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 nevertheless. Them actors are all pretty good.

Going down to blood circus

Esa Jussila's (Pri)sons is ultra-violent Finnish film. They're bashing heads aplenty, it's ridiculously bloody and disgusting. There's no story to speak of and the acting is terrible.

Not everyone is cut out for everything

What a letdown the last episode in an otherwise interesting movie. Kinds of Kindness, by Yorgos Lanthimos, is in fact three movies in one movie. They are starring the same people, namely Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Yorgos Stefanakos, Hong Chau and Mamoudou Athie. The absurd triptych fable includes a domineering boss (Willem Dafoe) and his subordinates (episode:The Death of R.M.F.),  a policeman (Jesse Plemons) who thinks that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person now (episode: R.M.F. Is Flying) and a sex cult is looking for a prodigious spiritual leader of a sex cult (episode: R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich). Begs patience for a viewer, but pays off a too little in the end and indulges itself in surrealism too much.

Don't break the circle

Push the floor numbers on a certain order and the elevator takes you to journey of nightmares. Elevator Game has couple of good scares and it's a decent attempt of old-school horror as a whole. But the understanding of keeping the brooding atmosphere going throughout the movie turns out to be difficult. Low budget and flaws everywhere don't help.

From the past comes the storms

They would have made something decent out of this had they got the courage to left a big chunk of the material on the editing room floor. So slow-burning western pathos that it's frustrating. Written and directed by Viggo Mortensen.

Seize the identity you want for yourself

A college teacher helps out the local police portraying a hitman and thus uncovering people looking for a liquidator doing a murder for them. He falls in love with one of his clients and we pretend it's all very funny and exciting.

Until months, to days, to hours, to seconds

Had there not been John Krasinski's A Quiet Place (2018) and A Quiet Place Part II (2020), A Quiet Place: Day One, by Michael Sarnoski, would be a terrific horror flick. Obviously it rides on the original idea, but even though manages to cover some of the plot-holes of its predecessors, doesn't come with a fresh approach. It's more or less the same, these alien freaks with excellent hearing hunt down humans who can't keep their noise down. This movie introduced a cancer-ridden woman (quite excellent Lupita Nyong'o), accompanied by a cat and a British student, who wants to get a slice of pizza in Harlem before she dies.

The fifth rider of the apocalypse

A thrill ride of crazy stunts and choreography. George Miller's Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. It's full of action and the story is epic madness. A mixed bag of entertaining things. Rich characters, awesome sequences with wacko graphic violence and wholehearted fun.

The poisoning of the earth

A crime thriller masquerared as a comedy. In a nutshell, Potsy Ponciroli's Greedy People is a flawed story that's not funny. It starts off light as a feather and ends up dark as night. The askew narrative didn't know where it was going.

Some water is magic

A swimming pool is evil. A former major league baseball player Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell), with his wife and their two children, moves into a new home and in its backyard lies this malignant pool. It's haunted, but drowns you in boredom really.  

Harpoon to the heart

A cult movie but no one really understands why. It's shit any way you look at it. So bad it's really bad. Some camp value on a side note only.

The law is wrong

Humans ruled the planet for thousands of years. But when a weird virus spread out, humans became stupid and apes took control. They somehow robbed human's intellect and ability to speak. Coexisting with one and other was a fucking mess still. Wes Ball's Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is probably the weakest film in the whole Planet of the Apes franchise.

No time to get ginger ale

To put it short, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence have aged a little bit more and they still can't act. Of course it's a shit story too.

The unfortunates of the world

Classic. What's there in the chemistry between Robert de Niro and Charles Brodin alone. But Dennis Farina as a mob boss, Yaphet Kotto as an FBI honcho and John Ashton as a bounty hunter. They make a terrific cast. Midnight Run, by Martin Brest, is an adventurous buddy comedy and a road movie of a bondsman escorting a former mob accountant across country from New York City to Los Angeles. Hardly no weak moments here.

