J Brown

One of the least well-known aspects of the Second World War here in the U.S. was Hitler's drive into the Nordic countries, part of his greater Blitzkrieg into Western Europe after the rape of Poland. This film delves head-first into the minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour moments of confusion and decision during the three days in which Norway, a constitutional monarchy, confronted the reality of Nazi occupation and how the King's choice--accept the Nazi occupation peacefully and abdicate, or refuse abdication and accept responsibility for Norway's suffering as King in exile--affected the country's politics long afterwards. The ensuing tension brings out the hardest in family dynamics, and strong performances keep what could easily be a dry docudrama fascinating. It also helps that the film has a timely release, as Nazi-inspired nationalist movements have made political headway in Nordic countries. Director Erik Poppe, whose most recent film "Utoya: July 22" tackles the 2011 killing spree of fascist Anders Breivik (not to be confused with the Netflix release "22 July" about the same event) reminds his native country the sacrifices made the first time when fascism became the rule of the day.

Disturbing thriller about an FBI agent going undercover into the American Nazi/fascist underground. In parts the story moves too quickly and could benefit from a well-crafted sub-plot but nonetheless it manages to instill a dread that can only grow as the climax approaches--and as the film ages.

Building on the last fifteen years of his work on the interplay of power and hubris as expressed through technology and idealism, Adam Curtis makes his first feature-length film about a country called "Afghanistan". Quotes are used because this is not the Afghanistan of our imagination, or really, entirely of its reality. According to Curtis, this "Afghanistan" is a mirror reflection of the deepest desires and insecurities of three great powers: America, Great Britain and the former Soviet Union. With a nightmarish stitching of news B-roll, grainy nighttime cameras, and shocking, sudden violence, and a soundtrack that ranges from dark industrial to the last part of a Kanye West song, Curtis morphs the country we think we know into a Wonderland--strange, nightmarish, otherworldly, forever sucking in naive great powers, where questions of modernity and identity are played out on a daily basis, and where illiterate Afghan women recently liberated from the Taliban are given lessons in modern art. Whether his narrstive ultimately comes out unblemished in the end, his experiment in making us look at the country--and the last fifty years as a whole--in a new light is certainly achieved.

A wild if sometimes too loose collection of narratives that nonetheless converge, or rather, crash in a beautiful and dark collage of images and songs that reflect the chaos of our accelerated age. Not nearly on par with Bitter Lake, nonetheless one of the few movies this long I've watched more than once.