Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

Pusher (Denmark 1996, 105 min, dir: Nicolas Winding Refn, cast: Kim Bodina, Laura Drasbaek, Zlatko Buric )

Frank (Kim Bodina) loses the dope, is broke, and the drug boss Milo (Zlatko Buric) wants his money. What else is new in the underworld? But Pusher is a breakthrough movie. When it was made, well before Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s film,21 Grams, Brian De Palma’s Scarface was still the model for a pusher movie.

Pusher built the genre in a different direction. Dope dealer Frank is not misunderstood or charmingly lethal. He is just a nice average guy trying to dig himself out of a hole that keeps getting deeper while Vic, the girl who loves him (Laura Drasback), stands by hoping he’ll figure it out.

Refn creates a documentary style to follow the action in long takes and subjective pans to cover dialogue between characters. If it looks familiar now, it is because half a dozen TV police shows use it. His inspiration was not police stories, it was horror movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre he watched as a child.

The director’s genius is building off-beat characters that start out unlikeable and slowly make us warm to them as they struggle but miss all chances at redemption. Pusher, Pusher 2, Pusher 3 and Drive follow this model.

Best to see all of these together. They offer lessons in cinema style as well as consistent character development. Drive is an American movie (MovieWithMe) but it follows the same rules of Refn’s view of characters: the arc goes through thwarted expectations to thwarted resolution.

This single-minded vision is probably what has protected Refn in the transition to Hollywood films. It is also what probably got him thrown out of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts when he threw a table at the wall in an argument with a teacher.

Brothers (two versions). (Denmark 2004 117 min. dir: Susanne Bier, cast: Ulrich Thomsen, Connie Nielsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas.USA 2009 105.min, dir: Jim Sheridan, cast: Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal).

The most amazing fact about Brothers is that it was made twice. Once might have been more than enough. There is an old Hollywood story about the producer and the writer alone in the desert dying of thirst. They spot a cold clear jar of water. The writer says, ‘Shall we drink it?’ The producer says, “let’s piss in it first.”

Susanne Bier’s Brothers is a modest movie about the romantic yearnings of two people when one happens to be the brother of the other’s husband. The husband has conveniently been declared dead on an Afghani war mission. But he is really being held captive and we know he will return.

It’s a good movie (which is why it is included in MovieWithMe, we only review the ones we like). But it is plot driven rather than character driven. Things have to happen to push it forward, and the audience knows where it is headed. Plot driven movies are like building a fence around the property and thinking what kind of house you will put in the middle.

Taking this modest house and remodeling it so Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman can live in it ruins the architecture. To begin with, Tobey Maguire has no sex appeal. The Muppet of Spiderman is not a leading man. Natalie Portman has some heat with Jake Gyllenhaal, so did she marry Tobey?

Jim Sheridan is a very talented director, up there with Susanne Bier in all respects except one: he’s working from a script that has been remodeled like the house to suit the new star tenants. No subtlety is allowed. Many of the scenes are exactly alike, but the remake doesn’t play like the original. When the military messengers come to inform the wife that her husband is dead, Susanne Bier gets to do it almost without dialogue.

Jim Sheridan’s version is more concerned with the two cute, precocious little girls who open the door for the soldiers. Everybody has to talk and explain. I guess the producers wanted to make sure they milked every emotion from wife to children. Did I say milk? I started this review talking about a joke with water. Choose your liquid but don’t drink the remake. Somebody has pissed in it.

Flame and Citron (Denmark, 2008. 130 min. dir: Ole Christian Madsen, cast: Thure Lindhardt, Mads Mikkelsen, Stine Stengade, Christian Berkel, Peter Mygind).

Director Ole Christian Masden is three years younger than Quentin Tarantino (1966 vs 1963), but their views on World War Two are both revisionist history. Flame and Citron is pure film noir, while Inglorious Bastards gallops in episodic bursts as an action shoot-em-up. Inglourius Flames might be the name of a great compression sequel.

