Rating: 
Summary: A journey, a mystery, a wonderful film
Review: Based on Peter Hoeg's novel (one that is well worth reading), Smilla's Sense of Snow takes the viewer to places never really travelled before. This is a journey to snow cold and ice, from Denmark to Greenland. Like Iceman or the Thing, this is a perfect antidote to the heat of a summer day. Coopenhagen is probably a very lovely city, but in this film, in Smilla's eyes, it is a drab and dreary place. The beauty of Greenland's vast and open spaces shines through, giving equal parts of calm and menace.The mystery is a good one, and the plight of the young Innuit boy is made clear from the start. Looking at the small body from the height it has fallen is disturbing and very sad. You understand immediately why Smilla would want to find out what she could about the boy's death. As the mystery unfolds, you realize that this is far afield from what you thought was the original answer. Some of the surprises are telegraphed, which make the unexpected twists and turns all that much more surprising. The book, of course, has much more detail, but the movie is a well done streamlined version, keeping the original firmly in mind. The only qualms with book vs movie are at the very very beginning and the conclusion, which is decidedly different. The picture and the sound on the DVD are amazing. The transfer is well done, and if you see this movie in any other form other than widescreen, you are missing out tremendously. The 5-1 sound is spectacular, especially when the movie moves to Greenland. There is a 5 minute featurette, which is better than most American featurette (don't expect the trailer shots to be used here--this is the cast and crew in Greenland). The supporting performances are well done (Robert Loggia, Vanessa Redgrave, and the underrated Jim Broadbent). A wonderful movie, one worth buying and repeatedly watching.
Rating: 
Summary: An Intriguing Movie with a First-Rate Performance by Ormond
Review: Even though the story falls off a little towards the end, I like this movie a lot. It has a cold, strange setting in Greenland and Copenhagen, a strong, fierce, independent heroine in Smilla Jasperson, a well-played second lead in Gabriel Byrne, and a story that, I think, is engrossing.
Smilla is woman who keeps to herself, trusts no one, and knows everything there is to know about the properties of snow. She's the daughter of an Inuit Greenlander and a Danish father. Her mother is dead; she's not close to her father; she's alienated from comfortable Danish society, but probably could never do well in Inuit Greenland. One day she comes home to her apartment in Copenhagen and finds that a young Inuit boy who lived in the building had fallen to his death. The police tell her that he had been playing on the roof and had accidently fallen. Smilla is instantly suspicious because she knew the eight-year-old was frightened of heights. Later, her reading of his prints in the snow convince her that he was running from something. Then she learns that there were puncture marks on his body. This sets up the story that involves an obsessive and ruthless scientist, a powerful company, a coverup and a huge scientific secret in Greenland.
One thing really makes this movie work for me, and that is Ormond's performance as Smilla. Ormond is a beautiful woman, but she's also a good actress. She nails the part as a person with many grievances and no particular reason to get close to anyone. She seldom smiles. Yet she does get close to the boy. Their gradual warming relationship, shown in flashback, is realistic and touching. Her relationship to the character played by Byrne is also intriguing. He lives in the same apartment house and for some time it's unclear what his role is. While Byrne's character is deeper than we think, in a test of wills Smilla is just as strong or stronger than he is. It's a nice concept.
The movie also features one of the most gripping opening sequences I've seen. In a vast, sunlit, silent ice field a single Inuit hunter holding a spear is standing motionless by an air hole waiting for a seal. His dogs are nearby. You see a streak of light descend in the far distance, hear a rumble, the dogs get restless. The hunter sees far away a great wave of snow and debris. He harnesses the dogs and takes off, trying to out race the gradually nearing line of disturbance that's moving toward him. The race is desperate and he doesn't make it.
But then there's the ending to deal with. It's not really a bad ending. It involves Smilla stowing away on a ship headed to Greenland, and then learning a sort of science fiction answer to the mystery. For me, it's always a bit of a letdown because the first three-quarters of the movie are so good. It doesn't keep me from watching the movie every year or so.
The other roles are played by very good actors, including Richard Harris, Tom Wilkinson, Bob Peck, Vanessa Redgrave and Jim Broadbent.
The DVD transfer is very good. And if you want to read an outstanding book as well as watch a good movie, pick up a copy of Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg.
