[Thor Joachim Haga]

During Easter, I saw a lot of my comfort movies before bed time, but again — not something I need to report on. These films are being used very ‘utilitarian’. I’ll chime in if someone else mentions these films instead, at some point.

I also snuck in a re-viewing of ELEVATION, which was a decent creature feature from a couple of years ago. It held up pretty well on second viewing. One of those high concept films (post-apocalyptic film about monsters who can’t go beyond 8000 feet) that is so reliant on the acts.

And the horror film DO NOT ENTER, which I had heard good things about. Well, I don’t know why, because it was a fairly middle-of-the-road genre affair about a group of stupid youngsters doing stupid things in a haunted hotel (but kudos for the eerie monster).

Yesterday, I finally got around to Jafar Panahi’s IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT. Well, for once, “this WAS a film” (unlike those experiments he did in jail), and there’s a lot of intensity in the dialogue (it’s a dialogue thriller, basically, that gets a little too shouty on occasion), but not that impressed with the rather mundane visuals. It’s a far cry from the director’s early films, like CIRCLE and THE WHITE BALLOON.

And now, I just came back from Kristoffer Borgli’s latest film, THE DRAMA – with Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as couple about to be wed until a secret is revealed. It’s labeled a ‘romantic comedy’, which is the least interesting genre of all. Thankfuly, Borgli does his usual twist on things, although most of the surrealism from DREAM SCENARIO and SYK PIKE is gone. Like Panahi above, it’s mostly a dialogue thriller (and a little nod to Thomas Vinterberg’s “Dogme” classic FESTEN). But kudos for inventive, musical editing that oscillates between past, present and imagined realities. Daniel Pemberton’s score was basically the plucking of random strings, and nothing to write home about.