Editorial Review

Masterpiece or masquerade? Lars von Trier's digicam musical split the critics in two when it debuted at Cannes in 2000. There were those who saw it as a cynical shock-opera from a manipulative charlatan, others wept openly at its scenes of raw emotion and heart-rending intensity. There is, however, no in-between. Read more

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• Closed-captioned
• Color
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Reviews (304)

Incredible movie! Be prepared to cry in the finale...
This is surely a masterpiece although it has as many admirers as haters. It is difficult to describe its character: is it a melodrama, a sentimental soap-opera, a musical, an eccentric videoclip, or simply a surrealistic story of a woman (Selma) who wears thick glasses and loses her vision with each day passing? Selma dances and sings due to her incurable love for musicals, when everything around her is falling apart. The camerawork is indeed hard to follow in some cases, but if you are patient enough you will be amply rewarded in the end! The finale is incredibly moving. Director Lars von Trier deserves congratulations because he succeeded to bring back compassion in modern cinema with the most subversive way. A film not to be missed!

Painfully dull, the camerawork is irritating as hell. Think "Blair Witch Project"
I couldn't even get to the end of this movie, it was so irritatingly dull.THe camerawork is... "artsy"? It made me feel sick. Evidently the ending was worse than the first half so I'm glad I didn't finish it. I'll just stick to (some of) Bjork's music and avoid ALL of this director's work.

Nauseating
I wish I could give this film negative-5 stars.Truly the worst movie I have ever seen.Von Trier is a sadist who forces his audience to sit through the last hour of the movie and share the unending agony of the main character, only to be followed by a horrible execution.After it was over, I was truly ill.Watching this movie reduced the quality of my life.I will never see a Von Trier movie again.He hates women and it shows.He should be launched into outer space; only a hateful human being would make something like this. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Drama    2. Feature Film-drama    3. Movie   

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• Black & White
• Closed-captioned
• Color
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Reviews (21)

Zentropa
The first film from Lars Von Trier's "Europa" trilogy that I have seen. It was a very intriguing film and definitely bears similarities with Von Trier's later films, but is SO much different. It is so stylized and well shot and so glossy and, dare I say, very Hollywood of him. Whereas, his new films are shot on DV and look very rough. I prefer the new way, haha, but this was still a very good film. It lacks the emotion of Von Trier's newer stuff, though, which was sad. But I really liked it, reguardless.

Unjustly Neglected Masterpiece
Zentropa is one of those rare films of which it truly can be said:it's unlike any movie you will see.It's a bloody shame this is not currently available as this is one of those films that deserves a much wider audience.As a personal aside, everyone I've shared this film with - and what a widely disparate assortment of folk that is - has been astonished by it.von Triers pays homage to the great expressionist filmmakers who went before him and he does them proud.
Brilliant Artistic and Enigmatic Tale of a Broken Europe...
The voice of Max von Sydow hypnotizes the audience by stating, "You will now listen to my voice..." as he continuous to count to ten, which pulls the viewer into a nightmarish dream.Simultaneously the opening shot of railroad tracks is flashing by, which visually puts the viewer in a trance as the screen turns black.This beginning incites the audience participation as the film definitely requires a high level of cognitive participation, unlike most films made where the story is driven by the scripted dialogue.Zentropa becomes a visual and aural journey that mesmerizes the audience in a highly artistic manner.
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Subjects:  1. Foreign Film - German    2. Foreign Film [Dub Or Subtitle]    3. Movie   

Editorial Review

Set in an unmercifully rugged, coastal village in Scotland in the 1970s, this extraordinary film by Lars von Trier stars British actress Emily Watson as a barely contained naive named Bess, who holds regular conversations with God and whose pure and intensely personal faith is hardly tolerated by the gruesome Calvinist elders of her church. Bess marries an oil-rig worker (Stellan Skarsgard) and comes to believe that erotic discovery is a part of God's grand plan. But after her spouse is hurt in an accident, she decides that divine instruction is leading her toward the life of a prostitute--with disastrous but somehow beautiful results. Von Trier (Read more

