Polito) ”We never know what we’re doing”?. Fraser always finds Downey Jr to be a little over the top, but that seems to work for him here. The music numbers, though, are the stars of the show as we, the audience, get to take a break from the awfulness of Dark’s situation.

We were aware that this was a remake, (the original we have not seen) and having a quick look at IMDB we can see that the ratings for the series are far higher. Yet, while the film may offer more of a quick fix, neither of us are in a place right now where we could endure a more drawn out version of this harrowing story.

Does it make it into the cupboard? Yes

5. Revenge for Jolly! (2012) Director - Chadd Harbold

Small time gangster Harry disappoints the wrong people, who send some guy to murder his dog, Jolly. Harry and his cousin Cecil set out to find the dog murderer, and Harry's grief over Jolly’s death causes him to murder a load of people for various infringements like saying “It’s just a dog”, or throwing ranch dip on his shoes.

This film tries to be like Tarantino, but falls horribly flat. It’s neither moving, funny or any interesting kind of unpleasant. We can see where the jokes are supposed to be, but we must have a completely different sense of humour to the makers of this movie.

Brian Petsos as main character Harry brings absolutely nothing to the party, whether that’s due to a bad script, bad directing or just a complete lack of acting talent, we can't say. The only thing we half liked, apart from a couple of nice shots, is Oscar Isaac as Cecil, who’s got a sadness in his eyes that creates an instant backstory. He also provides the only slightly moving moment in the film towards the end.

There are quite a few familiar faces in cameos, including Kirsten Wiig and Elijah Wood. Doesn't make a blind bit of difference. There are few characters that actually feel like characters instead of just targets.

Following on from The Revenant this is another “buddies on a killing spree”-film, but this time without any redeeming qualities. Paula is hoping for less machismo in the future, but the randomness of the film pile makes no promises. Fraser doesn't mind the machismo, so long as it's channelled correctly - but this is just pants.

We started squirming in the sofa after 20 minutes, and without this blog we would never have finished it. At least the film had the decency to only be 80 minutes long.

Does it make it into the cupboard? Are you kidding us? Nope nope nope

4. The Revenant (2009) Director - Kerry Prior

Imagine that your best mate came back from the dead. Would you chop off his head and plunge a stake through his chest? No, you help him of course, help him get back on his feet. It gets a bit difficult when you realise that he needs to drink blood so he doesn’t decompose, but solutions can present themselves. If you accidentally fall into a vigilante lifestyle that provides dead bad-people to feed on then, morally speaking, you’re off the hook - you also get the advantage of finding big roles of cash and the occasional stash off white powder! So far so good, though things, of course, are never that easy, as Bart (David Anders) and Joey (Chris Wylde) find out.

Effectively, this is a buddy movie, but with a couple of seriously flawed, weak-willed and largely unsympathetic characters. Mind, finding yourself in this particular situation would be enough to test the moral compass of any person, you would think. You don’t really find yourself rooting for these guys, which is perhaps where the (very dark) humour lies, in seeing them fail. Joey, who tries to do right by his undead friend, is still a self proclaimed “asshole” and Bart, despite trying to “do the right thing” all the time rarely displays true feelings of regret and has a tendency to absolve himself of blame from his actions.

As a base horror comedy it delivers in more ways than one with a good few laughs and silly situations (like taking a dead person to the hospital to find out what’s wrong with him) alongside some nicely brutal and sickening set pieces. It has a high production value, looks slick and uses a stunning diverse soundtrack to great effect. We like the film’s ambition to attempt to convey messages on everything from religion to race, politics and general degenerate behaviour, but unfortunately those comments often feel muddled and unclear. Perhaps a lack of central theme makes it difficult to truly lose yourself in the plot. Maybe it is just saying that bad things happen because people are fallible and screwed up - in essence, shit happens!

Overall though, this film is causing Fraser a problem. He could imagine really enjoying this in his twenties, it has action, humour and lad-like behaviour fully approved of in his early years, but is it good enough to warrant a place in the cupboard when he’s pushing forty? Paula says no - the comedy doesn’t make up for the scrambled social commentary and the bro-mance isn’t appealing enough. Fraser is going to hold onto it.

Does it make it into the cupboard? Yes, just. 
(Though, whether it will make it through the next cull is open to debate.)

Our next post will be up on Sunday 10th of January around 3 pm Swedish time (15.00).

3. Los Amantes Pasajeros (2013) Director - Pedro Almodóvar

What should a steward with bad experiences of panicking passengers do when he discovers that their aeroplane has a serious malfunction?

If your answer is drug the passengers in coach, serve everyone else a cocktail of booze and drugs to get people more “open and loving” and then perform an absolutely stellar version of I’m so Excited! then you have probably already seen Los Amantes Pasajeros, because honestly, how else would you have come up with that answer? Add a psychic virgin, a dominatrix, a couple of bisexual pilots and a criminal on the run and it’s your general, run of the mill Almodóvar.

Our feelings after this are along the lines of “what did we just watch?” But we can try to break it down for you. We’ll dole out some stars for the witty dialogue, the hilarious bluntness of the translation from Spanish to Swedish, the technicolor intro to a Spanishified version of Für Elise, and the cameos from Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz plus three exclamation marks for the delicious, expressive campiness of the three stewards.

