What we see on-screen, for the most part, in Ridley Scott‘s The Martian (based on Andy Weir’s popular sci-fi novel) is Matt Damon playing an astronaut, stranded on Mars, who must be resourceful on a resource-less planet in order to return to earth. From that simple premise spawns more entertainment than we’ve seen from Scott in years as we follow the Martian misadventures of Damon’s Mark Watney as he “sciences the shit” out of his dire situation with the (remote) help of his earth-bound astronautic team and the bright minds at NASA.

The movie’s trailers would have you expecting a white-knuckle, isolation-horror story along the lines of Gravity. I was pleasantly surprised, however (as someone who hasn’t read the book), to find a movie that’s optimistic, warm, very funny, and very much un-scary. This is much lighter material than the marketing would have you believe, and that’s a good thing.

The tone is set from the beginning with Mark and his team surveying the martian surface for, uh, science reasons. Mark rattles off smartass quips rapid-fire, and judging from his crew-mates’ joking, amused reactions, it’s clear they’re a tight-knit group. Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) leads the team, who refer to each other on a last-name basis. Martinez (Michael Peña), Johanssen (Kate Mara), Beck (Sebastian Stan), and Vogel (Aksel Hennie) find outer-space comfort in clowning on their good buddy Watney. Suddenly, a violent rock storm barrels through the work site and a piece of equipment slams into Mark, hurtling him into the darkness. Believing their friend dead, the team leaves the planet surface before the storm tears their ship to pieces.

Despite being left to his own devices, Mark finds a way to keep yapping: returning to the Mars base, he starts keeping a video log for whoever or whatever. It mostly keeps him sane as he MacGuyvers his way through the litany of problems that comes with being stranded on an inhospitable planet. The most pressing issue initially is Mark’s limited food supply; should he eventually find a way to contact earth or his crewmates, his current stock of NASA microwaveable meals wouldn’t keep him alive long enough for a rescue team to reach him. Thankfully, Mark’s a botanist, and he figures out a way to make his own water and grow an indoor garden, which bears enough potatoes to keep him going for the foreseeable future.

Much like in Robinson Crusoe and Robert Zemeckis’ Castaway, it’s a delight to watch our hero use his brainpower and willpower to gradually build a little life for himself in a hopeless place. It also doesn’t hurt that Damon finds his groove with the smart and savvy material, adapted by Drew Goddard from the book. Some of the jokes are pretty corny, but Goddard’s always had a knack for making even the cornball-iest comedy sing. Mark’s bright-side attitude is charming: when he runs out of ketchup for his potatoes, he dips them in crushed-up Adderall and jokes bout it; when it dawns on him that, because he’s grown potatoes on Martian soil, he’s technically colonized the planet, he sticks his chin up in the air like a proud child. The movie’s nearly two-and-a-half hours long, but Damon’s so entertaining that it’s a swift, streamlined watch.

The story hops back to earth regularly, where a crowded cast of mostly insignificant NASA officials debate how to tell the grieving public that Mark Watney is not deceased, as they originally reported, as well as figure out a way to bring him back home before his food runs out or a random equipment malfunction kills him. Jeff Daniels and Chiwetel Ejiofor have the most prominent roles as the two highest ranking NASA brains, with the rest of the home planet cast filled out by the likes of Donald Glover, Sean Bean, Mackenzie Davis, Benedict Wong, and Kristen Wiig, who’s in such a nothing role it’s sad. Chastain and the rest of the crew rejoin the story later, after NASA decides how to break the news to them that their friend is still alive.

The visual effects are as spectacular as they need to be, but the movie isn’t enamored with them like too many sci-fi dramas are. Mars looks totally convincing and serene, but the focus is always on what and how Mark’s doing. In essence, Weir’s story is about the wonder and power of science and how the human spirit can unlock its true beauty. None of the action scenes rival anything you’ll see in Interstellar or Gravity, but the that’s not what this movie’s about, after all, which is refreshing. The Martian won’t please those expecting a dark, terrorizing thrill ride where the heroes are in constant peril, but it’ll make the rest of us laugh and cheer, which is something sci-fi blockbusters don’t do enough these days.

