fear me not Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Tribeca Review: Fear Me Not
Filed under: Drama », Thrillers », New Releases », Tribeca », Mystery & Suspense », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports »
If The Shining taught us one thing, it's that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. In the atmospheric thriller Fear Me Not, the other side of that equation is unnervingly laid out: all play and no work yields the same result.
Mikael Neumann (Ulrich Thomsen) has been on leave from his job for six weeks when the film begins, a fact he reports to us in the somber-voiced narration that represents his diary. What sort of work he did, and why he went on leave, we don't know. Whatever it was, he has done well for himself. He and his architect wife, Sigrid (Paprika Steen), and teenage daughter, Selma (Emma Sehstede Hoeg), live in a gorgeous modern home on a picturesque lake.
Like many in his situation, Mikael has had a hard time adjusting to not working: the unstructured days, the lack of purpose. Sigrid is hinting that maybe it's time to go back to the office, a suggestion he disregards. Then, seemingly on a whim, Mikael volunteers for a clinical trial of a new anti-depression medication being run by Sigrid's doctor brother, Frederik (Lars Brygmann). He doesn't particularly suffer from depression, he says, but "you can always be better."
Like a 21st-century mad scientist, Mikael reports the effects of this medication to his diary and to us. He describes his feelings mostly with matter-of-fact dryness, occasionally lapsing into near-poetic accounts of his newfound joie de vivre. He is energized by two things: his apparently long-simmering resentment of Sigrid's control over his life, and his new realization that he can do something to change it. I won't go into detail about the pills' other effects on him except to say that his behavior becomes unstable -- but, creepily enough, he always remains controlled and apparently cautious.
IFC's Next Batch of On-Demand Horrors: Canadian Radio & Zombie Nazis
Filed under: Action », Comedy », Drama », Foreign Language », Horror », Independent », IFC », Festival Reports », Distribution », Home Entertainment »
If you're anything like me, then you like fiddling around with the buttons on your cable remote. It used to be that you KNEW of all the options your remote could provide, but nowadays I have cable channels and VOD options I never knew existed. So a little while ago I clicked on a button that said IFC Festival Direct, which delivered unto me a pair of options: IFC Showcase and IFC Midnight. Yeah, try and guess where I started.I saw a few familiar titles: Left Bank and Sauna, both of which I saw (and liked) at Fantastic Fest '08, as well as well-reviewed genre fare like The Chaser, Zift, and a Brit import called Hush that I may watch this very afternoon. Also on the docket for IFC Midnight: the indie thriller Dark Mirror, a gory South Korean offering called Cadaver, and a Dutch psycho story called Fear Me Not. Oh, and two I can definitely vouch for: the strange Canadian horror known as Pontypool and a Norwegian nazi-zombie fest called Dead Snow.
If you're looking for recent festival fare that's not horrific in nature, then you can sift through Joe Swanberg's Alexander the Last, the steamy erotica of L A'ventura, Sam Neill in Angel, or worthwhile options like Paper Covers Rock, Rain, or Three Blind Mice. Apparently this "VOD" thing is the wave of the future, and I find it very satisfying to know that the flick YOU just saw at the Florida Film Festival is also available from my own cable box for about six bucks. For a whole lot more on IFC's home-demand offerings, I suggest you click right here and flick around a bit. (They also offer some rather fine programming that's free with the IFC service, don't forget.)
Is Taylor Lautner Our Next Superhero?
100 Greatest Films Beyond the Canon
'Entourage' Movie in the Works?
Spielberg Backs Out of 'Harvey'
Discuss: Should Gay Actors Stay in the Closet?
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