Features

• Closed-captioned
• Color
• NTSC

Reviews (144)

Most Powerful Film On Von Trier's CV.
Breaking The Waves is quite possibly one of the best, and most powerful film of the 90's. It is considered one of the films in the Dogme movement started by Danish filmmakers including this film's director, Lars Von Trier. The Dogme movement was started in 1995, and is a set of rules, that director's can follow which allows the filmmaking to be at it's purest for cheapest, with no special effect and no big budget, this allows the filmmakers to focus more on the story and the actor's involvement with their characters. Although this is not a proper Dogme film, it does follow some of the other rules Lars Von Trier vowed to keep. This is Emily Watson's first feature film and definately is one of her finest roles to date. She achieved an acadamy award nomination for best actress as the leading character Bess, and the film also won the grand jury award at the Cannes Film Festival, along with best film of the year at the european film awards. The film was written by Lars Von Trier, Peter Asmussen, and the uncredited David Pirie.
extremely mixed emotions
I have never had such mixed feelings about a film. I think the film in and of itself is one of the worst I've ever seen: Lars "von" Trier is in my opinion a very sick individual, and the whole "Dogma" movement is an extraordinary exercise in silliness. I felt dazed and down for days after seeing this film, due to its twisted psychology, and the ending (with the bells ringing in the sky) is one of the corniest ever - pure kitsch. On the other hand, Emily Watson's performance in the leading role is possibly the best I've ever seen on film (up there with Brando as Vito Corleone and Anthony Quinn as Zorba). For that alone it's worth seeing.

Von Trier 'Breaks Boundaries' in one of the most bizarre love stories ever filmed!
"Breaking The Waves" may be one of the weirdest love stories ever, but one that perhaps best details how love can make us a bit insane.
Read more

Subjects:  1. Drama    2. Feature Film-drama    3. Movie   

Editorial Review

Masterpiece or masquerade? Lars von Trier's digicam musical split the critics in two when it debuted at Cannes in 2000. There were those who saw it as a cynical shock-opera from a manipulative charlatan, others wept openly at its scenes of raw emotion and heart-rending intensity. There is, however, no in-between. Read more

Features

• Closed-captioned
• Color
• Original recording reissued
• NTSC

Reviews (304)

Incredible movie! Be prepared to cry in the finale...
This is surely a masterpiece although it has as many admirers as haters. It is difficult to describe its character: is it a melodrama, a sentimental soap-opera, a musical, an eccentric videoclip, or simply a surrealistic story of a woman (Selma) who wears thick glasses and loses her vision with each day passing? Selma dances and sings due to her incurable love for musicals, when everything around her is falling apart. The camerawork is indeed hard to follow in some cases, but if you are patient enough you will be amply rewarded in the end! The finale is incredibly moving. Director Lars von Trier deserves congratulations because he succeeded to bring back compassion in modern cinema with the most subversive way. A film not to be missed!

Painfully dull, the camerawork is irritating as hell. Think "Blair Witch Project"
I couldn't even get to the end of this movie, it was so irritatingly dull.THe camerawork is... "artsy"? It made me feel sick. Evidently the ending was worse than the first half so I'm glad I didn't finish it. I'll just stick to (some of) Bjork's music and avoid ALL of this director's work.

Nauseating
I wish I could give this film negative-5 stars.Truly the worst movie I have ever seen.Von Trier is a sadist who forces his audience to sit through the last hour of the movie and share the unending agony of the main character, only to be followed by a horrible execution.After it was over, I was truly ill.Watching this movie reduced the quality of my life.I will never see a Von Trier movie again.He hates women and it shows.He should be launched into outer space; only a hateful human being would make something like this. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Drama    2. Feature Film-drama    3. Movie   

Editorial Review

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• Color
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Reviews (61)

Not a great effort
Unlike other reviewers,I don't think highly of this program. Cheap effects, B-movie acting, scares that don't scare for the most part, and humor that is more likely to make you shake your head than your belly all come together in one long tedious bore (I like my film metaphors entertaining. This is supposed to be an Entertainment first and foremost isn't it?). BUT I did watch all four episodes (it is Von Trier after all) and was sufficiently left by the final minutes wanting to see the second Season. I rate this a 2 but the ending bumps it up to 2.5.

