Just a switch that gets flipped off

Once again, out of nowhere, a new TV series that beats everything else. And, once again, it comes with practically unknown actors and it's still seriously convincing. A veteran Mac 'Quarry' Conway (Logan Marshall-Green), after two tours in Vietnam, returns home to find changes in the political climate of his country and his private life as well. He gets involved in gun-for-hire business and it kicks off an intense story of eight episodes.

Born to dream

Right there on the living dead bandwagon. While it's still trendy, it's quite frustrating to go through dozens of new zombie features and find nothing to write home about. But you feel somewhat privileged to witness a fresh yet traditional thing. And this is rather close to that with hundreds of zombies ('hungries') popping up everywhere and it's frightening. Cool shit and it's great to see the more established and renowned actors such as Glenn Close and Paddy Considine doing it.

Hatred drowned by weakness

Fritz Bauer was a public prosecutor in Germany in the 50s, specialiced in bringing down escaped nazi officers from WWII. It didn't help that he was a gay jew and the government office was still occupied by nazi symphatizers. He's still determined to do justice with his new enthusiastic and naive assistant and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to capture the notorious Adolf Eichmann and that, in turn, would reveal more war criminals still walking free. An excellent film of Germany's path towards democracy and its citizens ordeal to meet with responsibility.

If no one sees you, are you really there at all?

Things are bleak in Conor O'Malley's world. He lives in England, he's bullied at school, dad's away, grandma is not too cool and his mom is dying of cancer. His escape route is the fantasy land and its thousand year old tree with three stories to share. Them aside, it's a beautifully told tale of one horrendous disease and the grief and consequences within.

A bear wearing people's clothes

Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai has endured many renditions before, so another one won't hurt. A little western town is harassed by an evil gold digger, so the simple peace-loving townsfolk ask for brave gunslingers for help. Little nuances to the original, bodycount hundreds greater, and purely on technical details this is cool enough on its own right.

Magnificent prophecies

The aging Tom Cruise is more fitting to the role as a semi-retired rogue military officer Jack Reacher than superagent Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible franchise. Despite little flaws and ridiculous plotholes here and there, Never Go Back is a fine action-packed thingy of good military officers of the law beating the hell out of the bad ones, and vice versa.

Like going to your favorite cafe

Tower Records, the most powerful record store of our time. Established in San Francisco in the 60s, expanded all the way from L.A. to N.Y., even Japan, eventually up to almost 200 stores worldwide. Survived and flourished four decades until the music world digitalised and inventory became obsolete. Solid documentary by Colin Hanks.

A master plan

Just straight-to-DVD crap Bruce Willis has churned out the recent years. FBI agents, plain cops, bank robbers and all sorts of vigilantes in an awfully confusing plot. Bad as hell, nothing more.

Embodiment of true love

Rachel has issues. She's alcoholic, she's got temper, she's depressed and sad because her ex-husband has a new family. She becomes obsessed with the disappearance of a young woman she's spied out of jealousy before. Emily Blunt is terrific as the crazy drunken person who is afraid of herself. And there are some truly disgusting features that are almost too nauseating to watch, hence a pretty unforgettable film.

In war fathers bury their sons

Desmond is a nutter. He enlists in the army to join the forces in WWII, but refuses to touch a rifle. Stuck deep in his religious blindness he's stubborn as fuck, so he has to conquer several obstacles to get to the war he dislikes so much. It's decent enough a war flick, particularly doin' the intensive action sequences where bullets fly and people die, the director Mel Gibson is on his element. However the portrayal of the god-loving pacifist vegetarian war hero is borderline pathetic.

Not the business of the living

A widower runs a fortune-teller scam with her two kids. She decides to enrich the business by adding an ouija board to the collection. However the board is the real deal, so they call the local priest for help. Somehow I think I've seen the same thing before. Clichéd to hell and back.

The war ain't over

Newt (Matthew McConaughey) deserts his regiment in U.S. civil war to bury his nephew in a family graveyard. He likes his home just fine, but being a Confederate army deserter, he has to retreat even further in the swamp where he develops a taste for a slave girl and meets other people like him. And soon they grow in numbers and team up as a Robin Hood kind of jungle partisans, altho' U.S. army and government see it as a community of terrorists run by a traitor. The movie feels like a fast-forwarded history lesson, after the fighting's done, it's a political game with constitutional rights stepping in, therefore there's too much to deal in really.

