See you down the road

Fern is a nomad. She's without a regular job, works short shifts where she travels. There's a whole community of like-minded people. It's a lifestyle of freedom, but it's also rather hard and lonesome. Free from bureaucracy and normal society, you've all the time in the world to think about death, life and universe, the bad choices you've made and the dreams never completed. Nomadland is a slow-moving drama, a heartfelt piece, but can't grasp why it's an Oscar winner though. Must have been a bad year.

Banished from the world

Blood Quantum is a low budget piece of shit. It's a zombie movie set in Native American community. Lots of blood spattering and cutting off heads pay homage to the George Romero movies, but it's just hopelessly bad. The actors amateur acting skills and unbridled enthusiasm is pretty amusing to watch though.

Integrity of our institutions

An award-winning school in the Long Island village of Roslyn is in a world of shit. One of its superintendents is caught of embezzlement, a theft of taxpayers money, and if the truth gets out it's a scandal of the highest magnitude. It would effect the whole town, because the town is as good as its public school. The employees, can they be quiet enough, sweep the accusations under the carpet, to save their school's reputation? Luckily on the pupils in the student newspaper smells something is rotten and investigates the fraud. A well-crafted drama of the largest school theft in American history.

Soon come tomorrow

Four young adults rent a mansion by the sea. Should be a fun weekend trip, but things blow out of proportion and it's a creepy chaos that's what it is. The visitors are neck-deep in shit, tormented to death and don't know what to do. Criticized as a garbage thriller, but I kinda like this kind of simple suspense.

Siberia with family restaurants

This is why we love movies. A car salesman orchestrates a kidnapping of his wife to cover up his expenses, but of course the deal is lined up with so many unfortunate events, wrong choices and iffy characters that it's destined to end up in misery. One of those movies that has left a lasting remark in the world of cinema. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen in 1996.

Slavering wolf on the rolling prairie

Jeremiah Johnson wants to be a mountain man. He is a man of proper wit and adventurous spirit. Suited to the mountains. All he want to do is survive alone in the wilderness, hunt for living. A settler's simple life. However, it doesn't takes long until he has an adopted son and an Indian wife. And as a family they try to make do in the land of whimsical Indian tribes. Deliciously atmospheric cult western. Starring Robert Redford, directed by Sydney Pollack in 1972.

Return to the rhapsody in blue

A paradise island where you can fulfill your wildest fantasies sounds like a lot of fun. Driven by grief, revenge or amusement, five of its quests are bewildered and horrified that the island actually does that, make impossible possible. Corny semi-horror b-movie fantasy crap where absolutely nothing makes sense.

We're a very friendly people

Thought of watching the Fargo TV series and the movie in chronological order before I have the opportunity to see the latest season 4. The season 2 is set in the Upper Midwest in March 1979. It consists of the Kansas mafia and Gerhardt crime family rivalling for power and it's mind-blowingly brilliant. Well-crafted and abundant story, lots of violence, lots of laughs too. Starring people such as Patrick Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons, Ted Danson, Zahn McClarnon, Jeffrey Donovan, Jean Smart and Angus Sampson. A roller coaster ride of excellence.

Sometimes the moon is talking to nobody

Vikings Season 6 volume 1. I read a few harsh and really negative comments of the final season of the series. I kinda jumped the bandwagon there, but it's not really all that bad. The sons of Ragnar Lodbrok aren't as cool as their dad, the actors are pretty shite really and the viking ventures outside Scandinavia are not so interesting to follow, but otherwise it's alright.

In the shadow of all the president's men

I don't know do I truly want to find out whether this was based on actual events. Anyways, a wanna-be journalist comes up with an ingenious idea to make a story of the most dangerous thing he can muster. A trip to Somalia and interview the pirates who capture foreign vessels for living. Weirdly, the movie is almost a comedy thanks to the lively character Jay Bahadur performed by Evan Peters, yet there's the volatile issue of piracy, people are dying and no-one's taking Somalia's side. Kind of a distant cousin of Captain Phillips, different narrative, but really quite good.

Cause of death haunted house

A dad and son are renovating an old house they just purchased and encounter its ghastly secret. It once belonged to a wicked old lady, a witch to townspeople, and it seems her ghost occupies the house still. The oldest ghost story in the book, but genuinely spooky little thing.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here

It's a Big Brother style reality game show where contestants are literally being eliminated one by one and the last man standing wins the prize of 5 million dollars. A worldwide audience is watching as the killings unfold, either horrified or excited, but equally entertained because death is entertainment and opiate for the masses. Not a truly outstanding film, far from it, but quite watchable popcorn horror.

Into the last good fight

If you throw away common sense in the story of a plane crash survivors against a pack of wolves, Joe Carnahan's The Prey (2011) is an intense wildlife thriller and a nail-biting survival movie. Having the towering figure of Liam Neeson in the ranks helps as well.

