About me
About me 
Alien
Science fiction/horror from 1979. Directed by Ridley Scott, designs by H R Giger and Moebius.Cinema Paradiso
It's hard not to like this unabashedly sentimental movie. I much prefer the original, more magical version to the director's cut.Die Zweite Heimat
A story about love, art, relationships and growing up in Germany in the 60's. The movie is 25.5 hours long. I wish it were longer.Fucking Åmål
The first Swedish movie I've seen where people speak like they do in the real world.Return of the Killer Tomatoes
There is a lot of self-referential humor in this fourth wall-breaking low-budget movie spoof. I love it - especially the brilliant hero F.T. - but the other three movies in the series are to be avoided.The Godfather
I like the characters. I like the music. I like the nostalgic mood.The Terminator
James Cameron's breakthrough movie about an unstoppable humanoid robot sent from the future to kill a woman, Sarah Connor. I like movies with unstoppable enemies.
I also like My Neighbor Totoro, Smultronstället, When Harry Met Sally, On the Waterfront, Million Dollar Baby, Inglourious Basterds, JoJo in the stars, Fight Club, American Beauty, The Return of the Pink Panther, Edward Scissorhands, Cabaret, Galaxy Quest, Festen, The Pianist, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the bizarre first ten minutes of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Scarface, Pulp Fiction, Lilo & Stitch and The Breakfast Club. And the second half of The Iron Giant always makes me cry.
TELEVISION
I don't have a TV, but I sometimes manage to see TV series on DVD or otherwise.
I really loved The Office (UK), especially Gareth.
I love the original Æon Flux shorts for the visual design, for the experiments with narrative, and because of the way they show you brief hints and glimpses of a strange world.
I like The Wire, Outnumbered and Monty Python's Flying Circus. And the Blackadder II episode "Bells".
A few episodes of Buffy are great, like "Lover's walk", "Doppelgangland" and "Hush".
House, M.D. and Californication are generally good, if increasingly contrived.
I like the Invader Zim episodes "Bestest Friends" and "Mysterious Mysteries". I'm not sure who thought it would be a good idea to let the creator of "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac" design a children's show, but I'm glad they did. In a similar vein, Adventure Time is often brilliantly weird; I recommend the episodes "Tree Trunks", "Trouble in Lumpy Space", and "The Jiggler".
Some episodes of Gag Manga Biyori are pure surreal genius.
The strange Betty Boop shorts "Bimbo's Initiation", "Snow White", "Penthouse" and "Mask-A-Raid" are good. More people should watch them.
Kevin Smith's and Mel Brooks's movies are utterly dull. I don't find Seinfeld or Fawlty Towers to be funny at all.
I don't like any movie with Jim Carrey or Robin Williams. No, not even Dead Poets Society or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
I have never seen Robert Gustafsson or Killinggänget do anything I find funny. Hassan was good, though.
I was very disappointed with Magnolia and Antonia, which seem to be almost universally loved. With both movies, I was hoping for something more realistic, and got a bunch of absurd characters that bored me, largely because I couldn't identify with anyone.
I also didn't like that Magnolia's screenwriters inserted the old "improbable suicide" urban legend at the beginning of the movie as if it were their own creation. For similar reasons, I disliked Amelie's use of the old garden gnome travelling story.
Reality Bites - Wait, we're supposed to side with the talentless waif and the unsympathetic, condescending loser against the nice guy whose only fault is having a career?
Grease 2. I can't find words.
Alien 4 - Resurrection. I loathe this movie. The original Alien had its faults, but it was subtle, unpredictable, original, featured realistic characters and settings - it felt almost like a documentary - and it had some good plot twists and H R Giger's truly alien designs.
The second movie was a good action movie, but I disliked that it rehashed several things from the original - we have another android in the crew, the monster is once again blasted into space, and it was more of a predictable standard action movie - you knew that Ripley would survive. As much as I disliked Alien 3, at least it had the courage to kill off Ripley.
So what does Alien 4 do? It does the most tasteless and formulaic things possible. There isn't a single person in the movie that acts like a realistic human being. Jeunet brings in his favorite actors and dresses them up as a freak show that you couldn't care less about. Instead of dialog, the movie has dull one-liners. Ripley, who was finally gone, is resurrected in an extremely implausible way, they add another fucking android to the crew, and yet another time the alien is defeated by blasting it into space - but this time, it's done in a way that breaks all sorts of physical laws. They name the ship computer "Father" (the ship computer in Alien was called "Mother"). Everything Aliens did wrong, Alien 4 does ten times worse.
But it doesn't end there. Alien 4 never builds up any suspense; the aliens aren't scary, running around in full daylight as they are, and it's full of inane splatter movie effects. In one scene, a wounded man picks a piece of his own brain out of his head and stares at it stupidly.
A basic rule in writing is "show, don't tell". Then why does the end feature a man stuck on a slime wall, holding an endless monologue, explaining why there's a pregnant alien in the room and why it will give birth to another alien made of porridge?
It seems that some people liked Alien 4 for containing some sort of feminist allegory, which I apparently missed, as I was busy watching Jeunet destroy everything I loved about the original movie.
I mean, while he's at it, why not create a Godfather 4 featuring Adam Sandler as Michael and Ron Perlman as a cloned Don Vito, rehashing the most memorable scenes and phrases from The Godfather, but with more wire-fu? Because, you know, people like sequels.