Thursday, August 31, 2017

Running in thickening streams of greed

Allan Karlsson is a 101 year old pensioner with a taste for booze, things exploding and adventure. In the sequel of The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (2013), Allan is obsessed in finding a recipe for exquisite Russian soda, trouble is the hunt is accompanied by a few other individuals and even CIA. Sounds a bit funky, but not that bad a story, can't beat the debut though.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Running around with no shoes on

If it weren't for the controversy surrounding the previous year's Academy Awards, this movie hardly hadn't raised an eyebrow, but this year it won the fucking shit. Terribly mediocre, downright boring story of a black gay kid growing up somewhere in the Miami ghetto.

Monday, August 28, 2017

Frost harvests the crop

One of the biggest bands in Finland, Eppu Normaali, and this is their biopic. Thoroughly interesting, from punk noise outfit to fully presentable orchestra. I reckon, even if you weren't into their music, or any music, you'd find it utterly cool. It's all same to me, regardless of the genre, I enjoy watching music documentaries.

Brushing your teeth is political

A timepiece of America in the sixties, when the country was in turmoil mostly because of the effects of the Vietnam war with all the riots, demonstrations, terrorism, revolutions and retaliations at hand. One family gets the worst of it. Interestingly, this is Ewan McGregor's directional debut. Sadly, it's only decent.

Declaring war on the whole world

Vikings season 4 volume II. Ragnar Loftbrok has an obvious deathwish. He's a lowlife, ruthless against his friends and foes. Yet again, he's revered as the undisputed king of the vikings and the world's most dangerous man by everyone. His possible death would unleash a retribution. Be wary England and France and Spain and the rest of the world. Intense and suspenseful season, amongst its very best.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Our father who art in hell

A reknowned Danish painter finds toughest competition in his own son, a famous street artist knows as The Ghost. They soon realize they share the same taste for art and women, so they have to battle it out. And we pretend we are interested.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Travel and conquer

A handful of gypsylike people living in a derelict trailer campsite commit burglaries in rural England. And, of course, the cops are on their tails - and that's all there is to it. Probably tried to be both funny and exciting, even sentimental, but I'm afraid failed on all. Quite reknowned people - Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson, Sean Harris - in the ranks though.

God is a cunt

Bunch of door-to-door magazine salesmen indulge in debauchery and devil-may-careness while crossing the United States of America. This movie had a number of things to make me hate it: a hipster teenager road movie, overlong (two and half hours), shit road music and Shia LeBeouf. Somehow they made it through though, prob'ly because it shot the country in all its beauty and ugliness.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Surprised with thunder

A five-year-old Indian boy gets locked inside a moving train for couple of days and with that he loses contact with his mother and brother, and is forced to survive and deal with completely new surroundings, language and people. The movie took a sad undertone early on and it continues like that, but as always with the emotionally challenging pictures, there's brighter things looming on the horizon.

Friday, August 11, 2017

A lightning strike rescue op

I had never watched this up till now. Praised and recommended, but I had a gut feeling I wouldn't like it. I'm not too fond of Wes Anderson's calculated quirkiness, it's full of pretense. For instance Tod Solonz's, the Coen's even David Lynch's humour has lots more natural feel to it. Didn't enjoy this movie one bit.

The new American church

Ray Kroc didn't actually found McDonald's, the first fastfood restaurant, but he made it a global enterprise and with a little scheming and backstabbing stole the company into his name. Presumably most of the story here is true therefore it was great to follow how the whole rags-to-riches unfolds. However can't think of a reason to eatch this even again even though there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, they great actors are doing alright and all that, but the entertainment value is kind of limited.

Tuesday, August 08, 2017

Mind and matter meet

Dr. Stephen Strange is a self-centered disrespectful asshole until he almost kills himself in a car accident. He then becomes a key figure in a cosmic battle between good and evil. Purely on technical terms, this looks great even tho essentially it's just fantasy camp mumbo-jumbo.

Friday, August 04, 2017

Endless hope

German prisoner of war escapes his imprisonment in Siberia with an intention of walking back home to Berlin. The journey through Russian wilderness is colourful yet life-threatening. Luckily the resilient Russian spetsnaz lieutenant, who is after the prisoner, is always one step behind.

Stairway to paradise

Two men go to Aokigahara, the Suicide Forest in Japan, to end their lives but - beat that to irony - end up fighting to stay alive instead. American Arthur (Matthew McConaughey) and Japanese Takumi (Ken Watanebe) swap stories by the campfire, altho it's a one-way street there, Arthur's past is dug inside out whereas the Takumi character remains as paperthin as it was introduced, so much in fact that you are bound to wonder there's something fishy in the making. Better than the reviews I read.

All this and more

A stand-up comedian struggles to co-parent his autistic son. A simple story, seen many times before, but solid and entertaining little flick...