Caveman logic

Good guys and bad guys play hide and seek in an apartment building in Puerto Rico surrounded by a Category 5 hurricane. People write shitty scripts like this on a fucking paper napkins on a lunchbreak. Mel Gibson must have done this garbage as favour for something. I read that Force of Nature cost $23 million.

A digital invisibility cloak

A quick-tempered old-school narcotics cop Rick Bowden is transferred into a cyber crime unit for bad behaviour and he's up against geeks like Ross Ulbricht who eat megabites and nerd shit for breakfast. Ross Ulbricht uses the internet as an instrument of liberty and establishes a drug superstore in dark web where you can anonymously buy and sell anything, something like an Ebay for illegal drugs. At first, Rick Bowden has hard time adapting to the cyber crime unit. He may be old and slow, but he ain't stupid. He tracks down Ulbricht and just may crack the case the old-fashioned way. Silk Road got lots of negative feedback, but against common opinion, I found nothing wrong with the movie. Jason Clark, Nick Robinson, Darrell Britt-Gibson and Elexandra Shipp were amazing in the lead. Directed by Tiller Russell (Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer).

Learn how to suffer existence

The list keeps on growing: Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, Happy Death Day, Boss Level. Palm Strings is the latest addition to the infinite timeloop movies and it's fucking hilarious as well. Like it how they don't bother to explain the unxplained, rather just go with the flow. People are stuck in a wedding and it's kind of fun waking up to the same day again and again, you don't need to worry about tomorrow because there isn't one. Today, tomorrow, yesterday, it's all the same. Yet it's full of surprises, twists and turns.

Originality is overrated

It's much the same as The Trip ten years before. Another edited version of the series. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon talk and they eat while travelling from Troy to Ithaca following in the footsteps of the Odysseus. 

Never be hot, always be warm

This is the edited version of the TV Series The Trip where actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as fictionalised versions of themselves are on a restaurant tour of northern England. It's a dead simple concept yet it's somewhat brilliant. These guys have an opinion on everything, it's mostly improvised and they talk ceaselessly and, as the masters of the profession, imitate well-known people such as Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Al Pacino and others. It's fun, good entertainment.

Remain in the shadows

They were supposed to be just memorabilia and collector's items, but these little fucking nazi puppets kill hotel customers like there was no tomorrow! Pretty cool waste-of-time slasher horror.

Future before the past

There's a serial killer at large in Los Angeles, California. He's been terrorizing the city for decades and ridiculed the local police thus they are under heavy pressure to capture the sadistic killer. A team of old and new detectives is frustrated as fuck. It's been a little quiet in the serial killer cinema as of late, The Little Things is something, but after a decent start it barely goes nowhere and the story doesn't really have an ending. Surprisingly, Rami Malek - Hollywood's new favourite pet - looks like a rookie in the company of the heavy-weights Denzel Washington, Chris Bauer, Jared Leto and Terry Kinney.

Human weakness cannot be killed with a gun

Bob Lee Swagger is asked to plan a presidential assassination, so the actual assassination could be stopped. He's double crossed for the actual kill and soon the world thinks the poor sniper is the assassin and there's a relentless manhunt to catch his ass. Luckily for him and the truth, he's a proper ex-soldier and he can survive shit no-one's survived before. Antoine Fuqua's action-packed thriller is as entertaining as they come.

Without mercy or malice

Vlogger celebrates his 10th anniversary as a public favourite and his friends have surprised him with an exclusive custom made escape room experience in Moscow built just for them by a Russian billionaire. Awfully bad and predictable piece of shit.

Through darkness to the twilight air

Five Norwegian friends - young adults - go to a remote cabin by a lake. And of course the fucking cottage is haunted. The lake as well! At first the people start question their sanity and then themselves. Or are the horrific experiences they encounter orchestrated by demonic dark forces or perhaps some local lad is just pulling their leg? Another useless addition to the endless list of cabin horror.

Big furry rat thing on the wing

A flight officer Maude Garrett is stuck in the ball turret of a bomber. The rusty bucket has seen better days, but that's the least of her worries because she's tormented by an uncooperative crew, attacking Japanese fighter planes and otherwordly rodentlike creature aboard. A silly B-movie garbage, but at least there's quite a hair-raising adventure in it.

You are left with ungatz

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction - his autobiographical documentary struck me deeply. Albeit entirely fictional, Lucky seems like another biography of Harry Dean Stanton. It's like a premeditated send off. It's his final role and he didn't even live long enough to see the official release. The film also reunites him with Tom Skerritt (after 38 years since they appeared in Alien) and David Lynch (who directed Harry Dean Stanton on numerous occasions). Lucky is a beautiful film of exploration of death and celebration of life. Goodbye Harry.