Accept the fact that there is no God

Stephan Lang makes an excellent psycho and, without a doubt, Don't Breathe is one of the greatest contemporary horror cuts. Everything goes sideways when burglars choose a wrong door to break into. Simple effective thrills where excitement turns to fear turns to stupendous terror.

Take us to the great beyond

An animated feature (for adults only) of grocery store products that sit and wait to be purchased so they can travel to the great beyond which, to their minds, is the ultimate place to be and where they meet God. A little accident occurs and a sausage, a bun, a taco, burrito and several others adventure in the product partisans hideout to learn the truth about consumerism. A pretty funky cool feature, although the joke pretty much died out after 30 minutes or so.

The sea of humanity

On 15th of February 2003 was the biggest global anti-war demonstration and still U.S. ja U.K. (president Bush and prime minister Tony Blair) executed the Iraq war on false pretense. Good people like Hans Blix found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, no one did, there was not one single piece of evidence linking Saddam Hussein on 9/11, but the western warmongers went out and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. So who were the real criminals?

Evil like a knife

A punk rock band Ain't Rights witness a murder and is hijacked by redneck white supremacists. Things escalate from murder real quick, in fact it's soon set in ultra-violence mode. A great splatter/thriller indie by Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin) where, quite surprisingly, people like Anton Yelchin and Patrick Stewart star the show.

Once a fat kid always a fat kid

Slapstick buddy comedy. I'm sure some people think Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson's chemistry and comical intuition is hysterically funny. Those people laughed their tits off watching this. I think it was infantile and stupid. If this thing had a story it was buried under idotic guffaw. Didn't laugh, not once.

Misfits and nitwits

I don't think it deserves much more, it's a fucking western John Wick where Ethan Hawke does his best Clint Eastwood impersonation and can't fucking deliver.

Someone fundamentally new

A divorced mom is kidnapped for some weird experimental tests. And she's not the only one imprisoned inside the facility run by mad scientists. The mom has several obstacles to overcome if she wants to escape alive, but luckily she's quite inventive. A horror/scifi that tries to ignite claustrophobia, anxiety and fear. Ignites fucking shit.

Just a little goodbye gift

Awfully fast-paced therefore lost lots of its potential and the decent cast (Gary Oldman, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds) can't inhabit its paperthin characters. A long-haul convict Jerico Stewart (Costner) is transformed the memory of a deceased CIA agent, so he can continue the unfinished business of the wrongdoings of a terrorist and a cyber nerd. Sounds silly and it is silly, but they do their utmost.

Spiked drink drown in a bathtub

A perfectly happy couple get new neighbours the floor below and the new people seem suspiciously creepy. It's kind of like Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) or The Tenant (1976) all over again, copycatted a few thousand times before and it's always a bit exciting and terrifying. This one took twists and turns that are particularly vile and evil.

The city for everyone who belongs everywhere else

I've picked up great mini series as of late. The Night Of and The Night Gardener and now this, River. Stellan Starsgård is a detective who gets occasional visits from the dead people from the cases he investigates. Sounds crazier than it actually is, in fact terribly interesting whodunnit thing with a real authentic feel to it.

Unprecedented until it happens for the first time

One hell of a pilot. Chesley Sullenberger. The guy who landed Airbus A320 on the Hudson River saving the lives of 155 people. And one hell of a thing accusing him of not doing the right thing. Clint Eastwood directs and Tom Hanks stars, one hell of a pair (their first collaboration). A story of a fullblown hero.

Psycho assassins

Shy of Batman and Superman, they are all here, them superheroes, and they take turns fighting against each other and a common enemy. Nicely executed action and there's plenty of it, but otherwise this stuff is fucklots indifferent to me.

