A country without a language is only half a nation

Across the globe an ingenious language dies every 40 days. Reminding us of this is Kneecap's the most important message. The comedy-drama movie otherwise is hopelessly average. The film depicts the rise of Kneecap, an Irish hip-hop trio from Belfast and they are rapping in their native Irish. There's also drugs and anti-social shit involved.

Phantom bones bite back

A quick memory refresher because they are producing follow-up seasons as we speak. An alien on a mission to destroy humanity crash-lands on Patience, Colorado. And it's damn wicked fun.

Dark nights of peril, loss and heartache

Probably the greatest war movie ever made. An absolute masterpiece. A group of soldiers who went through hell in Normandy in WWII are asked to locate Private Ryan and bring him home safely. This powerful and at times harrowingly brutal film is directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Matt Damon ja Jeremy Davies.

The faithless other side

Mysterious snowfall kills people. Thus begins quite an adventure where survivors battle an alien threat. El Eternauta (The Eternaut), created by Bruno Stagnaro, is an Argentine television series based on the comic by Héctor Gérman Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López. Despite the excitement and horror, the show is incredibly beautiful to watch, one of the greatest apocalyptic little thingies. 

Head over heels

Any publicity is good publicity, but to confess to a murder you didn't commit to gain fame, reckon that's a bit excessive. A poor struggling actress Madeleine Verdier and her manager/lawyer Pauline Mauléon think it's a great idea to boost your career and showcase your talent in a courtroom. Soon others will follow suit. And it's a farce all written.

Repetition is hell

A college history professor Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) has a doppelgänger. Namely Anthony Claire (Jake Gyllenhaal), an actor. It makes a pretty weird yet curiously entertaining thriller. And there's a complicated ending. Enemy is a 2013 film directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Hard times for wicked dead hearts

Troma Entertainment movies are a different sort of boogie. Return to Return to Nuke 'Em High AKA Volume 2 (2017) is the fifth one in the Nuke 'Em High film series. It's disgusting and atrocious with lots of nudity, inappropriate human fluids and nuclear sludge. Classic exploitation filmmaking by Lloyd Kaufman.

Died a hundred times

Pretty groovy ghost story by Edgar Wright. Eloise is a fashion designer student with a too comfortable and close connection to 1960s London. Her life is drawn into murders in the past. Last Night in Soho is a visually arresting piece, truly bloody interesting, the fun died a little along the way, but an entertaining and unique movie. Brilliant soundtrack to boot.

A cold knife in the middle of the back

An ex-con is framed for an armored car robbery and he sets out to discover who set him up. Close to excellent film noir. A good story, great first thirty minutes, but anticlimactic narrative towards the end. Kansas City Confidential is a 1952 crime film directed by Phil Karlson starring John Payne, Coleen Gray, Neville Brand, Preston Foster, Jack Elam and Lee Van Cleef.

Love is the price

What a poor lad. Got mightily famous, got lost in the fucking success really. Pushed in all directions, projects and side projects and sessions, songs to write, shit to deliver, pretenders and hangers-on everywhere. Had probably a million things buzzin' in his head. Burned himself out. Big time. And couldn't take it anymore. Avicii, an enormously gifted young DJ and musician Tim Bergling from Stockholm, Sweden, chose to end his life in 2018, aged 28.

Beneath burning bridges

Bunch of young activists break into a furniture store to vandalize it to shit. Little do they know that it's guarded by a psychopath security officer who gets all fired up by these intruders. He stalks them, sets deadly traps and, most ridiculously, forces the activists to assemble a shelf even! Something else. This kind of slasher thing can be tasteless and delicious at the same time.

Pale paranoid opioids

Alongside a few other performing artists, Brian Epstein (1934-1967) was the manager of The Beatles. He had no experience of artist management before, but after witnessing them, he became a music entrepreneur in a twinkling of an eye. His story in Midas Man had a good thing going, but the film lost its focus just when something magical should be happening. Pretty outstanding performance by Jacob Fortune-Lloyd though.  