Written on the wind

Earth is pretty much uninhabitable because there's no oxygen left. Handful of people are holed up living in basements and underground tunnels. Luckily they are quite intelligent and have devices to produce precious air. Freshen up a bit, eat healthy and do normal stuff like read. With state-of-the-art oxygen kits they can explore the world, scavenge for food and supplies. Things get tricky and possible volatile when people meet other people and it's a guessing game are all the gun-toting strangers reliable and nice. It's a bit silly, Stefon Bristol's Breathe, but there are worse dystopian flicks out there.

Tuning chemistry

Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass didn't want to have anything to do with this movie. It's a different animal. Jason Bourne is mentioned only in passing altho the film rides quite shamelessly on his name. It's still packed with great action. Packed on shit storyline. But still. 

Not with a bang, but a whimper

This is great. It's so unbelievably bad that the total shittiness is an absolute asset and Ice Storm is entertaining as fuck. That comes with the worst of the worst, it's like a natural phenomena, you're nailed to your seat, mesmerized by everything you see. Super cool.

The sky singing with all its might

It's quite simple. Anchorman 2, like lots of Will Ferrell comedies in fact, it's either pure comedy gold or it's embarrassing and not really funny at all. Particularly embarrassing was Steve Carell's performance and what was penned for his character. Otherwise, it's something like 10 minutes heartfelt laughs and the rest is abominable rubbish. Should never have been released.

Muddy springs aren't always deep

It's a Finnish road movie. And it looks like a Finnish road movie. A philosopher (Ville Myllyrinne) residing in Lapland is invited to Independence Day Reception in Helsinki and he takes a 1200 km taxi drive through Finland accompanied by an eccentric driver (Kai Lehtinen). It's an easy-going and relatively funny trip.

One more death

The Good Father by Shô Kataoka. It's kind of weird and that makes it exciting, but the more you watch it, the more it transforms stupid and silly. The Kubo family are involved in a car accident and they don't come back the same as before.

Prelude to the alchemy of the future

It's embarrassing. Chris Pine writes. And directs. And he's the lead star in Poolman. An absolute joke of a movie. A comedy that's nowhere even near funny. Tries to be offbeat and cool, but it's only confusing. Just a bunch of quirky dialogue thrown around hoping some of it would stick. None of it does. Horrible drivel. Not worth a fucking cent.

Fury forged in war

To properly retaliate Nazi Germany's bombing of England's cities, the Brits build the Lancaster bomber that was a machine made for war and that in fact of major reason for Allies winning the damn WWII. The story is told through the words of the last surviving crew members. Epic and eye-opening material.

The worst of humanity's traits

A stuntman breaks his back, ruins his career and workplace romance. He's called back, but soon framed for murder! The Fall Guy is a light-hearted comedy thriller with a very thin plot where Ryan Gosling looks weird.

On a shoot-on-sight authorization

Incredible. One of the most thrilling high-octane agent flicks. Paced to perfection and executed with relentless energy. This is the way how thrillers should be made. Nothing but impressiveness.

Nuns have more fun

People are losing interest in religion, so in all wisdom Church needs to create something to fear. A small, but powerful group of priests and bishops, even higher, they decide something drastic has to be done. These priests believe they can birth the Antichrist and then control him! Allow him to bring his dark forces to bear on the world just enough to drive people back to the Church! Blimey! A prequel to the original The Omen (1976), it has a few decent moments but pretty dull as a whole.

The art of kissing the cold ground

Tough one. Outlast season 2 was presented like a proper survival reality TV, sending bunch of people to Alaskan wilderness with bare essentials only and a mere good luck note. They have to eat mushrooms, hunt squirrels and mice for food. Somehow keep themselves warm, nourished and hydrated. And 6 out of 8 episodes it’s exciting. Needlessly the producers watered down the whole project. The last two episodes ruined the whole thing, it no longer was about surviving in the forest and making the ends meet. The competition became extremely unfair, favoring certain individuals, to the point that it’s fair to say it’s a fixed result.