Tongueincheek
This TV show is not supposed to be surreal. It is a tongue-in-cheek soap opera with overtones of the fantastic and horrific. It is visually stunning with some very humorous exchanges between the characters. Listen to Lars Von Trier at the end of every episode--it's really funny, pointed stuff. It also, at the same time, mulls over some very serious issues concerning the limits of science, the sanctity of life and the role of the spiritual realm in, and contrasted to, the sciences. Don't listen to the nay-sayers: they confuse genres so easily with glib remarks that underscore their ignorance.

Fix For Disc Two Error
Like other reviewers I found an error 39:11 into Disc Two. If you have purchased this movie and have such a problem Koch Lorber is aware of the error. You can get in touch with them through their web site www.kochlorberfilms.com
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Subjects:  1. Drama    2. Foreign Film - Other    3. Movie   

Editorial Review

The latest galvanizing and controversial film from Lars von Trier (Read more

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• Closed-captioned
• Color
• NTSC

Reviews (185)

Have you ever been to Dogville?
`Dogville' is a unique look at human interaction.Set in the town of Dogville where the people live in close quarters away from the rest of the world a young woman, a stranger, named Grace (Kidman) comes to escape a group of gangsters seeking her.Tom (Bettany), who feels he needs to be the moral guide to the town, feels that accepting Grace into their lives and helping her will help the town build character.So, with all in agreement, they give her two weeks to prove herself no danger to the community, and so with the help from Tom she begins to prove herself by doing jobs here and then for the community.
The name says it all.
This experimental production was lurking in the Movie Section and so I rented it based on awards and on-box reviews. (major mistake) After scrolling through a couple scenes and getting confirmation from my sense that it all would be horrifically boring, (based on cheesy dialogue and claustrophic layout, I simply ejected it with the same weariness that might had beseiged me had I had watched it through its running time which is roughly one/eighth of a day. Even as an experiment this piece could have claimed less damage were it limited to 21 minutes tops. Three hours of it is cruelty. So what about all those awards? I just don't know. Maybe, after all, it's who you know.

2 years later I'm still thinking about it
After thinking for a while, I decided that this actually is my favorite movie ever. It is long and not the kind of movie I'd watch over and over again, but no movie has ever had such a profound emotional impact on me and stayed in my mind for so long. I really couldn't stop talking about it and thinking about it weeks after I saw it. It is long and slow moving, which can be boring, but it makes the ending of the whole story so much sweeter. You really feel like you've truly gone through this whole journey with the main character through the traumatizing and the mundane. It seems a bit strange that the film basically has no props or set, just the outline of a town drawn on a stage, but I appreciated it in the end. You get so caught up in the whole thing that in the end you realize that it is just people on a stage (much more scarce than most plays you've ever seen.) It impressed me how the camera work, sets, etc. were not fancy at all. The most simplistic film affected me more than any other movie that has taken me to completely different places visually. You may get the urge to turn it off, but stick it out until the end and you will be satisfied. And it is not Anti- America as far as I can tell. It's about human nature and it could happen anywhere in any town. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Drama    2. Feature Film-drama    3. Movie   

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Reviews (14)

Funny
This is not a "big" film like, say, Breaking The Waves, but it is a good film in its own right. The whole concept is hilarious and at times intensely funny. So just lean back in your sofa, hit the remote, tilt your head a bit, keep your mouth a bit open, drewl a bit and enjoy.