The undead shadows

A secret South Korean science organization created killer dogs as a military experiment to hunt down terrorists. But the project had to be shut down. During transportation to be executed, a pack of these mutant dogs break out and all hell breaks loose! It's kind of cool popcorn horror.

You can't lock up a man's whiskey

Marshall Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne) loses his badge because his kill count is incredibly and worryingly high. He drinks too much as well. And let himself go a little. When some real job - catching nitroglyserine and gun thieves - needs to be done, they recruit him back. Teaming up with Christian missionary Eula Goodnight (Katharine Hepburn) and a Native American Wolf (Richard Romancito), he eats bandits for breakfast.

See the enemy first

A little too far-fetched a story and meandering plot twists. Regardless David Mamet is a masterful storyteller and Spartan (2004) moves forward strong and well. The daughter of a US government official goes missing and special-ops agent Scott (Val Kilmer) is determined to find her. Whatever the cost.

Then one day you will go down

Often said that Frank Oz's The Score has the best three actors of their generations. Namely Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Edward Norton. Be as it may, it's a fun bunch to watch, their characters here orchestrate a heist of the Montreal Customs House and a scepter of immeasurable value. The film was released in 2001.

Years of being brushed aside

Packs a different punch. It's not a superhero series, nothing cartoonish about it, it's all about Mafia and gangsters in a gritty and grimy Gotham City. Colin Farrell as the mobster Oswald "Oz" Cobb, nicknamed The Penguin, is absolutely terrific and the noirish tone and violent madness of the episodes is incredibly arresting.  

The gates of hell are open night and day

This doesn't have the feeling of this first one even if it tries to recycle a lot. Gladiator II's computer-generated humbug kills the pleasure and entertainment and, quite frankly, Paul Mescal in the leading role nowhere near replaces Russell Crowe's charisma. The film is an overstuffed blockbuster, but lacks depth.

Decaying vestige

Horrendous piece of garbage. It's sad really that in this day and age this sort of thing is even being released at all. The movie is basically filmed in the back of a truck. It's cheap and talentless insult to all the other so called confined space movies.

Tomorrow is promised to no one

The cast in Clint Eastwood's Absolute Power - Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, E.G. Marshall, Dennis Haysbert, Richard Jenkins, Scott Glenn - is tough class. Their presence is impressive, downright dazzling. And the story of the President of the United States involved in a ghastly killing, and a burglar witnessing it, is brilliant. If they had paid more attention to the small details and cleaned up the mistakes, the film would be one of the greatest thrillers.

The moment the laughter died

Torture. There's not much to like in Todd Phillips's Joker: Folie à Deux. It's an awfully boring affair. Riding on the coat tails of Joker (2019), they probably thought they could pull off anything, stupid musical bits included, and people would suck it up.

Just another man hunting for a trophy

Essentially Kraven the Hunter is a ridiculous action hero movie. The character Kraven is a fighter of animal justice whose superpowers are courtesy of a some mysterious elixir. He's a gung-ho kind of guy and mercilessly wipes out the people in the poaching business. The movie is a different kind of absurdity with inconsistencies and plotholes, but kind of liked it all the same. Wacky shit.

Sulfuric and hydroflouric acid for blood

A group of young people want to change their miserable home planet to a planet with at least one Sun. With a brighter future in mind, they need to hijack a deserted spaceship that just happens to be floating around useless. But of course, that's the one where the alien monsters reside! Alien Romulus started off great, a good idea and proper tormenting claustrophobic horror in the making. But the potential was promptly killed.

Hope is just another burning soul

Be prepared to see something you have never seen before. Everything in Adolescence is great. Mind-blowing even. Everything but the story. The cinematography is pure magic and the acting, wow, it's properly done, thought-out and executed to absolute perfection. The uncomplicated story is the only downfall. This four episode thriller mini series was created by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne.

Rumors are often revealing

Jewish refugee Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) plots a revenge against the Nazis who slaughtered her family. It catches the attention of the Basterds, a group of guerrilla soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Things might end up in a bloodbath and the deaths of key figures in the leadership of the German Nazis. Quentin Tarantino's war movie Inglourious Basterds (2009) is wicked and entertaining historical nonsense.

