Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Nerdy movie buffs without girlfriends inevitably cheer the movie's anti-consumerism message. Most die-hard film-fans get all of their education about history, society and politics from movies – which are largely left-wing – so obviously they will happily acknowledge any movie that has even the remotest anti-capitalist message because their own views are being constantly shaped by the world of filmic make-believe rather than the real world in which they hardly ever actively participate. Whether this movie falls into the left-wing category or not isn't entirely clear, but one of its themes - the yuppies' obsession with furniture - certainly falls into that category, evoking "Fight Club" for example. If an excessive fetish for IKEA products is the worst left-wing film-makers can say about capitalist society, then capitalism must be working marvelously.Of course, what do die-hard movie fans do all year? Well, they watch movies! 3-4 films per day, every day of the week, ever week of the month, every month of the year. Very few of them work in office building or have well-paying jobs like the Bothersome Man here, and those that do - unlike Bothersome Man - can't find a date to save their lives. These people are society's misfits, losers unable to find their place in the "post-industrial consumer society" or whatever other pretentiously hateful label they'd stick on modern society which they blame for all of their own shortcomings and failings. Capitalism: the convenient scapegoat for every "blameless" misfit and failure incapable of self-criticism.But come on, all ye whiny misfits, keep this one thing in mind: our mostly dirt-poor ancestors struggled just to make ends meet, and the average human life-span had been around 30 until just a few centuries ago; medicine practically didn't even exist as a proper science until the last century, dentists worked without anesthesia, streets stunk of horse-manure, there was no toilet-paper, military service was usually compulsory, and personal freedoms were greatly limited by the combined tag-team efforts of the Church and the monarchy. There was no porn, no tennis, no internet, no chocolate latte – and very ironically no movies either. So let's not get carried away with this need to criticize progress, going so far even as to decry it as a regression of sorts, just because a few yuppies have plastic smiles and obsess over having a large house with a swimming pool.I guarantee ALL of you one thing: if a time-machine were to transport any of you spoiled moaners back into the 18th century (let alone much earlier!) after only about a week you'd be screaming your head off to go back to the cozy safety of 21st-century "decadent consumerism". Trust me on this one. People are first-and-foremost clueless hypocrites.I hope the movie's makers didn't have this idiotic left-wing message to make, because it would certainly reflect poorly on their intellects. Hopefully, TBM is just a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Twilight-Zone-ish look at the possibility of an imperfect afterlife in which food doesn't taste of anything, in which alcohol can't get you drunk, where sex is devoid of passion, and where people are frustratingly superficial and even zombie-like. Then again, does one need a "consumer society" to find superficial people? They're nearly everywhere you go, including non-consumer (i.e. starving) societies, which is why TBM's world is not totally unlike our own, but definitely quite different.Still, there are no children. That's hardly a bad thing, huh?The ending predictably takes the easy way out, not explaining much. I am not complaining though; semi-mysterious/vague movie conclusions offer a riddle for the mind, even if TBM's equation gives you far too many unknowns to know where to even start. Hence almost any theory concerning Hell, Heaven, or Purgatory is as good as the next one. One thing is clear: the Bothersome Man, in his desperate quest for tastes and smells, had stumbled onto a direct path to our world. Or did he? Perhaps he was in an overrated Heaven and found out that life on planet Earth was still better, or maybe he was in a sort of diluted Hell and discovered a forbidden entrance into Heaven. Whichever. Now I sound just like all the others reviewing the film.The first half-hour was quite dull. Grieg's music wasn't quite suitable because it's far too dramatic for this cheeky horror film.

The fact that this work has been critically acclaimed these days testifies to how low people's tastes have dropped. Yet another farcical melodrama featuring such novel emotive device such as bodily amputations, nostalgia for the idyllic life and caricature of materialism. Yes, people these days watched Hollywood too much that they forgot about these themes which have been repeated million times by junk literature writers, but that does not make this movie less banal. The screen writer seems to hold the belief that his audience is so stupid and insensitive these days that he can just stuff all these well-rehearsed themes into one big splash and get away with it. It is unfortunate that people do seem to respond that way.

The basics of this movie in my view is to show the worst nightmare of all human societies - where everyone live rich lives, but everyone seem to be like robots without any emotions. The protagonist shows us around in the world, similar to how Kafka shows his worlds, though this one is not at all as odd as Kafka. Bottom line is: if you like to see dystopia movies, enjoyed Kafka, etc. you'll probably like this one. If you don't you'll probably be a bit bored and feel that the movie is blown out of proportion, it's just another dystopia, and basically a world of robots, nothing new about humans need for social interactions nor their constant dissatisfaction with their life (grass is always greener mentality) you'd say. And you'd be right

Grabbed my attention on Netflix Instant Play because it was only an hour and a half long (it's nearing 4 am here), and because it's Norwegian, which I wanted to follow up with Dead Snow and see what else the country is offering in international cinema right now. A droll and deliciously wry romp, this movie features a man, Andreas, who gets shipped out to some Purgatory of a Brave New World city, where everyone is happy and bland and food has no taste, nothing smells, and even sex loses its appeal. Driven to the edge by his lack of common senses, he feels nearly ready to kill himself.After an hilarious botched attempt at latter, Andreas tracks down a man with similar complaints and the two discover a tiny, vagina-shaped hole in a concrete wall from which music emanates. The two attempt to break through to see what is on the other side, tracking a tiny bit of light they can barely see. But of course, in fantasy allegory land, desire and nonconformity are not allowed and the elements of the city operate to end Andreas' attempt at freedom and sensuality.Jens Lien and crew create a simple, straight-forward movement to the story, one that flows well with its themes and moves along at just enough of a pace to keep from lagging. The similarities in other similar science fiction aren't worth enumerating, but still the movie has a unique feel and balances some very funny scenes with some pretty horrifying ones. I like the limited but effective use of gore in this movie, some disembowelment and flagellation that will get your heart stammering harder than The Passion of the Christ simply because it is so perfectly out of place from the gray-toned mise-en-scene. Trond Fausa Aurvaag is a dependably squirrelly actor who physically feels out of place from his surroundings, which works very well. Despite the fact that the concept itself isn't anything to write home about, everyone involved makes it work and the movie fully realizes its own world.--PolarisDiB