Flame of malignance

A petty gangster is keeping the nice people of local businesses on their toes in a small Italian coastal town. Dog groomer Marcello, who is friends with everybody (even with the gangster himself), is caught in a such moral crossfire that only a severe backstabbing can dissolve. A lowkey Italian crime thingy, shot to perfection and absolutely stellar performances by Marcello Fonte and Edoardo Pesce, but despite all the brutal shit going on, it couldn't really keep the tempo alive the whole time.

A hardened rusty nail

Absolutely zero expectations. In fact, thought of getting a tough guy picture of some Steven Seagal or Vin Diesel wanna-be. Well yeah, there's a tough guy Cain (Scott Adkins), an incarcerated boxer, but it's of a bit different nature. For one, it's a British movie and that only gives it a bit more edge and it's a bit more straight-forward bashing of heads. This boxer dude has a 20,000 pounds price on his head, so with prisonful of hardeded criminals, he has his hands full and somehow gets his way of revenge outside the prison as well. Kind of cool.

Riding a whirlwind

Jonah Hill's directional debut. A depiction of 90s skater kids who loiter around L.A. streets and parks partying, drinking and smoking. Particularly it's coming of age for the youngest one of the gang Stevie aka Sunburn. Harmless albeit decent drama, it looks pretty real as well.

Night is darkest just before the dawn

Joker single-handedly makes the city of Gotham into burning chaos where no one feels safe and everyone thus is utterly scared of this inhuman clownlike freak. Batman and prosecutors and the police are also petrified because the adversary keeps on executing insanely clever tricks to kill people and their fight against injustice seems helpless. A real action-packed fucker.

She's a real man-eater

Can't help it. Every once in a while I make a decision that I'll only watch guaranteed good movies. The movies that has a certain buzz around them or are highly rated. Time is too valuable to waste it with shit. Then couple of days go by and I'm already inserting a new Nicolas Cage B-thriller into a player. Primal's current IMDB scale is 4,8. All hell breaks loose on a cargo ship full of unique animals (including venomous snakes and a white jaguar) and one mass murderer. Pure B-movie garbage fun. Cage does these, it's part of his enigma, but Michael Imperioli, missed seeing him in movies, he should fucking fire his agent. And Famke Janssen, once thought she'd make a proper career, but now she, sadly, looks like a wax mannequin only.

The secrets of scary people

I reckon, I wasn't that jazzed about Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy before. Entertaining movies alright, but for me easily forgettable. However, after seeing brilliant Todd Philipps' Joker last week I thought of giving them another chance. Batman Begins (2005) continues where Joker left off, from a different perspective. A billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) builds his winged mystical figure from a scratch and fights againts Gotham's drug syndicate and someone who is dumping poison into water supply. Better than I remembered.

The red of the dying sun

Benni is a 9-year old problem child. She's loud, angry, impassionate and violent. All fucken hyped up. Dangerous to herself and others. Therefore she's institutionalized and going through many special schools, surrogate mothers and welfare workers. A new special needs assistant Micha may have a solution and new ideas for her health. Not my turf these kinds of movies, but it's admittedly a harrowing story, executed so well that I almost forgot I was looking at a fictional film. The lead star, Helena Zengel, the world is her oyster now, lots of film awards looming on the horizon.

Such a happy little boy

Everyone has raved over this to hell and back, so I figured - and kinda hoped - it could never fulfill the expectations. But. Joker is exceptionally good. It's tragic. It's violent. It's grotesque, disturbing and sadistic. Built beautifully and subtly towards explosive hysteria. And, boy, Joaquin Phoenix, does he deliver.

Safe from the blessings of civilization

Classics or not, I usually don't open up to black and white movies of the yesteryear. Stagecoach (1939) wasn't nowhere near quite as fierce and entertaining western as I remembered, but, anyhow, one of the greatest of its time, the John Wayne - John Ford collaboration at its finest.

In the end, the son suffers the sins of the father

This is presented as a 'near future' feature. People have colonized The Moon, even Mars, and are orbiting between planets with terrible ease. Elite astronaut Roy McBride's dad has been hiding in the dark side of Neptune for couple of decades and recently been behaving all too weirdly. The son is determined to find him. It sounds wild and crazy, and it is, it's fucking ludicrous nonsense. Even if the movie offered space monkeys, moon pirates, Martian recording studio, all that kind of wacko stuff, it bored the fuck me out.

Death over abandonment

This 50-year old narcissistic woman, a proper nutcase, Claire Millaud (Juliette Binoche), a professor in university, creates a new identity for herself as a 24-year old model entrepreneur and hooks up with a young guy in the internet and they both get overly excited with this new relationship based entirely on lies. It gets crazier by the minute and Claire needs therapeutic councelling. Another social media movie with pretty good twists to stay exciting.