Barely braking the skin

An ex Marine on his way to bail out his cousin from jail confronts hillbilly cops who are crooked to the bone. Rebel Ridge harks back to the Reacher films and it’s overall an okay film, but unfortunately not much more.

Nothing but a fuck puppet

Boy (Bill Skarsgård) has only one purpose. To kill Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen), the devious leader of an unnamed city and responsible of the death of Boy’s family. One of these non-stop blood-drenched mayhem and carnage flicks, heads are bashed in and the violence is graphic and it’s everywhere. It’s either a real blast for some or it suffocates in its own excessiveness for others. In the region of Bullet Train, Sin City, John Wick and Kill Bill, but not as balanced story telling.

A wish beyond daydream

Millions of dollars of drug cartel money is hidden inside a hospital that's scheduled to be demolished. Three desperate parties want the find the money and run away before the charges are set to blow the establishment to kingdom come. The clock is fucking ticking. Dolph Lundgren's Castle Falls is cheap and stupid garbage.

Legacy of misery

It's like a man walks out of prison and he seems so unhappy that it makes you wonder if he want to go back in. Elsewhere a young woman is raped. Kills a cop, too. These two lost souls meet and their path is paved with unexceptional boredom.

Guys wound so tight they were bound to snap

An amnesiac agent Jason Bourne has retired in Goa, India, but he's framed for murder in Europe, so he's forced to resume his profession. The Bourne Supremacy (2004) is a sequel to The Bourne Identity (2002), and those two make better and exciting spy thrills than the James Bond franchise altogether.

In a bodybag by sundown

Do they make thrillers like this these days? If not, they should. The Bourne Identity is a clever high-octane thing with no loose ends. A nail-biting fucker. Agent Jason Bourne is found bullet-riddled and suffering from amnesia. He gradually understands a little bit of himself and what he's supposed to be doing. But everything is a great labyrinth of deception and the truth is hard to decipher.

School of hard knocks

The film follows the continued career of Fisherman's Friends (a sea shanties performing folk group), their second album and performing at Glastonbury music festival. A few struggles with the pressures and such, but nothing too challenging. A too predictable a piece, an unnecessary sequel, but heart-warming and quite lovely shit to watch nevertheless.

An ocean of dungeons

It’s 1907. Norwegian miners aren’t too happy with their greedy owners, so they make a rebellion against them. It looks like Nordic Wild West and that’s kind of cool. But otherwise, a fucking bore.

Before the piano wire gets too tight

America is in a civil war. We follow a carful of journalists and their journey towards the capital Washington D.C. and the President of the United States to get a quote of the fucking mess. They witness and encounter shit that's pretty repulsive and are constantly in danger. Alex Garland's Civil War is quite brilliant in its warfare, but disappointing in a sense that it hardly carries any message within. Exciting and intense, but a missed opportunity.

A void in humanity

Pretty wonderful. It's sad with wars and deaths and all, but those are beautifully put together with a simple yet harsh family life in an isolated island of Stormskerry (Stormskär) in Åland, Finland. Annoyingly slow-moving at first, but when it got going, it never let go. Directed by Tiina Lymi.

Always carve with compassion

Something else. Bella's own brain is replaced by the brain of her unborn baby. Thus begins the evolution of a young woman. Take that for a premise of a story. The movie is quite off-putting with its abstract imagery at first, but turns out to be engaging and unique. A weird masterpiece.

The winds of a patient man

A man is in a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean when his yacht collides a floating shipping container disabling his navigation equipment and radio. It takes proper wits and self reliance to survive the disaster and the incoming storms alive! All is Lost is a film with hardly any dialogue and just proves the versatility of the talent of Robert Redford. The movie however is just his character trying to stay alive. It's a brilliant adventure of isolation and great danger.

