Quick Movie Grabs

Watched some movies tonight:

The Man Without a Past (2002, dir. Kaurismäki) - Very odd. Unique. Perplexing. I had such a bizarre experience watching this movie (the second film in Kaurismaki's Finland Trilogy, althought I don't think I needed to see the first film of the trilogy to get this) because the film is made in such a strange manner. The dialogue is very "Hi." "Hi." "I will go now." "Yes." (make sense?) It's just very to-the-point and straight forward. And the way the actors recite these lines was reminiscent of an amatueur stage play - they stand awkwardly, say their lines with no emotion and walk away. However, it sort of works. Not completely, I think the film was a bit too dry for me. However, there are some moments of great humour (this is definitely one of my droll comedies I've seen in a while, if ever) and the performance from Kati Outenin was absolutely supurb, unfortunately the lead man of the title (Markku Peltola) wasn't so good. His one facial expression (literally) wore thin fast. Still, for my first Finnish film experience, it was pretty good. B-

The Card (1952, dir. Neame) - This is a very delightful comedy from the early '50s with Alec Guiness playing a cheeky young upstart. If you need a smile-enducing happy movie then this is a great choice. I loved Alec in this film, and the supporting players (which includes Petula Clark?!) were also great fun. Not really much more to say about this. I had a blast with this film. A-