Press
BEOWULF & GRENDEL
VILLAGE VOICE – Bill Gallo
“Good, bloody fun that stirs the intellect whenever it feels like it, and as a swashbuckler, the dead-game Butler outswings just about anyone in Troy or Kingdom of Heaven or Tristan & Isolde. Those overblown historical epics played just as loosely with history as this one does, but they didn’t boast a third of its bawdy, sly humor.”
SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER – William Arnold
“A visual treat. Shot entirely in the outback of Iceland, it’s a gallery of hauntingly beautiful locations, and director Sturla Gunnarsson skillfully uses its bleak otherworldliness to distance us from anything familiar and evoke a lost heroic age.
TORONTO STAR – Geoff Pevere
“By stripping the ninth-century epic poem Beowulf down to its narrative bones, and by shooting it with an unembellished, steely realism, the Icelandic-born Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson has made something decidedly unusual from this medieval tale of revenge and reckoning…
This isn’t the story of mythological heroes and monsters but of men ultimately confronting their own reflection in the monster they’ve been dispatched to terminate. It’s like a thoughtful action movie with a conscience … a successfully strange and strangely moving adventure.”
PALM SPRINGS DESERT SUN
“Gunnarsson brings enormous visual panache and psychological depth, as well as touches of unexpected humor – in this tale of retribution and revenge based on the epic poem about a legendary Norse warrior enlisted by a venal king to rid the Danes of a rampaging and murderous troll.”
NATIONAL POST – Vanessa Farquarson
“It’s almost like the Scream of historical action hero cinema; a sort of anti-Braveheart, because as it works on one level, in that it has all the requisite material an epic period film must have – battle scenes, obvious allusions to Christ, beheadings etc. – it also manages to poke fun at all of this…
Gunnarsson drenches Beowulf in booze, wenches and troll jokes, which makes for an entirely original form of entertainment. Perhaps it will pave the way for a new genre: the ironic, historical/epic dramedy.”
HALIFAX CHRONICLE HERALD – Stephen Pederson
Scenically the photography is overwhelming, mists and crags, powerful natural greens and earth tones, the indefinable mutations of volcanically filtered light and the sea and ice-scapes all building an unforgettable image of a crude warrior society struggling with new ideals of heroism, and encountering compassion for the first time, not as a separate act of kindness toward a fallen foe, but as an ideal standard to be absorbed…
Beowulf and Grendel is both an original and a gutsy movie. “
TANDEM NEWS.COM
“Cool viewing for the heady crowd”
AIR INDIA 182
MACLEANS MAGAZINE – Brian Johnson
Gunnarson, who has jockeyed between drama and documentary in his career, is one of Canada’s most accomplished, most consistent, and most underrated filmmakers. With Air India 182, he combines pure documentary with eloquent scenes of dramatic re-enactment. And this film … may be the finest and most important of his career. It pushes the frontiers of non-fiction with a veracity and power on a par with movies like United 93, A Mighty Heart—and Standard Operating Procedure, the Errol Morris film about Abu Ghraib, which is also being shown in Hot Docs.
Like Morris, Gunnarson uses stark, confessional direct-to-camera interviews. And he makes creative use of re-enactments, but in a radically different style. Morris fetishes the unknowable with impressionist, slo-mo images that verge on abstraction. Gunnarson’s are chaotic snatches of verité realism. But he too finds a poetic beauty and glimmers of transcendence in imagining what might have unfolded, and portraying a life that is about to be lost.
TORONTO SUN – Bruce Kirkland
… Gunnarsson’s brilliantly crafted film made its world premiere yesterday as the opening night gala of the Canadian program in Hot Docs. This film will haunt viewers and shake them from complacency as it recreates, examines and reinterprets what Gunnarsson is calling “the most deadly act of air terrorism in history before 9/11.” …
Gunnarsson succeeds by meticulously piecing together available evidence, dramatizing the human element of families who lost loved ones, and interviewing everyone available. That includes retired CSIS and RCMP investigators. The results, seamlessly juxtaposed, transform this doc into a classic of its genre and an important page of Canadian history.
CANADIAN PRESS
“Air India 182″ is one of the marquee entries at the Hot Docs film festival, yet it’s a movie so gripping and suspenseful in its retelling of a large-scale tragedy that it frequently seems like a tautly written drama instead of grim reality. CP
SUCH A LONG JOURNEY
“It’s not often that a film crosses the line between merely being very good, and being a truly great work of cinema. Such A Long Journey not only crosses that line, but makes it look easy … a modern masterpiece.” — John Binns, UK Film Review
“It’s as if the noblest attributes of the late Vittorio De Sica and Satyajit Ray had been rediscovered by Mr. Gunnarsson. You’re likely to find yourself awash in tears during the most affecting sequences, but they’ll be as clean and well-deserved as movie tears have ever been.” – Gary Arnold, Washington Times
“Such a Long Journey, filmed on location in Bombay, is a film so rich in atmosphere, it makes western films look pale and underpopulated. It combines politics, religion, illness and scheming in the story of one family in upheaval, and is very serious and always amusing.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“Rich in detail and character and soaked in atmosphere of its time and place … studded with memorable scenes and arresting performances, most notably Mr. Seth’s.”
– A.O. Scott, New York Times
“Works like this are rare: they require judgement and for the director, self discipline at a miraculous level. He never forces, twists, goes for the big shot or the stunning image. It’s not about him, but about his characters. The movie itself is quite an experience and long live the fabulous Nobles.” – Stephen Hunter, Washington Post
“Gunnarsson masterfully weaves the strands into a bold, multi layered tapestry surrounding a powerful story of a good man and his family caught in the turmoil of the times and the familial conflicts common to all cultures.” – Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post Intelligence
“Beautifully humane and funny.” — Daily Telegraph
“… remarkable emotional resonance.” — The Times
“A pungent fable that looks beautiful and is played to perfection.” –The Independent
“First class performances … under Gunnarsson’s direction, Such A Long Journey is lively and quick witted.” — The Guardian
“Gunnarsson moves a brooding, Ray-like camera around poverty veneered sets as if to the manor born.” – Nigel Andrews, Financial Times
SCORN
“…Superb psychological drama … the best and scariest thing you’ll see this weekend.”
–The Globe and Mail
“Calling SCORN a true-crime movie-of-the-week would be like calling Lord of the Flies a boys-own adventure story. Like Golding’s horrific tale of society unleashed from the bounds of civilization, SCORN is an unflinching study of humanity’s capacity for evil as represented by those we would prefer to think of as innocents: adolescent boys.”
– The Ottawa Citizen
“Razor-sharp script and subtle direction.”
-- TV Times
“The world of Darren Hueneman as portrayed in SCORN is austere, ambiguous and cold. From the hard angles of light in his house to the masterful performance of Eric Johnson, the film is a haunting reflection of a boy without a conscience.”
— The National Post
“SCORN is psychologically astute, highly stylized and offbeat … a timely meditation on the seductive powers of evil.”
-- Globe Television
“As a study of evil, SCORN is a huge success … riveting.”
– The Vancouver Province