Irresponsible offensive behavior by grown-ups...
Karen stumbles aimlessly around in Copenhagen and she ends up in a classy restaurant where she meets Stoffer who is the self-proclaimed leader for a group of individuals that live by acting as if they were mentally handicapped.The group offers something to Karen to hold onto as she begins to discover her "inner idiot" by acting irresponsibly and immaturely.This behavior causes confusion and disorder around them, which leads to anger, anxiety, and misery.The Idiots begins with several comical situations that leads to distasteful behavior, which will certainly offend most viewers.However, it is the offensive behavior that brings about a daring theme that pushes the envelop as it provides some insights into our Western civilization.This leaves the audience with an interesting cinematic experience that is shot with the Dogma 95 style.

sooo much fun and brilliant acting
this movie is sad,funny,you name it its there .the actors here are soo good it hurts...this movie made me such a big lars von trier fan!!i think the moral of the movie is that if you act like an idiot it might stick to you!i watched this movie like 5-6 times each time i found out something new!this is the best lars movie .i love you lars !!!!keep it real man!!!!!! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Comedies    2. Feature Film-comedy    3. Movie   

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• Color
• Subtitled
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Reviews (5)

"Why must women bear so much?...
...Wordlessly submissive in body and deed? What rights have women?" --Medea
Awful Transfer
Stay away from Facets. I thought the transfer was poor on the Facets edition of Heimat, but this makes the US Facets Heimat look hi-def by comparison. This dvd is pixilated, grainy & just barely this side of unwatcheable. This transfer makes many of the dollar store dvd's look good by comparison. I can't believe Facets has the gall to charge $30 for this. This review & the 1 star rating is for this dvd, Not for the film. The transfer is so bad that I can't judge or enjoy the film.

More Greek Myths
Trier, who is at times an accomplished director, has an eye for great art. This film, which deals with the Greek mythology of Medea, who killed her children in order to appease the gods, is an artistic telling of the event, from deep colored shots of the ocean to lens filtered wind brushing against the actors shade, this is all visual, but the film is quite utterly boring and thus, we are not interested in the development of sequences which Trier arranges from us. Udo Kier is common in this adaptation and by the end, we are glad that the screen is no longer filled with such blatant incoehesion.
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Subjects:  1. Foreign Film - Other    2. Foreign Film [Dub Or Subtitle]    3. Movie   

Editorial Review

It may prove confounding to anyone expecting a more conventional narrative, but Read more

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• Color
• Letterboxed
• Original recording remastered
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Reviews (22)

Lars is a scary genius
Lars von Trier is a provocatuer film maker and you can see the roots of that persona in his first major film, Tlement of Crime. Once you accept the conceit that the entire film is happening in the protagonist's subconcious under hypnosis, it all makes a startling kind of brutal sense. This is not "sci-fi" or "futuristic". It is a straightforward story of Europe at the end of the 20th century seen through a nightmarish veil. It's brilliant. I wish I admired all of his work as much as I like this film.

Extraordinary debut by one of the greatest filmmakers today, Lars von Trier
A reviewer posted earlier than von Trier was the future of cinema.I think he's definitely part of it.This was his first feature film, and it's stunning.Shot in sepia with flashes of blue throughout, it's very reminscent of Tarkovsky.It's slow, thought provoking, brooding, and gives a mood of sadness and dread.Von Trier's early work has none of the hand held camera work that is characteristic of his later films.This film (along with Epidemic and Europa) are classically composed, and von Trier excels at it.The performance are superb.Michael Elphick is very good, and Esmond Knight give a great final performance as Fisher.Knight was in many Powell and Pressburger film during their heyday (mostly in supporting roles).The only complaint I would have is the dialogue.The film is in English (not dubbed, it was shot that way), but it doesn't sound like normal, conversational English.It has a stilted quality about it, as do other films of von Trier's that are shot in English.Aside from that, it's a magnificent film.