There are two movies playing out in the Norwegian film Pioneer. The first is a gritty procedural of a deep-sea dive, and the second, and more dominant, is a tense thriller. While at first glance these two separate stories of the film feel markedly different, even potentially at odds, they are two parts of a whole. Each shares a feeling of claustrophobia, physically and psychologically, that carries the film and makes it an engrossing experience.

Back in the late 1970’s, Norway discovered oil off its coastline and sought to build a pipeline. But the government would only agree to the pipeline’s construction on the condition that test dives were made to ensure the safety of the program. This required co-operating with an American company–here represented by Wes Bentley and Stephen Lang–that had the necessary equipment to successfully manage the dive. This makes for more than a simple cultural clash. First, it allows writer-director Erik Skjoldbjærg to play up the pernicious international interpretation of the United States as a domineering, empire-building bully. Second, it enables Skjoldbjærg to reference his debt to 1970’s American conspiratorial thrillers.

Little about the start of Pioneer’s initial premise suggests what it will turn into. Petter (Aksel Hennie) and his brother Knut (André Eriksen) are two of the Norwegian divers tasked with performing the test dive. Skjoldbjærg sketchily lays out their relationship, antagonistic but ultimately loving. They stand in stark contrast: Knut is a family man with a wife (Stephanie Sigman) and son; Petter is the slovenly uncle. Here the film finds some melodrama worthy of a very poorly written soap opera (and I say that as an apologetic fan of soaps). The film never convincingly establishes these relationships, but then again its real interests seem to lie elsewhere.

However, the film excels in other regards. During the dive, inexplicably something goes wrong, leaving Knut unconscious and his diving mask smashed open. In a fantastic, nerve-wracking scene, Petter gives Knut his oxygen tank and swims back up with his brother’s body, under threat of getting decompression sickness.

Skjoldbjærg’s manner for shooting this scene is one he takes for the rest of the film. He situates the viewer both in the psychological head space of his protagonist and the physical space of the environment. Both confining and paranoia-inducing.

At this point–about 40 minutes in–the film shifts gears. Knut doesn’t survive the incident, and Petter suspects foul-play. As Petter’s superiors and government agencies systematically deflect his concerns and questions, he becomes further convinced of his suspicions. But almost to the end of its runtime, Pioneer continues a sense of skepticism around Petter’s reliability. For one thing, prior to the dive, Petter and the other Norwegian divers were placed in a pressure chamber to test their ability to withstand the deep ocean pressures. The chamber had a hallucinatory effect on them. This element calls into question Petter’s credibility, and his obsession with discovering the truth becomes all-consuming as he grapples with his own grasp on reality.

A favorable opinion of Pioneer depends entirely on one’s response to the presentation of the plot. A favorable assessment might politely describe it as convoluted. The film’s plot is, centered as it is on a conspiracy, needlessly self-involved and complicated. But I think criticizing it for this misses the point. As previously mentioned, Skjoldbjærg draws inspiration from 1970’s American thrillers. These films–like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor–arose out of disillusionment after Watergate and the Vietnam War. While a few of these films have really great plots, they were more interested in a sustained feeling of paranoia and distrust, and they often had their conspiracies encompass just about everyone imaginable, including the highest reaches of government.

Pioneer does not attempt anything quite so vast and far-reaching, but does play around in that same convention of thrillers. Plot matters less here than a constant sense of dread and obscure mystery. Trying to pick apart the film and its plot is easy to do. The focus should be on the nervy, tension-filled pleasures of the film. (After all, The Parallax View, for example, does not make a lick of sense and is a standard of the genre). In its back-half, Pioneer holds an adrenaline-fueled single-mindedness: Petter is an everyman caught up in something even he does not quite fully understand. His investigation involves plenty of double crosses, reveals, counter-reveals, and moments of misdirection. Eventually the plot ceases to matter.

It helps that the film has such a strong visual design to support this shaky plot. Cinematographer Jallo Faber does an excellent job of creating a moody, anxious atmosphere. He nicely plays around with lights and shadows to capture the insidiousness at hand. Skjoldbjærg’s shoots a number of scenes in close-ups that emphasize the tight spaces and the feeling of being trapped. But every so often he will pull back and show a character dwarfed by their environment, as just another pawn in the game at hand. This is smart, involving filmmaking that elevates a premise that has only so much momentum to it. By its end, Pioneer drags out, running out of avenues in its loopy storytelling. After all, even the best conspiracies have their limits.