Conscience with a sinful sound

The most harrowing story of the year where a wee lad - surrounded by death and inhumanity - is fighting for survival in Eastern European countryside during the Second World War. His ordeal is oftentimes painful to watch, some of the scenes are downright disturbing. Václav Marhoul's Painted Bird is a visually stunning masterpiece with a poetic yet unapologetic storytelling. Essentially a European production, but spiced up with a few familiar names such as Harvey Keitel, Stellan Skarsgård and Barry Pepper.

Tombs sit ceremonious

My head almost exploded because the flaws and stupidities of this film were too much to handle. Thankfully all the stupidity is hilarious and it creates quite a ruckus, but sometimes I wonder why the actors even bother with such nonsense.

Everything is meaningful

Hands down, one of the greatest acting performances I've ever witnessed, particularly courtesy of Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgård and Stine Fischer Christensen. Absolutely stellar shit. And it's a brilliant story. One of those movies that you pick up every so often and are always thoroughly entertained. Directed by Susanne Bier. 

Blood and sand

I've read the first two Peter James's Roy Grace novels - Dead Simple (2005) and Looking Good Dead (2006) - thus far. The season # 1 of Roy Grace is exactly those two novels and it truly is quite decent. As always, lots of material has been left out, but the adaptation is surprisingly pleasant.

The prodigal sun

I probably have said a number of times this or that movie is the worst of the year or the last ten years or whatever. However The Seventh Day hits the new low. Priests are investigating demonic possessions and you'd fall asleep if you weren't so annoyed at its diabolical stupidity. Guy Pearce and Stephen Lang doing God knows what.

Only the cold stones remain

Father Frank's and son Sean's bonding trip takes them to Ireland where they are supposed to say the final goodbye to the woman they both love and toss the ashes of her remains in a remote lake. They have several personal issues to deal with first. And the journey is full of other surprises as well. Done a million times before, but not too much to complain otherwise.

Every justification to kill

An elderly man with dementia goes on a killing spree across North America as he hunts down a nazi who served in Auschwitz. One of my favourite movies of the past few years, released in 2015, starring Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau and Bruno Ganz, all quite recently deceased.

Fountain of Champagne

Covid-19 is for wimps, Covid-21 is the shit. It zombifies the people, it's a hopeless fucking pandemic. A proper shit movie, easily one of the worst that I have ever seen, but I truly enjoyd. Shit story, shit acting, shit everything, but I love watching dismal looking cinema to death.

Into an endless void

A family moves to an apartment where an old woman had lived before. The apartment is full of her things. Everything that was left of her life. She died alone with no one left to miss her. She had no family, so all her belongings were included in the deal when the new residents bought the apartment. She would have been totally forgotten, buried in the ashes of time, unless these folks hadn't made this documentary. It's still fucking sad.

It's called a ghetto blaster

A James Bond movie directed by John Glen in 1987, starring Timothy Dalton as the agent 007, Maryam d'Abo as the Bond girl Kara Milovy, Robert Brown as Bond's superior 'M' (the head of MI6), Desmond Llewelyn as 'Q' (the head of Q division), Caroline Bliss as Miss Moneypenny (MI6 secretary) and Jeroen Krabbé as double agent General Georgi Koskov and Joe Don Baker as arms dealer Brad Whitaker, the main antagonists. The theme song performed by A-Ha. Once again western intelligence and KGB are at each other's throats. The most overlooked film in the series, but I think it's one of the best because without the trademark cheap laughs in the story, it makes the Bond character more serious and darker as well.

Please, let this death be the last

He doesn't know how it's possible, but he keeps on repeating the same day. Always a bunch of assholes he's never seen before kills him for no reason. And he wakes up the next day, just to be killed again. It's kind of what Groundhog Day started and Edge of Tomorrow and Happy Death Day continued, and it's as wicked. And funny too. And violent like, say, John Wick. Frank Grillo, Mel Gibson and Naomi Watts in an adventurous kind of mood.

Dreams prove the existence of the soul

Rapayet wants to get rich to marry a girl he fancies. Distributing coffee and booze ain't lucrative enough, so marijuana is the merchandise that will help him pursue his dreams. However drug trade fucks things up and throws family values and traditions in a waste bin. Indigenous and atmospheric Columbian cinema.

Message from the holy mountain

Joseph is so fucking tired. He's fed up with everyone and everything. He loses it. His mind. His self-control. Gone mental, he starts robbing shit and acting all weird. The story is rather thin, Surge is just one weirdo's breakdown really.