But Tarentino’s resistance fighters are pure invention while Masden’s Flame and Citron actually existed. They were part of the Danish underground, the Holger Danske, that was formed to counter the happy welcome most Danes gave the German invaders. The Holger Danske kept up sabotage and assassinations until the end of the war. The Mindelunden memorial in Copenhagen is dedicated to 64 who were killed during the War, including Flame and Citron.

Masden’s film, one of the most expensive Danish movies ever, is actually quite close to actual history; at least once you remove the movie swagger of both characters and the three-day beard Mads Mikkelsen (Citron) always keeps carefully to length. I don’t think face stubble became stylish until the mid-eighties. In the era of World War Two, men felt lucky to have a clean shave each day.

As for attention to other facts: one of the most improbably sequences in the film actually happened. The real Flammen and Citron were arrested trying to penetrate German headquarters disguised as Danish police offices. It turns out on that day the Germans ordered the arrest of the entire Danish police force, whom they suspected of collusion with the resistance. The real Citron actually did try to escape over a wall and was shot (as in the movie) and was saved by the ambulance crew that took him away. The real Flame walked away in the confusion and escaped.

There was also a real resistance leader named Winther (Peter Mygind). Hoffman (Christian Berkel) was the head of the Gestapo in Denmark. There was a Ketty (Stine Stengade) but her film personality and love affairs is mostly fiction. Every film noir needs a femme fatale.

Flame was Bent Faurschou-Hviid, who had red hair and is credited with killing 22 people. Citron was Jorgen Haagen Schmith who got the name because he worked in the Copenhagen plant of the French carmaker, Citroen. (A name that has nothing to do with lemons, unless you count some of their cars).

Both men were killed by the Germans in October, 1944, just as in the movie. The real Citron, however, died with a group of resistance fighters hiding in the same safe house.

The inscription on the memorial to Citron in Copenhagen says, “For all good thoughts they cannot die before even better thoughts are sprouted of their seeds.” I guess that’s a Danish way of saying that we ought to make their deaths lead to a better world. I’m not clear we’ve done our part.

Flame and Citron is a good movie, and also a reminder that bravery is often mixed with bravado, that good deeds often turn out to be bad, and movie heroes are only in the movies. Maybe the only lesson is the one found on so many French World War Two memorial sites. “Passersby, go this way and remember.”

After The Wedding (Denmark 2006,120 min. dir: Susanne Bier, cast: Mads Mikkelsen (Jacob), Rolf Lassgard (Jorgen), Sids Babett Knudsen (Helene)

Melodrama is what hits your tear ducts when you think you’re safe. After The Wedding is a master class in how it works. Melodrama comes from 18^th Century narratives that were spoken over musical melodies used to pump up the mood. Sort of like Cialis commercials on TV.

After the Wedding is about a Danish expat who lives in a typical third-world country. He does good work by teaching in a primary school. As the film begins, he contacted by a millionaire back home who is considering giving a giant endowment to the school. The catch: Jacob (the teacher) must appear in person to audition for the funds.

He flies home to Denmark and arrives on the eve of the big weekend wedding of the millionaire’s (Jorgen) daughter. Of course, he is invited. Weddings and funerals are always fun occasions for a movie, and Susanne Bier knows how to take us down the aisle. Jacob’s first surprise is meeting Jorgen’s wife, Helene. He dated her! Then he meets her daughter, the bride. And the he finds out Helene was pregnant when they split up! His daughter is getting married! (Exclamation points to seem cool and hide my own embarrassment at being hooked on the story).

The whole film reminds me of two screenwriters telling stories in a bar saying, “Can you top this one?” But it works. These actors earn their pay. Jacob and Helene still have passion in their eyes and in their body language. When we learn that Jorgen is conveniently dying of an incurable disease, it all makes movie sense.

Susan Bier went on to make Things We Lost in the Fire, which starts with a funeral. Weddings and funerals and recitativo singers playing to a courtly audience are all fertile furrows where drama nurtured by melody sprouts melodrama. Forget the negative soap opera connotation of the word. Susanne Bier and an excellent cast make After The Wedding worth our hope and tears as two lovers finally find each other.