Rating: 
Summary: What happens when Scandanavians try and do X-Files
Review: Film opens with an astroid crashing into the Arctic Ocean in 1859. A great opener, great special effects. Then a mysterious death in 1996, which Smilla, a loner, begins to investigate. At times, scenes resembled the X-FILES, as mysterious killers and conspiracists and prehistoric worms brought to life all enter the picture. But most of it is like a self-absorbed Ingmar Bergman film. Long boring scenes emphasizing how depressed and alienated all the characters are. I didn't much care for any of them, and it was tough putting up with their dreary lives. I taped this off the Independent Film Channel, and forced myself to watch it over two days, just to see how it all turned out. I was too bored to see it all on the same day. Film made me glad I don't live in Denmark.
Rating: 
Summary: What a weird one: like two different movies
Review: First, let's start off with what's good about "Smilla." You can list these easily: 1. Julia Ormond
2. Julia Ormond
3. Julia Ormond Why is this stunningly beautiful and talented actress so underused? Her imdb.com filmography is scandalously short, given her obvious talents. She's brilliant here as lead character Smilla Jeperson - complex, alluring, conflicted and committed. For Ormond alone, check out this movie. But, wow, are there some peculiarities here. Let's start off with a group of American and English characters roaming about Copenhagen, ostensibly Danish (one would think), all speaking English in shifting accents. Reminds me of the recent John Malkovich-helmed "Dancer Upstairs" - set in quasi-Peru, all in English with Spanish accents. Just weird. Weird here, too. Then there's the progression of the movie. Its first half is this pretty tight, intense *little* thriller. Then, in the second half, it's off to Greenland by freighter, Ormond turns into a Bond girl, bodies start dropping, throbbing meteorites somehow figure greatly, huge explosions go off. I mean, what happened? The odd casting is also worthy of comment. Robert Loggia as Julia Ormond's father? Ummmm....No. And although Peter Hoeg probably lays this out in excruciating detail in his 500 (or so) page book, the moviegoer never gets any explanation of how/why the Loggia character was in Greenland, how he met and wooed Ormond's Inuit Mom, why he's in Copenhagen now, etc., etc. Despite all these oddities, 'Smilla' is worth a rental or purchase.
Rating:
Summary: What a weird one: like two different movies
Review: First, let's start off with what's good about "Smilla." You can list these easily: 1. Julia Ormond
2. Julia Ormond
3. Julia Ormond Why is this stunningly beautiful and talented actress so underused? Her imdb.com filmography is scandalously short, given her obvious talents. She's brilliant here as lead character Smilla Jeperson - complex, alluring, conflicted and committed. For Ormond alone, check out this movie. But, wow, are there some peculiarities here. Let's start off with a group of American and English characters roaming about Copenhagen, ostensibly Danish (one would think), all speaking English in shifting accents. Reminds me of the recent John Malkovich-helmed "Dancer Upstairs" - set in quasi-Peru, all in English with Spanish accents. Just weird. Weird here, too. Then there's the progression of the movie. Its first half is this pretty tight, intense *little* thriller. Then, in the second half, it's off to Greenland by freighter, Ormond turns into a Bond girl, bodies start dropping, throbbing meteorites somehow figure greatly, huge explosions go off. I mean, what happened? The odd casting is also worthy of comment. Robert Loggia as Julia Ormond's father? Ummmm....No. And although Peter Hoeg probably lays this out in excruciating detail in his 500 (or so) page book, the moviegoer never gets any explanation of how/why the Loggia character was in Greenland, how he met and wooed Ormond's Inuit Mom, why he's in Copenhagen now, etc., etc. Despite all these oddities, 'Smilla' is worth a rental or purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Good Movie
Review: For any Gabriel Bryne fan or Julia Ormond fan this is a must-see. The love story is beautiful and touching. The chemistry between the two is great!! The scene in the car between the two of them was really good!
I loved the whole mystery of the movie and romance. The acting was very well done. It was great to see Vanessa Redgrave and I wished to see more of her.
Gabriel Bryne was wonderful in this film. His soft, vulnerability, but strong character was perfect to Smilla's more thorny character. He really helped make her softer in the end. I can only wish to see more of Gabriel Bryne in these kind of roles.
