Charity begins - in Ireland ?

This is a mini-review of A Thousand Times Goodnight* (Tusen ganger god natt) (2013)

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6 May

This is a mini-review of A Thousand Times Goodnight*(Tusen ganger god natt) (2013)

* Contains spoilers *


A division was called on the motion 'This Film is Not a Good Film'


Nos

* Lovely shots of the beach in Ireland

* Arty tricks with light at the beginning (which remind of K-PAX (2001)'s tag-line beam of light)

* The whole mystery of the opening scene, with the near-masonic pre-burial - though a mystery sought for in vain elsewhere...

* The girls are convincing sisters

* A cute kitten (a device as favoured by The Movie Evangelist (@MovieEvangelist))

* Some of the photos from the Kabul trip

* A role for Maria Doyle Kennedy (one of the people who rescued The Commitments (1991)), but blink and you miss it - sure some scenes cut there along the way !



Ayes

* Too many lights crystallized as out-of-focus dots

* Much wooden dialogue / delivery

* Flagging up that it is Afghanistan by the descending words on a building KABUL BUSINESS CENTRE (or some such)

* Accents from Binoche and Coster-Waldau that nearly wander as much as her character travels the globe

* Editing that cuts off several scenes rather abruptly, and not as if to move 'the action' along with a pace

* The closing resemblance to Jennifer Saunders, let alone the wild, bearded stereotype of marine biology

* She is patently not taking photographs with those Canon EOS 5Ds - at best, she shows how to snap a lens onto a body

* As if she would (but she is thoughtless...) only realize on the plane that her daughter might want to photograph Kenya whilst there, not giving her the chance to try out the camera

* As plausible as The Bride's rising from a coma (in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)) that she should recover both so quickly and with so little damage from that blast

* How a family could possibly have survived in tatters this long, given how old the daughters are 

* The clunky Skype-type scenes with Jessica (whoever Jessica really is)

* We also need to believe that Jessica just commissions photographs of someone about to become a suicide-bomber, no questions asked - let alone the ridiculous belief that it matters very much that those particular people were killed or maimed, whatever the real target was

* That the said 5D and its lens are so robust that photographs can be taken after the blast - even more robust than Binoche, really

* Any notion that the camp in Kenya, declared safe, was going to be safe

* That the hut used as a shelter really afforded the photo-opportunities whose results we see

* The clear similarity to te main theme of In a Better World (Hævnen) (2010), which may not have the billing, but... could be a better film


QED The Ayes have it !



End-notes

* What Romeo and Juliet has to do with it is anyone's guess - director / co-writer Erik Poppe likes the sound of the words ?

It could easily have been A Thousand Times Goodnight (2013) to the film... Sooner Friar Lawrence any time !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 6, 2014

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)