Filmfetish Friday: The Troll Hunter, Neds, The Human Resources Manager

May 13, 2011 | by Anouk | Art, Event

About the author

As a freelance journalist, Anouk (26) usually writes about what other people do or like. In her precious spare time she watches arthouse films. Not a few. A lot, thanks to her trusted Cineville pass. Here she can finally share her film-fetish with the world.

To watch or not to watch? Anouk will tour around Amsterdam’s cinemas and answer this crucial question every Friday. Without mercy, of course. Sucky movies will be slaughtered, cinematographic pearls will be appreciated as such. Or the other way around. After all, good taste is in the eye of the beholder.

The Troll Hunter

My weekend will be a failed weekend if I can’t get to see this film. It’s supposed to be awesome, a sort of Norwegian Blair Witch Project. Some sceptical students investigate a series of mysteriously killed bears, but after a few days, they disappear completely. The only thing found is 283 minutes of film material, now made into a 104 minutes during horror story.

We see how the group meets a troll hunter, played by the famous Norwegian comedian Otto Jespersen. He sums up weird facts about trolls in a very serious way (“they smell the blood of Christians”) and that’s what makes it all seem very real, and pretty scary. What the hell happened to the students? I can’t wait to find out!

Watch this film in: Kriterion

Neds

Wow! After watching this I felt not at ease for the rest of the evening. My sisters and I couldn’t stop talking about it; the power of good cinema. Neds is about ‘Non Educated Delinquents’, in this case Glasgow teenage boys who hang around, smoke, drink, are very violent and who barely go to school. Except for John McGill, a smart kid, top of his class even; the total opposite of his older brother who is a feared gang leader. You really, really hope that John doesn’t make the same mistakes, but deep down you know he will. You can feel disaster slumbering: when the police arrests him by mistake and asks for his last name, when he picks up a big knife during a school fight, when he’s not welcome at his friends house any more, and when he starts hanging around with the Neds. Damn!

Director Peter Mullan, who also plays McGills alcoholic father, worked with real Scottish street boys, not actors. He lets them talk in their own language, which makes it all very realistic. Not a too difficult task voor Mullan though. According to him, this film is a bit about his own youth. Poor man..

Watch this film in: Het Ketelhuis, Kriterion.

The Human Resources Manager

Bombs in Israel are like the ongoing rain in a Dutch summer: that shit just happens. When the human resources manager from a bread factory has to go the morgue to identify the body of a former worker, the ‘morgue man’ asks: ‘Which bomb? Bus or pizza restaurant?” Just a detail, because this is not a film about bombs and the Middle Eastern conflict. This is a roadmovie, a funny one, set in that reality.

The human resources manager, a super handsome man by the way, is send off to Romania by his boss. He has to deliver the body of his former worker to her family. An extra service, because the factory didn’t even notice she was missing and left her lying in the morgue for days. A nosy journalist wrote a story about this ‘inhumanity’, and he and his photo camera join the tip to Romania. The human resources manager could of course not be more annoyed. A story with humour, a lot of snow, desolate landscapes, a driver without a license, a taking female consul and her husband, a coffin and a rebellious teenage boy. A tiny bit too long, but very nice. P.S. I wish I could speak Hebrew.

Watch this film in: Rialto