Rating:
Summary: Wintry skies, loneliness and a little boy's mysterious death
Review: How many words for "snow" do you know? In most language, there is only one ... or maybe a few, but not many different ones. But the Inuit language knows countless words for snow - different expressions based on its consistency, its aggregate state, on whether it's old or freshly fallen, and much, much more. And snow is Smilla Jaspersen's specialty; it's what she studies and what she knows better than anybody and anything. So when her only friend, an Inuit boy living in the same Copenhagen apartment complex as her is found dead on the pavement in front of their house, she knows something must be amiss; he can't have fallen off the roof, as the police quickly conclude: afraid of heights, he would not have climbed to the roof if not driven there in the first place, and he certainly wouldn't have run to the edge ... as his footsteps in the otherwise untouched snow cover on the roof, however, indicate. Smilla, half Inuit herself and brought to Copenhagen against her will after her Inuit mother's death, is a loner, a rebel against society, hiding her fears and loneliness under a thick coat of armor of unapproachability and trying to be "rough all over." Unable and unwilling to ever lift that coat of armor, she takes refuge in science - her definition of longing are mathematics's negative numbers, the "formalization of the feeling that you're missing something." - Yet, this movie's Smilla is not the Smilla Jaspersen of Peter Hoeg's novel which the movie seeks to adapt ... although Julia Ormond's performance is not exactly coated with sugar, she is a far cry from the book's 37-year old woman who hates her Danish father for tearing her from her Greenlandic roots and open skies, and who hates the confines of the society in which he has made her grow up. And as the story's protagonist changes in the movie adaption, so does the story line itself - unfortunately, not for the better. Even accepting that it would have been impossible to translate all the novel's subplots and subtleties onto the screen, what begins like a complex, introspective story about loneliness, the loss of home, and the unchecked power and ambition of a group of prestigious scientists, turns into your average thriller in the end - a huge let-down in an otherwise compelling movie. Nevertheless, Ormond's performance as Bille August's Smilla (even if not Peter Hoeg's) is strong; and so, in all its quietness, is Gabriel Byrne's performance as Smilla's neighbor, the would-be mechanic. Atmospherically, the movie wonderfully projects Smilla's loneliness in the sad, gray skies and wet snow of wintry Copenhagen, as opposed to the crisp blue skies, white ice fields and limitless horizons of Greenland. For these reasons alone, the movie is well worth watching; even if those of us who have read the novel will have to leave aside a good portion of its contents to be able to appreciate the movie on its own merits.
Rating:
Summary: Julia Ormond's excellent performance redeems this film
Review: I am a longtime fan of Julia Ormond. She is excellent in the short list of movies she's been in: Legends of the Fall, First Knight, Sabrina, and then this movie. I wish she would appear in more movies!! What happened to you, Julia?
The film concerns an intelligent woman, Smilla Jaspersen, who investigates the mysterious death of her neighbor friend, Isaiah, who is a young boy. Smilla is suspicious about the way the investigation of the boy's death is going and she tries to find out who's responsible for the boy's death and how Greenville Mining Company is involved.
I have not read the book like some of the other reviewers have, so I cannot judge this movie based on the novel. I'd like to analyze this movie as a fan of Julia and as a movie buff of mystery/suspense films.
The Good:
1) Julia Ormond's portrayal of Smilla Jaspersen is outstanding and the redeeming factor of this film. Julia does an excellent job of portraying the multi-faceted sides of Smilla. We see her rude and cold demeanor and yet we also see her tenderness and love for the boy and his mother. We see her alienation and emotional detachment and yet we see her yearning for love and affection. We see her as a frightened woman when threatened by the bad guys, yet we see her courage and determination in pursuing this case to the end. Smilla is a woman of fierce determination and courage. She will get to the end of investigating this mystery and if there is foul-play or cover-up involved, she'll make sure the bad guys pay for what they've done. And what's more, she knows everything about snow -- falling snow, tracking snow, snow for building igloos, etc. hence, the title of this movie & novel.
2) Smilla's comical relationship with her dad and her dad's young girlfriend. Some of the most memorable and comical scenes are when Smilla is around her physician dad and his young girlfriend. Smilla loves and respects her dad but totally hates his girlfriend, who seems slightly younger than Smilla herself. I loved the verbal "sword duels" between Smilla and Benja, the girlfriend. Here are two women who absolutely despise and hate each other, and yet they are emotionally attached to the same man. I enjoyed the scenes when the two women were together.
3) The tender moments when Smilla is with the boy, Isaiah. Here, we see the tender side of Smilla. Despite her coldness, she is drawn emotionally to the boy and takes on the role of a surrogate mother and protector of the boy. These scenes were touching and moving.
4) The great lines: Smilla to Elsa Lubing: "The way you have a sense of God, I have a sense of snow"; The verbal jabs by Smilla to the hated girlfriend of her dad.
The Not-So-Good:
1) Unbelievable plot lines and "coincidences": How is it that Smilla always meet the Mechanic guy (played by Gabriel Byrne) at exactly the right moment when she is in danger and chased by the bad guys? How does he know exactly where Smilla is aboard the ship?
2) How did Smilla survive aboard the ship when she was chased by the bad guys? Did these guys suddenly give up their chase?
The scene when she hides from the bad guys in a wine cellar seems like a plot taken from the Nancy Drew novels.