We do feel like we’ll have to retract some stars though, for the non-consensual sex that seemed to be played for comedy, the jarring scenes that take us outside of the aeroplane and the slightly drawn-out scenes in the beginning that still leave you feeling like you’ve missed a chunk of action. And we can't really judge the acting performances much since we have very little grasp of the Spanish language and culture. None of the characters actually seem to change in any way during their traumatic air trip either. But - that might, in fact, be the point of the film.

If we try to count all of that out, the only conclusion that we can draw is that the show number to I’m so Excited! (the films English title) gets five out of five unicorns (which seems like more of an appropriate unit of measurement for this film), and in the days before youtube we would have kept the film just because of that scene. It is an interesting watch, and we do recommend it for the campiness, the absurdities and that awesome, awesome routine.

But to answer the question that this blog centers around:  

Will it get permanent residency in the cabinet? No.
 (although Paula will get in some other Almodóvar films instead)  

Our next post will be up on Thursday 7th of January around 6 pm Swedish time (18.00).

2. Gangster Squad (2013) Director - Ruben Fleischer

Here we have a pretty useful cast in a kind of gangster film, graphic novel mash up (think Gotham meets The Untouchables) that promises much yet probably fails to deliver. It is inspired by real characters in 1940s Los Angeles. We find ourselves in the dark underworld of Micky Cohen's (Sean Penn) power grab, and an “honest cop”, John O'Mara is charged with heading up a crack “Gangster Squad” that can use any means necessary to sabotage Micky's empire.

The crew itself is fantastically diverse for the genre – square-jawed guy, pretty guy, Mexican guy, black guy, old guy and brainy guy. If you are wondering where the women are, then you can rest at ease in the knowledge that square-jawed guy's (Josh Brolin) wife hand picked the team from the police files. This, unfortunately highlights one of the problems we had, in that it represented a missed opportunity. In this world of tommy-guns and flicked cigarettes, there was little finesse at work in their dealings with the mob. This was even pointed out to O'Mara by pretty guy (Ryan Gosling) at one point which could have led nicely to said wife taking on a bit of an operational role in the group, so that it wasn't all headless-chicken kind of policing/sabotaging.

The film looked great, with a clean, crisp comic book feel to set and costume, but was shot largely in dark locations. While this highlighted the seediness and the dark nature of violent crime, it also led to little recognition of characters during hectic shoot-em-up scenes and detracted from the stylised aesthetic. Darkness does not go well together with mumbling either, no matter how tough it makes your protagonists seem.

Sean Penn was up to his usual high standard, but probably lacked a little subtelty and nuance in his back story to truly come off as one of the great villains. Ryan Gosling was very watchable, as was Emma Stone, but they weren't allowed to develop or influence proceedings, which was disappointing.

Overall, other than a couple of half-hearted attempts to provide moral ambiguity, particularly through brainy guy (Giovanni Ribisi) wondering what the difference is between themselves and the bad guys, this film was very black and white and too generic. Fraser believes that truly compelling gangster pictures stand or fall on the force of personality of the protagonists. Unfortunately, this one can not hold up its head alongside the other great gangster films in our collection.

Does it make it into the cupboard? No

Our next post will be up on Tuesday 5th of January around 3 pm Swedish time.

1. All About Eve (1950), Director - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Our first film has set the bar high - All about Eve, a classic about the world of theatre’s allure and potential for destruction - which suits us both as lovers of the theatre.

The film opens with an awards ceremony for rising star Eve Harrington. While the award is being presented, we are met by the wonderfully smooth voice of Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) narrating and introducing us to the characters sat around a table in the audience - Margo, Karen, Bill, Lloyd and Max - before we meet Eve. When she receives her award, she is greeted with applause, except by two of our company.

The characters take turns to narrate the story of Eve’s rise to prominence from the first meeting between Eve and Margo Channing, an idol of the stage who takes Eve under her wing, through to the awards ceremony.

All about Eve is a film that is still relevant today, with a script of high quality (with epic lines such as "Fasten your seat belts - it's going to be a bumpy night"), superb acting performances and a plot twist - that did not come as such a surprise to this cynical audience in the 2010s, but was still very entertaining to watch. Bette Davis, playing actress Margo Channing, is just amazing through her voice, physicality, vulnerability and strength; George Sanders’ (who you may know as the voice of Shere Khan in The Jungle Book) Addison DeWitt, is a superb Machiavellian theatre critic weaving evil plans; and obviously, Anne Baxter, as the title role of Eve, plays out a wide register with a honey sweet voice. In general, all the roles are well acted, yet above all, it is the relationships that make the film. It was funny to hear, when Paula read the trivia on imdb.com, that Margo and Karen in the film are best friends, when in reality, Bette Davis and Celeste Holm did not get along, at all.

For a film from the ‘50s they manage even to keep the roles free from overly obnoxious gender patterns - they also pass the Bechdel Test with flying colours, especially since everyone is talking about Eve more or less all of the time. But with three women in the lead roles, it is perhaps not surprising that they manage to show women as individuals that behave in different ways, who are strong, weak, angry, seductive, sad, mad and funny.

It is a slick movie with distinctive costumes and scenography. A strong film, which has stood the test of time for 65 years, and should certainly continue to do so.

Does it make it into the cupboard? Yes!

Our next post will be up on Sunday 3rd of January around 3 pm Swedish time.