A Gilded Planet

Europa 1991.  112 minutes. Denmark. Directed by Lars von Trier . Watchdate: 7/16/2012. Wow! I am certain this movie strikes a different chord now that Lars von Trier has publicly expressed sympathy (jokingly?) for der Führer. Until watching this movie, I had never really given any serious thought to Nazi dead-enders conspiring in Germany after the second world war ended. It does make sense that there would have been some kind of violent political insurgency during the Allied occupation of Germany (not Iraq level, but something!). I'll give von Trier credit for provoking me to think about that peculiar historical footnote. And he either deserves great credit or a resounding demerit - I'm not sure which - for pressing me to even have just the barest modicum of sympathy for the purest evil that humanity has witnessed. I have to acknowledge the movie's imagery - bizarre, haunting, elegiac, disturbing and occasionally even goofy - and certainly like very little else I...

Melancholia 2011. 136 minutes. Denmark. Directed by Lars von Trier. Watchdate: 1/10/2012 This is the finest cinematic demonstration of expectations creating reality that I have seen. For that alone I will extoll its virtues beyond (perhaps) what is fair. But there was something deeply disturbing but also exciting about that idea of expectations. It's like the dark edge of Charles Dickens updated for our time, but it's also sort of the anti-Secret (fuck Rhonda Byrne).  Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is told not to make a scene before she actually makes a scene, Justine is told she is a workaholic before she actually does anything to indicate she's a workaholic, Justine is told she is not happy enough before she really does much of anything to justify that sort of expectation. Similarly, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is told to avoid going online to research her fears before we ever actually see her doing so and John (Kiefer Sutherland) - well in John's case he is such a swirl...