A Man Called Otto (2022)

Let me start by saying that this is a good movie, but it is also a remake of the 2015 movie titled A Man Called Ove, which was Sweden's submission for Best International Film and was on the list of final nominees, and is based on the 2012 book of the same title by Frederik Backman. The Swedish movie is better. It is about Ove, an ill-tempered, isolated retiree who spends his days enforcing block association rules and visiting his wife's grave, who has finally given up on life just as an unlikely friendship develops with his boisterous new neighbors. It is droll and dark and we all know an Ove so it gives everyone something to think about. The only reason to see the new over the old is if you don't speak Swedish, and you don't want to read the subtitles. In my household, we have enough hearing loss that no matter what, we have the subtitles on, so it just doesn't apply. Part of the appeal of the old over the new may well be that it is just hard to settle into a movie with an uncharacteristically cranky Tom Hanks. He does his usual excellent job on embuing himself in his role, but it takes a while for the experienced Tom Hanks audience to quite grasp it, and by then the impossibly appealing neighbors are well known to us, and we cannot imagine him not falling for them the way we have. It is a story that you can see the end coming a mile away, but it is enjoyable none-the-less to get there, and this version is well worth seeing.