The logic of tyrants

I should have read the novel. I guess there's an idea somewhere why the director Ron Howard had to make the movie so confusing and fast-paced, it's galloping like a race horse on LSD. The countless of flashbacks don't help. Otherwise it's a typical Dan Brown mystery where the professor Langdon runs (literally) through the maze of riddles and betrayal. Read about the controversy surrounding the changed ending, apparently the novel had an intelligent and ambiguous ending and the movie watered it down with a happy one. Typical Hollywood, never fucking liked Ron Howard's films the first place.

Dive in the wild side

After Open Sea, The Reef, Deep Blue Sea and, obviously, Jaws, it's virtually impossible to bring anything new to the shark movie business. Your tools of trade are kind of limited: sea, sharks and their prey. So, it's the way you do it that matters. In The Shallows the usual thrills are there and on technical standpoint it's great, but towards the end it got a bit too thick and unbelievable when the surfer chick who fights this monstrous ungodly beast is unforeseenly inventive.

World-class bullshit detector

A courtroom drama of one case of patricide. The quality of acting, cinematography, set design, you name it, overall how it represents itself, this should never pass on as 'a film'. Looks like a parodized soap opera. Terrible.

The modern battlefield is everywhere

An Oliver Stone movie of a CIA/NCI whistleblower Edward Snowden. Lots of interesting things on how the US intelligence agencies are spying us and watching and tagging everyone on the planet. Even, if needed, they can shut down the powder grip of an entire country. Thanks to his disclosure, Snowden embarrassed and ridiculed the US government, and his actions changed legislations (or we are lead to believe). Anyways, an interesting biopic of the outlaw, currently residing in Russia.

Criminal justice

It's like a novel you can't put down. An innocent man (or so we assume) is incarcerated of stabbing a young woman 22 times. Seems like an open-and-shut case, however a resilent officer of the court John Stone (John Turturro) digs a little deeper. Wonderful mini series with a multi-layered story and memorable characters (particularly John Turturro as the defender with eczema and sweet relationship with the victim's household cat).

The chaos of creation

Three wagonfuls of settlers are looking for greener pastures and a somewhat shady character named Meek is their guide through fierce Indian territories. Doesn't say much this movie, just a handful of people lost in an unknown place, tired and thirsty, and scared out of their tits.

Nobody wears black panties to war

A group of well-doers (Aid Across Borders) are cleaning up wells from rotting corpses in war-torn Balkan region. In a conflict zone even finding a proper rope is a difficult - and dangerous - challenge, not only because of the war with warmongering people with guns and mines and whatnot, but petty UN jurisdictions as well. A great movie.

Acting is surviving

One of the greatest actors of all time. Eccentric - borderline crazy - outside and as for his private life he was very reclusive. Interestingly he recorded hours and hours of spoken audio tapes and this documentary goes 'em through and adds them up with snippets from his movies.

Innocent people don't run

The best [sic] pickpocketer of Paris is a yankee Michael Mason (Richard Madden) and he accidentally steals more than he bargained for. A bomb. And when there's a bomb in a city, there's a terrorist ring. So the French cops and the CIA cops want to bring the bad terrorist people down. Idris Elba makes everyone look like extras, no one else can act, he stands above the terribly plotholed story as well.

A magician's greatest strength is an empty fist

I remember fuck all, but I think I thought that Now You See Me (#1) was total crock of shit. Now. Double that.

Drenched days of summer

There's a backpack killer roaming about east of Caleis. One of the group of two hitchhikers and a couple living in a mansion apparently is the notorious serial killer. Perfectly ordinary mush.

It's only death

Season 4 of Vikings. It has a very good start and a decent enough ending, but fucklots of leeway in the middle. It seems like they are prolonging it for all the wrong reasons.

Please don't make fun of the disableds

David Brent, Ricky Gervais' character from the original The Office, is so deadpan awkward and embarrassing that you feel like wanting to crawl out of your own skin. And yet, he's still one of the greatest, honest and funniest characters ever created. Pure gold.

Never do anything by half

Irish buddies at school form a band - Sing Street - to become the next Duran Duran or Wham!. Even tho there's nothing that ain't said and done before, it's a perfectly watchable timepiece of the culture of the 80s and it's merely done by following the comings and goings of the wee band and the family life of the singer-songwriter.