3) The semi-James Bond-like ending. I won't give away too much except to say that I wish that what began in this movie with a very interesting character study of Smilla ended in a derivative Holly-wood, semi-James Bond-like ending. Why can't movies stick with the character development of the main character without having to resort to a predictable, semi-action type ending?
4) No explanation of who the Mechanic guy is. The movie does not explain who this guy is, why he's there, and what side is he on? After watching the whole movie, I still don't understand this character.
I guess I will have to read the novel to answer some of these questions.
In any case, I recommend this movie based on the Julia Ormond's performance and the excellent first half of the movie, which focusses more on the character development of Smilla, Isaiah and her mother. If you can forgive the derivative second half and the ending, then you'll like this movie.
Rating:
Summary: A painful botch I just can't refuse
Review: I hadn't even read the book (which I had saved for a snowy weekend) when I picked up the movie version of "Ms. Smilla's Feeling for Snow". Don't ask me to spell out Smilla's first name in full, nobody asks the director's either, just indicative of the neglect that the filmaker's give their star charachter. This only enlarges the biggest gap in the novel: "Smilla" is a mystery with X-files-style paranormal overtones, yet no mystery author Peter Hoeg offered matched the one posed by Smilla herself. With her tightly bound prejudices and hatreds, Smilla is practically her own whodunit, comprising all of the charachters who you'll meet in any given mystery - being her own intrepid investigator, the official detective assigned to the case, any one of a dozen of the usual suspects, the murderer and the victim. One suspects she'll morph into Keyser Soze if given the opportunity. The ingredients of Hoeg's actual mystery pale by comparison and Smilla's baggage seems to block any of Hoeg's efforts to get the real mystery going. In this case, the mystery involves the death of Isaiah, a young inuit boy who lives in Smilla's apartment block in Copenhagen. The inuits approximate to Danes what the Native American's are to modern America - separated from their spiritual roots in the Earth, their modern trappings give way to alcoholim, welfare dependency and despair. Smilla, whose animosity derives from this detachment, had become Isaiah's surrogate mother. That there is any myserty at all seems at first to arise from Smilla's compulsive suspicion. A few key coincidences, the meetings of recurring charachters who shouldn't have anything to do with each other, the Danish police's stiffening insistence that Smilla drop her own investigation, death threats, exploding boats and a large corporation's interest in a meteorite that landed in Greenland over a century ago - all gradually convince us that something is afoot, but nothing gels together to surmount what remains the mystry of both book and film: Smilla herself. The film's makers, free from the first person narrative of the book actually make Smilla a greater enigma than Hoeg had. They keep the details light but - while preferable to a heavier hand - don't create a myserty one wants to solve. Like the mystery, the flaws of the film are based on numerous small details that only harm in the aggregate. The lovely Julia Ormond seems too young to play the 37 year-old Smilla, giving no hint to the heroines rotracted history, one that would have her as a radical college student in Denmark's turbulent 1960's. Similarly, Gabriel Byrne seems too dark and myserious to play the Mechanic who was only supposed to arouse suspicion in the book. Then there are the villaisn, the mining company that employed the victim's late father. After effectively burying the truth, and not a few of those who threatened them, the multinational corporate evil allows itself to fall apart on a Greenlandic glacier, suddenly lacking even a shred of power or menace. Even their capacity for secrecy is gone - with the usual standby clues (the informer who tells all out of conscience; the evil scientist who just has to spill teh beans knowing that the hero will just die anyway) jettisoned in favor of a single videotape prepared, it seems, just for the hero to find. As in the book, the climax fails to satisfy and leaves the film with an empty feeling.
Rating: 
Summary: Realize the book and movie are different but....
Review: I know books and movies are often different, but sometimes annoying changes are made for no reason. Now why was Smilla made half American and half Greenlandic instead of half Danish? It takes away her whole background and half the story by removing her Danish half--that is part of the anger she has. Making her American is really stupid. Denmark owns Greenland, and she is torn between her Greenlandic roots (her mother) and the Denmark where she now lives--and the rich Danish father that she hates. The relationship Denmark has with the Greenlanders is similar to America and its natives. So the issues of racism, prejudice--she is a mixed breed and feeling neither here nor there, and she wouldn't be having those feelings if she was American. It's the Danish background that adds to her animosity. And why are they speaking like Brits? That said, I really couldn't get into it. Why is she living in Denmark if she's American? And Smilla is supposed to be very outspoken, not understated like her portrayal in movie. Why was that changed? While I enjoyed the book, the ending left me very cold. So if they were going to rewrite the story, you'd think that they would at least give it a decent ending.
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