Hunk 'O Junk!
This movie is about the biggest piece of turd any one filmmaker could drop.I'm sorry to be so blunt but I have never been so frustrated or tired with one movie in my life.It's completely unwatchable.You never know what's going on, and just when you think you do, you realize that you were wrong and you really didn't know at all!Don't waste your time or your money on buying this.Matter of fact, don't even rent it.borrow it from a friend or the library for free, then you won't feel cheated. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Drama    2. Feature Film-drama    3. Movie    4. Mystery    5. Mystery / Suspense    6. Suspense   

Editorial Review

Set in an unmercifully rugged, coastal village in Scotland in the 1970s, this extraordinary film by Lars von Trier stars British actress Emily Watson as a barely contained naive named Bess, who holds regular conversations with God and whose pure and intensely personal faith is hardly tolerated by the gruesome Calvinist elders of her church. Bess marries an oil-rig worker (Stellan Skarsgard) and comes to believe that erotic discovery is a part of God's grand plan. But after her spouse is hurt in an accident, she decides that divine instruction is leading her toward the life of a prostitute--with disastrous but somehow beautiful results. Von Trier (Read more

Features

• Closed-captioned
• Color
• Letterboxed
• Widescreen
• NTSC

Reviews (144)

Most Powerful Film On Von Trier's CV.
Breaking The Waves is quite possibly one of the best, and most powerful film of the 90's. It is considered one of the films in the Dogme movement started by Danish filmmakers including this film's director, Lars Von Trier. The Dogme movement was started in 1995, and is a set of rules, that director's can follow which allows the filmmaking to be at it's purest for cheapest, with no special effect and no big budget, this allows the filmmakers to focus more on the story and the actor's involvement with their characters. Although this is not a proper Dogme film, it does follow some of the other rules Lars Von Trier vowed to keep. This is Emily Watson's first feature film and definately is one of her finest roles to date. She achieved an acadamy award nomination for best actress as the leading character Bess, and the film also won the grand jury award at the Cannes Film Festival, along with best film of the year at the european film awards. The film was written by Lars Von Trier, Peter Asmussen, and the uncredited David Pirie.
extremely mixed emotions
I have never had such mixed feelings about a film. I think the film in and of itself is one of the worst I've ever seen: Lars "von" Trier is in my opinion a very sick individual, and the whole "Dogma" movement is an extraordinary exercise in silliness. I felt dazed and down for days after seeing this film, due to its twisted psychology, and the ending (with the bells ringing in the sky) is one of the corniest ever - pure kitsch. On the other hand, Emily Watson's performance in the leading role is possibly the best I've ever seen on film (up there with Brando as Vito Corleone and Anthony Quinn as Zorba). For that alone it's worth seeing.

Von Trier 'Breaks Boundaries' in one of the most bizarre love stories ever filmed!
"Breaking The Waves" may be one of the weirdest love stories ever, but one that perhaps best details how love can make us a bit insane.
Read more

Subjects:  1. Drama    2. Feature Film-drama    3. Movie   

Features

• Color
• NTSC

Reviews (14)

Funny
This is not a "big" film like, say, Breaking The Waves, but it is a good film in its own right. The whole concept is hilarious and at times intensely funny. So just lean back in your sofa, hit the remote, tilt your head a bit, keep your mouth a bit open, drewl a bit and enjoy.

Irresponsible offensive behavior by grown-ups...
Karen stumbles aimlessly around in Copenhagen and she ends up in a classy restaurant where she meets Stoffer who is the self-proclaimed leader for a group of individuals that live by acting as if they were mentally handicapped.The group offers something to Karen to hold onto as she begins to discover her "inner idiot" by acting irresponsibly and immaturely.This behavior causes confusion and disorder around them, which leads to anger, anxiety, and misery.The Idiots begins with several comical situations that leads to distasteful behavior, which will certainly offend most viewers.However, it is the offensive behavior that brings about a daring theme that pushes the envelop as it provides some insights into our Western civilization.This leaves the audience with an interesting cinematic experience that is shot with the Dogma 95 style.

sooo much fun and brilliant acting
this movie is sad,funny,you name it its there .the actors here are soo good it hurts...this movie made me such a big lars von trier fan!!i think the moral of the movie is that if you act like an idiot it might stick to you!i watched this movie like 5-6 times each time i found out something new!this is the best lars movie .i love you lars !!!!keep it real man!!!!!! ... Read more