BEOWULF & GRENDEL
FILM AS ART – Danel Griffin
“Sit down if you’re standing, because I’m about to make the boldest statement a film critic can ever make – one that a responsible person in my profession should only state once or twice every ten years. Here it is: Beowulf & Grendel exists on the same plain of unadulterated genius as other mad, operatic visions like Stroheim’s Greed, Coppola’s Apocolypse Now, Hertzog’s Fitzcarraldo, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America.”
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.”
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, 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.”
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.”
TANDEM NEWS.COM
“Cool viewing for the heady crowd”
FORCE OF NATURE
GLOBE AND MAIL – Guy Dixon
“…possibly the most convincing and fascinating argument yet heard on every person’s right to a clean Earth.”
CANWEST MEDIA – Katherine Monk
“… reawakens us to the daily miracles that surround us – from the simple act of breathing, to the complexity of the natural world.”
TORONTO SUN – Bruce Kirkland
“Sturla Gunnarsson’s Force of Nature is both a marvellous biography of a Canadian icon and an entertaining and enlightening documentary about biodiversity.”
AIR INDIA 182
TORONTO SUN – Bruce Kirkland
“… Gunnarsson’s brilliantly crafted 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. 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.
MACLEANS MAGAZINE – Brian Johnson
“… 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. 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.“
SUCH A LONG JOURNEY
UK FILM REVIEW – John Binns
“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.”
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES – Roger Ebert
“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.”
NEW YORK TIMES – A.O. Scott
“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.”
WASHINGTON POST – Steven Hunter
“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.”