Where fun goes to die

Some of the scenes in Gave O'Connor's The Accountant you need to pause, just to let it sink what you just witnessed. Then rewind and watch them again. The action, not that it comes around too often, is arrestingly straight-forward and firm. Easily Ben Affleck's strongest role to date. He's plays a smart accountant, and a part-time mercenary, Christian Wolff who is such a cool character that it's a shame they didn't franchise it like Bond or Bourne.

March of the boom boom

The security of a British outpost in Afghanistan has been compromised. An enormous compound is guarded by two soldiers. I was as busy counting plot-holes as they were counting bullets. Combat movie trash.

A blind pig must use its nose

Nothing but a popcorn movie. Freelance is an action comedy adventure where bodies are piling up for fun. It's silly and easily forgettable waste of time packed full of embarrassingly corny one-liners that are supposed to make you laugh.  

In men there is madness

 

Nothing can go wrong when a hot summer day in Ostrobothnia, Finland, includes debt collection, a submachine gun, moonshine liquor and stubborn brothers. Pekka Parikka's Pohjanmaa (1988) is a narrative into landscape of the Finnish soul.

Feed the beast within

Esko Ketola is a veteran weightlifter. Teräsvaari is a documentary where this 72 year old iron man prepares to compete in a World Cup in Argentina. He's a confident man, resiliently fights against the hardship of getting old. Quite decent, but they just as well could have written an article somewhere instead of filming the process.

Bad vibes terminated

People are collectively seeing dreams of Paul Matthews who is an actual man, a professor, in real life. First they are normal dreams, harmless, good dreams and some of sexual nature even. And that makes Paul famous, a national phenomenon. Then the dreams turn into nightmares. And he's no longer popular. He becomes despised and ostracised. What a movie. A bloody hilarious dark comedy, a borderline horror flick. Nicolas Cage is on fire.

A chalice of poisoned blood

A Danish movie set in Greenland. And based on it the life out there is quite straightforward and nice. To Jan, a Danish nurse working there, the Greenlandic way of living gets under his skin. Kalak is based on an autobiographical novel by Kim Leine, who also contributed to the screenplay, it's directed by Isabella Eklöf. You don't get to see movies shot in places like Nuuk, Greenland, too often, so it's a treat. By the same token, had it been shot somewhere else, no one would hardly bat an eyelid.

Part science part religion

To understand and choke them, Kate studied the fuck out of tornadoes. Her friends die. Years later she's hunting them dust devils yet again, meets a charming YouTuber and things fall into place. Purely on technical terms, Lee Isaac Chung's Twisters is very well made, but everything else bit of a bore and seen so many times before.

Lured there for a reason

This is grotesque and bloody disgusting. One of the most graphic contemporary video nasties. Art the Clown ain't messing around. He doesn't talk but kills like a motherfucker. Absolute sickening bonkers the whole thing, it's horror would have been more effective and scarier without the unnecessary supernatural bits though.

Discarded headlines

A decent Danish film. But unfortunately Mikkel Serup's Mørkeland (a sequel to Nikolaj Arcel's Kongekabale) is nothing else. There's an investigative journalist (Anders W. Berthelsen) in the middle of political conspiracy. It's as exciting as the next political thriller, but hopelessly dull and carried too much by the performance of Anders W. Berthelsen only.

True king builds bridges

It feels like you are looking at a video game and you are bored out of your tits. It's like an animated feature and they plastered real people like Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman and Dolph Lundgren in it. It probably was just played out in a green room somewhere and that's it. Perhaps they just photographed the actors and let the AI generate the rest. Sure it's colorful and wild, but it's as much stupid too.

One more river to cross

Finnish director Joey Palmroos's The Outlaws (aka 5 Outlaws) is just amateurish western indie that really gives you nothing. A posse makes a train robbery, hide in the woods and suddenly their loot disappears. That's 75 minutes that last like a lifetime. Although advertised as the lead star everyhere, Eric Roberts makes his first appearance in the 57th minute, his screen time is mere crumbs.

Never going to find any peace

The CIA's former operative Jason Bourne is drawn out of hiding! And his former employer wants to kill him dead! This is a welcome return of the character, Paul Greengrass back at the helm. Plenty of well executed high octane action sequences and the new cast (Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassell and Alicia Vikander) delivered incredibly well. Besides the director Greengrass, Matt Damon returns to the series.

God sends dogs for the unfortunates

A childhood tragedy made Douglas Munrow (Caleb Landry Jones) to trust none but dogs. He runs a New Jersey State dog shelter and if necessary he can use them to offer protection services for others or even perform robberies and implement his own revenge on his enemies. Dogman is a Luc Besson film. It's quite boring to tell the truth and particularly towards the end the story gets carried out a bit too much.

A coffin considered as furniture

These things are the greatest. Unfamiliar faces as the actors, but they are all great. A simple crime thriller without too much excess nonsense, just good writing and shot brilliantly. There's a gas station in a middle of nowhere and they've run out of gasoline. Little by little it's getting crowded, all sorts of folks hole up in there to wait for the fuel truck. Couple of bank robbers on the run included! A lovely story. Possibly the biggest positive surprise of the year.

Sometimes we fight alone

A man is found dead in the snow under a balcony. They suspect it's the wife who killed him. The defense says he fell down from an open window, accidentally or on purpose. The couple's blind son is the only eye witness. It's quite a riveting trial.

Monsters aren't real

FBI and the police know that he's one of the 3000 men in the audience of over 20,000 in the concert of pop star Lady Raven. He's 'the Butcher', a notorious serial killer. He's also a dad watching the show with his daughter. M. Night Shaymalan's latest piece Trap is entertaining in its own right, but c'mon it's fucking ridiculous and full of gaping plot-holes.

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. A few funny bits were great though.

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.