Ray Pride

Icelandic director Baltasur Kormakur's first feature, the slacker comedy "101 Reykjavik" was a loopy delight. For his follow-up, the bleak, savage and often very, very funny "The Sea" takes on Scandinavian family drama with a vengeance. Ibsen? Strindberg? "The Celebration"? Bah. Kormakur, working from a stage play by Olafur Haukur Simonarson, delineates the decline of family and industry in a distant town by the sea through a single, brutally angry family. He's in Bergman territory, if not Bergman-on-speed territory. They've gathered because their father, keeper of the family's fishing rights, who believes in the survival of the village more than in his irresponsible brood, has news for them. They're all anxious for the divvying of what they presume is a sizable estate. Some festival reviewers have leapt upon the convulsive soul-baring as contempt toward the characters, but the point-of-view is so consistent and corrosive I couldn't help but enjoy the thrashings amid some of the most gloriously diverse weather on screen in ages: ice, sleet, snow, rain, volcanic springs loosing mist into the forbidding night. Kormakur's the real thing.

"The Sea" opens Friday at the Landmark Century. (2003-05-28)

Also by Ray Pride

Short Runs
This week's limited screenings
(2003-05-21)

The Woo of art
French nouvelle noirist Jean-Pierre Melville's twelfth, and penultimate feature, the epic of gangster manners "The Red Circle" (Le cercle rouge) "presented" by John Woo, graces the Music Box this week.
(2003-05-21)

Spin control
In more that one interview with filmmakers, I've seen them describe their burgeoning DVD collections. Some, like the Hughes Brothers, need a dose of cinephilic Ritalin when they talk about how they assemble scrapbooks of frame-grabs of shots they esteem by other directors...
(2003-05-21)

Summer Film 2003
From "2 Fast 2 Furious" to "Whale Rider"
(2003-05-21)

Summer Film 2003
(2003-05-21)

Summer Film 2003
(2003-05-21)

Quibbles and bits
(2003-05-14)

Tip of the Week
(2003-05-07)

Short Runs
(2003-05-07)

Members only
(2003-05-07)

Innocence unprotected
(2003-05-07)

Tip of the Week
(2003-04-30)

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