Baltasar Kormákur

Touch

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Miko and Kristófer in the 1960s

Gentle and beguiling, Touch is a change of gear for director Baltasar Kormákur, the Icelander who made his name with a series of genre movies, like the homegrown thriller 101 Reykjavík, before heading to Hollywood where 2 Guns (with Denzel Washington) and Everest (Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley) showed he could handle big stars and big productions. That’s all dialled back here in a very human and quiet drama about a lone, ageing Icelander who, towards the end of his life and with a wife now dead, tries to find the young woman he fell in love with 50 years before. Kormákur chops between the eras. In the here and now Kristófer a grizzled … Read more

The Deep (aka Djúpið)

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Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (left) in The Deep

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 9 December Clarence Birdseye born, 1886 On this day in 1886, one of the greats of the modern food industry was born. The man who could be considered to be the real Captain Birdseye came into the world in Brooklyn, New York, the sixth of nine children. Clarence didn’t come from a privileged background and when he grew up he struggled to pay his college fees. He ended up dropping out and in his early 20s wound up being a taxidermist, where the standing problem is how to keep the animal fresh while it’s being worked on. By the age of … Read more