Dawn of doomsday

This woman - Jessica - is stalked then kidnapped. Obviously, she needs to escape from the maniac who did this to her. He might be a serial rapist who intends to imprison her for his own sadistic pleasures for years to come and start a nightmare on her life. Deliciously creepy little thriller of survival. Based on a Swedish movie Försvunnen (2011) by Mattias Olsson and Henrik JP Åkesson.

Chance favours the prepared mind

An architect's, a university professor's and a DEA special agent's lives are intertwined by a painkiller Fentanyl. The highly addictive opioid is smuggled between United States and Canada and obviously there are dangerous people involved as well. Evangeline Lilly, Gary Oldman and Arnie Hammer in a not bad but an average thriller.

Moments of silence in ball games

I'm sure I liked it the first time I saw Body of Lies (2008), but forgot it by the same token. Now years later, it's quite an exciting and volatile espionage thriller, but I realize why it was so hopelessly forgettable. It's a cliché-ridden plotholed fucking thing and despite all things, it's kind of dull. Maybe I'll like it again in few years time, after I've forgotten it again, starting tomorrow.

Highway lines in quicksand

A cattle rancher accidentally makes enemies with a Mexican drug cartel. Bad people armed to teeth are after him and a boy Miguel he's protecting from Arizona to Chicago. Never miss out a Liam Neeson movie, but even on his standards The Marksman is if not poor a mediocre film.

The closer you are to Caesar, the greater the fear

Thin Red Line (1998), a mightily good war film by Terrence Malick. It's funny how it's epic and poetic yet catches the utter insanity of war to perfection. The story itself is pretty simple; U.S. forces gaining foothold in the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific during the second World War, destroying Japanese defense. But the way it's executed, it's almost mindblowing perfection and the cast knows no equal: Jim Caviezel, Adrien Brody, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Ben Chaplin, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Thomas Jane, Elias Koteas, Jared Leto, Dash Mihok, Tim Blake Nelson, George Clooney, John C. Reilly, John Travolta and so on. Amazingly, scenes including Bill Pullman, Gary Oldman, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen, Martin Sheen, Jason Patric and Mickey Rourke were left on the cutting room floor.

Sugar-coating the world

A long weekend and a group of Finns in a summerhouse by the lake with plenty of free time in their hands always includes alcohol and arguments. The oppressed emotions breaking free enable unmendable frictions in relationships. Throw in an unknown Swede crashing in and we're talking shitstorm that could end up in murder. Brilliantly performed drama with actors who haven't worn their faces out in drivel TV entertainment - Laura Birn, Emmi Parviainen, Eero Milonoff, Samuli Niittymäki, Paula Vesala, Christian Hillborg, Iida-Maria Heinonen and Paavo Kinnunen - they are true specimen of their profession. Directed by Jenni Toivoniemi.

Get the hammer out

Grace's husband Jonathan is the lead suspect in a murder investigation. And the accusations only skyrocket when the man goes missing. And the plot keeps on thickening episode by episode. This is the good shit, gets little out of hand towards the end, but an intense Mini-Series orchestrated by a strong and reputable cast of David E. Kelley (L.A. Law, Picket Fences) and Susanne Bier (The Night Manager, After the Wedding, Brødre).

Paranoid instead of protected

It looks like there's only one honest cop in the city. All the others are corrupt asshole cunts who sold their shields off to the highest bidder. Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) has to fight against fellow officers in blue who all are out of control. A little out of focus at times, pretty confusing in the beginning particularly, but strong performances and a decent action movie nevertheless.

A shadow is cast wherever he stands

The first Jack Irish TV Movie (2012) of a Jack Irish TV Movie series. Guy Pearce as the private dick investigating a few gruesome murders and realizing he has a big target on his own back. Not great, but a pretty cool crime thing and it's somewhat refreshing to see fiction shot on the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.

Between heaven and hell

Not often I'm impressed of a piece of fiction where every single character is despicable piece of shit and you don't give a rat's ass of their destiny, but in Snabba Cash TV Series I was so thoroughly focused on the brilliantly depicted Stockholm criminal underworld that I couldn't care less. It felt genuine the whole deal. Amazing shit.

Getting old is a gift

The heroes, they are all characters in a video game and their quest is to recover a jewel from Jurgen the Brutal and show it to the Sun. That's Jumanji: The Next Level in a nutshell. Two hours of fast-paced photoshopped nonsense entertainment.

The thundering line of demented choirs

Everyone tries to make Daniel Léger a hotshot drug dealer and a criminal mastermind, but he's just a lowlife junkie. A true story of a Canadian citizen who was wrongly accused of smuggling heroin in Thailand in 1989. An investigative journalist managed to dig out the truth before he was executed, but the man was cheated 8 years of his life. Federal police in Canada in of the biggest clusterfucks and wrongdoings the country has ever seen. Truly a well researched and crafted story in the indie crime, directed by Daniel Roby.