Pioneer trailer

Out of all the places in the world, one would not think of Scandinavia to be the prime export of thrillers in the world at the moment. But they are. Over the past 3-4 years high class films and television series has been churned out from the friendly people of Northern Europe. From Sweden’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, to Norway’s Trollhunter, Sweden’s (in cooperation with Denmark) TV series The Bridge, Rare Exports (the best Santa Clause movie released in years) from Finland, the Wallander TV series too, Scandinavia is on fire. Hell, even AMC’s The Killing is based off of a show originally out of Denmark. I’ll even remind you of the superb Norwegian film Insomnia that was released some years ago.

I don’t know what has prompted this recent output of top flight material and I honestly don’t care, most of it is searing entertainment that is sure to please most people willing to follow along. Now comes the most recent export from Norway, Headhunters, probably my favorite out of the bunch.

Headhunters is a film that is fanatically exciting. Its opening scenes suck you in with its playfulness. At times it’s very funny. Even while the film is gruesomely violent, the film is just plain fun. The director, Morten Tyldum, is very good at welcoming the audience into the story. Opening with a narration by the main character, Roger Brown, the story is set up within minutes. Roger Brown is played by Askel Hennie, an actor/director from Norway who seems quite popular in his native country.

Brown is a corporate headhunter. Seeking out candidates for big businesses is his day job. What he does on the side you wouldn’t exactly call legal. Brown moonlights as an art thief. What makes this interesting is that he often steals paintings from the candidates he interviews for the job. He does this he says because he needs to support his wife who lives for luxurious things, clothes, jewelry etc. He is in horrible debt and is barely surviving as it is  His wife is about to open an art gallery which puts more pressure on him. Brown also has a woman on the side because he is convinced his wife loves him for his money and nothing more. I found it kind of ironic that a headhunter with loads of confidence in a board room has almost none with his own wife.

All of these opening scenes are inviting, they move along at a nice pace and almost feel like a 20 minute montage priming the audience for what lies ahead. The movie really kicks off at Brown’s wife’s art gallery opening where he runs into the film’s villain. Clas Greve, who is cheerfully diabolical in his ways, is played by the great Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. You’ll recognize him from the HBO series Game of Thrones. A good thriller is only as good as its villain and Headhunters has one hell of a villain. Waldau is fantastic as Greve, a man who is more than meets the eye. He arrives with an aura of mystery when he meets Brown.

We discover that Greve used to work for a major military corporation in the Netherlands and just recently stepped down. Greve also used to be a black ops mercenary who was a specialist at tracking down people. Brown wants to sign him to a rival military firm in Norway. Once Brown finds out that Greve has an extremely rare painting worth tens of millions of dollars he immediately hatches a plan to steal it. But does Clas know more than he is letting on?

Brown goes to Greve’s apartment to steal the painting only to find his wife’s cellphone lying next to the bed. Headhunters then throws down the gamut. Not knowing who to trust, Brown is thrown into complete paranoia and the film reveals its ugly head, thrusting itself into a frenetic chase across Norway. Twisting and turning at every moment, Brown is in completely over his head.

The cat and mouse game that gets played between Brown and his tormentor Greve gets quite brutal at times. Brown is forced to kill a dog in one scene and in another has to hide in the worst part of an outhouse. Greve is relentless in his chase. One of the best scenes involves a police car and a semi rig in the high mountains. Let’s just say it doesn’t end well for a few people.

Headhunters is almost unbelievable at times. In one scene Brown is forced to play dead and Greve pretty much looks at him and decides he is dead. You’d think a man of his past would know to check for a pulse or put one last bullet in his head, but he doesn’t. But honestly who really cares when the film is this much fun? The cast has fun with the material, the plot is twisty and a lot of fun to watch unfold and Tyldum’s direction is flashy enough to keep you guessing. Headhunters is almost never boring and when you’re watching a thriller isn’t that the point?