The queen must ride alone

Nordic pagan ceremonies can be a little intimidating for Yankee students. For instance, it may be a little extreme to witness human sacrifices in Midsummer masses. But like they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Read and heard lots of negative commets of Ari Aster's (Hereditary) second full feature, but fucken liked it, oppressive horror at its finest.

See you on the other side

Cheap and kind of hilariously weird end of the world movie. There's this evil wind that hunts down humans and turns them into pillars of dust. There are only few people alive, including one lucky boy who has a scanner that detects and defers the evil wind and with a handful of other survivors, he's determined to study the fuck out of this terrible force of nature. It's like a bad Twilight Zone episode.

Wind whispers gently to the shore

The life and times of the legendary Finnish schlager and country & western singer Kari Tapio (1945-2010). It seems that they took the easy way here. The storyline is snatched from Wikipedia and they thought putting old costumes and wigs is enough to make picture of the times in the seventies and eighties. That's why the movie looks like a farce. Kudos for the lead actor Matti Ristinen who pulled it through with talent and respect though.

Hammer to the skull

What do you do when you suspect your own dad is a serial killer? Sure enough, the dad Don Burnside (Dylan McDermott), bondage porn as a hobby, is suspiciously wacko, but the murderer of dozen of women? The son needs more evidence and fortunately there's another teenager hooked up with the same unsolved case. A fun little B-movie, tension is built nicely and suspense is plentiful. Stupid ending though.

Creating own reality

In the post 9/11 world, United States of America attack Iraq on false pretense and fabricated lies. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. Millions of others lost their daughters, sons, mothers or fathers just because U.S. government wanted the war and no-one could stop them. It's all yesterday's news, the movie is yesterday's news, but it's a good reminding that the culprits, the mass murderers and war criminals, are still not prosecuted. And it will happen again. Because history will repeat itself.

Tribe to a nation

The Bailiwick of Jersey was the only piece of British land that was occupied by Nazi forces in WWII. The Germans sent hundreds of Russian soldiers of war to work there at labour camps. Another Mother's Son (aka. Saints of War) has a little too much British drama feel to it as it follows the steps of one Russian fugitive and the people who protect him in an isolated place full of hostiles, but makes a decent film nevertheless.

The grand roar of thousand woes

While investigating the wrong-doings of an oil company, two Swedish journalists (Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye) willingly endanger their lives in volatile Ethiopia where army, rebels and different military organizations are killing each other like there was no tomorrow. Illegal entrance and terrorism activity are rewarded with 438 days of incarceration in Papillon magnitude. I reckon I have book of this case somewhere, I ought to read it now.

From cradle to grave

It was pretty desperate. I got really obsessed with finding something funny in this movie that I couldn't stop watching it. It was useless. I merely observed the decline of Hollywood comedy. Just fucking repulsive.

Apex predator all day

It's pretty fucked up in the hurricane season when there's alligator farms in the neighbourhood. It's absolute nightmare stuff if you for instance get stuck in a basement with these monsters! All things considered, Alexandre Aja has done a pretty intense alligator thriller here, it's nothing too special, but suits his résumé (Piranha 3D, Haute Tension, Horns) just fine. A threadbare genre, but managed to come by with a few fresh, hilariously gruesome scenes as well.

The farther away, the hazier it all gets

After 27 years Pennywise has fucking come back. Not cool. Not cool at all. The teenage survivors, obviously adults now, coming back to the small town they once left behind, Derry, Maine, have to live the same nightmares allover again. Or maybe they have now the knowledge to fight against the bogeyman and finish it, for good. But, petrified beyond belief, can they actually do it? Almost three hours of cheesy horror, it tries to be frightening and cool, but never ain't.

If you survive war, you survive anything

Well, it's more telling and impressive than thousands of fictional war movies put together. The World War I opens up in front of your eyes the way you could never have imagined before. You almost smell the mud and the shit and the rot and the death. Amazing breath-taking footage. Oustandingly well done in the restoration department by Peter Jackson who dedicates the movie to his grand father William Jackson, sergeant who served in the British Army from 1910 to 1919.

Hope and health

This could have been so much more. Chinese Cheng and his son Nunjo are visiting Lapland, Finland, and thus the movie kind of deals with the most obvious cultural differences - language, cuisine, behaviors - imaginable. So much so that the assets of the film; the breathtaking landscapes of the northernmost parts of the world and the Finnish heavyweight actors (Vesa-Matti Loiri and Kari Väänänen) don't get enough screentime. Still, a warm and beautiful little thing of the magic of friendship and nature.

Too qualified to be happy

A headhunter has to learn how to prioritize when his family is stricken with a tragedy. Without guns and ammo and people to kill Gerald Butler is maybe a little out of his element, but it's a sappy little film, so everything's forgiven.