Blue-blooded aristocrats

There's a law in this dystopian society somewhere in the near future where single unmarried people are needed to be hunted down and killed so they can resurrect as animals of their choosing. One of those bizarre movies, this. In most cases, they are stuck too deep in their weirdness and essentially fail to deliver anything entertaining. The Lobster, I'm afraid, is on that ballpark, a few interesting absurdities, but drivel otherwise.

They may already be among us

The truth about the cult of small town satanists is unraveling piece by piece. They can't believe their eyes when the dark and ghastly secrets of devil worshipping are revealed. Smart officer of the law (Ethan Hawke) is on the case, but something on it makes him question his own wits. This inspired-by-true-events -crap goes nowhere and when it tries to go somewhere it makes no fucking sense, directed by Alejandro Amenábar, resposible for one of the greatest horror movies The Others, so it's kind of sad.

Goblins and fairies up in the attic

In Grand Canyon a kid finds a secret Indian burial ground, violates a tomb and nicks a few ancient ritual stones. Big mistake. His family now is shit scared because a wicked Native American ghost is tresspassing their sweet suburban life as if their suburban problems weren't enough. To invent everyday problems the writer obviously took out a dictionary and highlighted the first ones that came up: adultery, alcoholism, anorexia and autism. And that's the script. Silly fucking thing.

Black as black

They kept saying everywhere that this was a miss. But fuck,  I enjoyed it aplenty. Based on a le Carré novel, so there's a guarantee to the story in that alone. And there's the close-enough-heavyweights - Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgård, Damien Lewis - doing it. Some of the action had a little rushed feeling to it and because I cannot imagine the depth the actual novel has, I reckon I just have to read it now.

Very small, provincial, and mediocre

Copenhagen, Denmark, in the 70's. A group of eight friends with two children of whom one is terminally ill, decide to live together in a commune. It doesn't take too long until little cracks in the hippie lifestyle begin to take hold. A trademark Thomas Vinterberg film, wonderful realistic vibe with all life's joys and sorrows.

Rolling in the deep

To catch the criminal mastermind of Hong Kong known as 'The Matodor', the unlikeliest of pairs - a Chinese police officer and a sly yankee con artist - must team up. It's a buddy comedy and it's surprisingly well done, reminiscences of the great old Jackie Chan movies. Good move to the director, Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Die Hard II, Ford Fairlane) to set foot in China.

Shoveling snow in a blizzard

My doubts were unnecessary of the Breaking Bad spin-off. This is solid gold. The crazy cool attorney Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) can bend the rules some, but he's hard-working, honest, loyal and funny. One of the most loveable characters in contemporary television.

Scorched earth tactics

A dysfunctional-family-get-together movie. There's an insecure-neurotic actress (Nicole Kidman), his brother, a writer with writer's block (Jason Bateman) and their parents (Christopher Walken and Maryann Plunkett) who are all hyped up on weird avantgarde public performances. Tightropes between a melancholy drama and comedy and, despite great actors, falls down and fails way too often.

A fox in the henhouse

I like westerns even though the majority of them are of the downright average kind. Exactly like this. There are the good righteous people opposite the unlawful little fuckers. Everything is so black and white. Nothing out of ordinary to the stars of the show - Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland and Michael Wincott - all have plenty of this kind of shit on their resume.

Space guys

I get angry and frustrated and sometimes somewhat sad at the sheer stupidity of any religion. They are all nuts. At the same time I laugh at their expense. Like these scientology fuckers. They are mad, the lot of them. Absulutely fucking bonkers. Total idiots what-have-you.

Great knowledge comes from the humblest of origins

An ill-educated Indian accountant is good with numbers, so good in fact that the Cambridge professors want to see what he is made of. A true story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a rags-to-riches mathematician. A bit boring thing and I wish someone would finally figure out that there are other Indian actors than Dev Patel.

Present in an eternal moment

A.W. Yrjänä, poet and the frontman of Finnish band CMX, sits by the campfire and recites stories of Finnish mythology. Shamanistic humbug to some, but even so documents interesting anecdotes of animalistic nature religion and ancestral footprints.