Thinning the herd

Architect Paul Kersey, a vigilante on free time, has kept the streets clean from scum and filth in New York and Los Angeles before. And now he returns to New York to make things right again. This time however, he has a right to vigilante! And become the neighbourhood hero if justice is brought to the streets record time! Scumbags, street gangs, drug dealers, rapists and degenerates better beware! Michael Winner's Death Wish 3 (1985) is exaggerated urban lawlessness to no end.

Countdown to cold graves

Paul Kersey, an architect by trade, is a vigilante. In New York, wrong-doers killed his wife and raped his daughter. He took revenge on the fuckers! Paul moves to Los Angeles and eight years later, some scumbags hurt his family yet again! Retribution must be executed at all costs! Death Wish II was directed by Michael Winner in 1992, the soundtrack was composed by his then neighbor Jimmy Page and the movie stars Charles Bronson as the architect and people like Laurence Fishburne, Kevyn Major Howard and Thomas D. Duffy as the muggers.

Prophets get stronger when they die

Reckon it would be blasphemous to criticize and ridicule anything so epic and grandiose. Dune: Part Two is yet another endless journey in a sand planet somewhere where a couple of tribes fight for power and a valuable spice that is a key to interstellar travel. It's done well, stripped off some of its running time and pseudo-mythical mumbo-jumbo, it would have been better.

The return of the sun after long darkness

Everything is shrouded with factitious mystery. To be part of the True Detective franchise, they probably just decided to be super mystic and obscure. Backfires big time. It's just weird and plastic. And after all the secrecy and puzzlement a simple and silly ending top offs the stupidity of the fucking thing. Ridiculous plotholes are aplenty too. And to be perfectly honest, not sure about Jodie Foster's performance either.

Even ghosts must have feelings

A ghost writer, completing the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister because the previous writer had been found dead, uncovers secrets and, in turn, puts himself at danger of death. The Ghost Writer is an amazing espionage thriller, courtesy of Roman Polanski. It’s old-fashioned thrills and atmosphere. Quite smart and exciting.

Burned by thousand dawns

The Lapua Cartridge Factory explosion happened in Lapua in 1976. It is Finland’s worst industrial disaster. 40 workers dead and 60 injured. Lapua 1976, the movie, directed by Toni Kurkimäki, is a wishy-washy love story of two workers in the factory. They could have carved so much more of the incident, but the catastrophe is just a sideshow.

Top of the world

Wasn't it quite brutal. Raoul Walsh's White Heat. From 1949. James Cagney is a mean and violent son of a bitch, a frightening figure for both cops and fellow criminals. A perfect psychopath. A brute force of nature. Makes intense film noir.

Obsolete and unspoken

A Finnish-Iranian action movie. Nothing can go wrong. Right? A hero fire fighter becomes the Persian Chuck Norris after his wife is kidnapped and suddenly he has enemies everywhere. Little embarrassing the whole charade, but somehow an appreciating effort nevertheless.

The ones who left in time

Caught from Netflix. A 3-episode piece of the murder of Laci Peterson. Horrible tragedy, disgusting details of the life and death of a beautiful young woman. Happened in 2002 and now twenty years later, Laci's mother and friends speak out, revisiting this terrible thing.

Dreams between two worlds

What a bleak little Aussie indie. It's b&w, so the heavyheartedness is emphasized even more. A cop investigates an unsolved 20-year old case where a small town girl had been kidnapped, possibly killed. No funny moments here. Hardly anything really.

Fortunate men taste the same misery as the unfortunate

Fuckers kidnapped the wrong son! But a wealthy businessman still decides to pay up. It builds up a proper thriller. Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) is the best detective reasoning I've ever seen. The story unfolds slowly but once it gets going it's a mesmerizing and magical ride.

A dusk of damnation's pride

John Knox is a mob hitman. He's diagnosed with a fast-moving form of dementia called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It's worse the Alzheimer's they say. He needs to retire. Go away. But before that Knox has few things he gotta do right. Including saving his son from trouble. Nothing's amiss in Knox Goes Away, directed by Michael Keaton. It's a cool thriller.