Fuel for astronomy

An ordinary car mechanic from Essex, UK, meets a draq queen. Sort of fancies her. And a whole new world appears and ignites a love story of two different people. That's all there is to it, pretty average drama as a whole.

Prayers don't work

It's fucking solid piece. Hugh Grant is great. Superstitious mumbo-jumbo doesn't fuck up the suspense and thrills in its religious horror entirety. A killer film.

A passage through thunder

Gard B. Eidsvold's performance as Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945) is one of the greatest and most memorable acting performances I've seen in recent years. Every single detail in his portrayal seems to be thought-out to perfection and makes a huge impact on the movie. Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian Nazi collaborator in charge of Norway's government during the country's occupation by Germany during World War II. An intriguing and insightful film by Erik Poppe.

Eyeless hellbound blues

They probably ruined The Crow's (1994) legacy with four other sequels already, but this fucking thing is blasphemous beyond everything. Quasi-Gothic trash with a story that is an absolute mess. Some graphic violence to lift up spirit, but an abomination otherwise. 

Never to return

Season # 3 made Seinfeld a household name with eight Emmy nominations. It comprises 23 episodes and it was initially aired in 1992. According to the co-creator Larry David the season three was a big turning point for the series in terms of how the show was made. The episodes are some of their best: The Pen, The Parking Garage, The Red Dot, The Subway and my personal favourite The Limo.

A little puppet on a string

It's pretty good nostalgia. Harmless fantasy horror and proper eye candy. But unfortunately too many sidestories took momentum away from the main one and everything was a bit rushed. Nothing iconic, an easily forgettable movie.

The day after the wheels of shadow

Cafe owner Kato gets a message from himself. He gets it from the TV screen in his own cafe which is two minutes ahead of time thus showing images from the future. Together with his friends they start to play around with it. Perhaps make some profit from the peculiar time machine. Thank heavens, Beyond the Infinitive Two Minutes lasts only 70 minutes because the mindfuck it generates becomes a bit too thick to chew. Pretty clever - and funny - little thing nevertheless.  

Road of the righteous

Frustrating, overly sentimental, clichéd and soulless little thriller. It makes no sense why Robert De Niro and John Malkovich decided to be part of this abomination where a recovering drug addict becomes a vigilante.

Like wolves in the sun

A progressive hearing loss makes a detective feel himself useless. A security risk even. His hearing aid dies down while working on a case. He ends up trapped in an apartment building to be demolished with a deaf girl who is a witness in a murder case and there's a plenty of bad people wanting to kill her dead! The Silent Hour is a predictable and flawed thriller.

Evil has many faces

Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen) is a priest in a rural church. He's suspiciously happy, sees the world through rose-colored glasses yet convinced he's at war with Satan. The rectory is also a halfway house for paroled convicts. In comes a neo-Nazi (Ulrich Thomsen) sentenced to community service who immediately questions the minister's faith and view of the world. Brilliant dark comedy, absolutely hilarious. Directed by Anders Thomas Jensen. 

Boiling brains on an atomic level

Popcorn cinema for people who don't think so much. It's photoshopped Marvel action with so much jokes and snappy one-liners that it becomes exhausting. The story is just a mere footnote and renders itself useless before it even started.

Bad time for rats

Swedish secret agent Carl Hamilton gets in contact with German terrorists and joins their posse. He's undercover. Their plan include an attack against the CIA headquarters in Stockholm. They've filmed quite a lot of Jan Guillou's book series with Swedish heavyweights such as Peter Stormare, Mikael Persbrant, Jakob Oftebro and Stellan Skarsgard in the leading role. The Democratic Terrorist (1992) is decent, but nothing more.

Living in the clouds

AI moves into a family of five. She learns the family's behaviors and anticipates their needs, she's a helpful little fucker. But she also comes with disturbing features. Pretty interesting techno thriller/horror movie, but lacks in suspense. A lost oppurtinity really.

Sometimes a sinner

Intruders pop up at James and Kristen's summer home and they come up with bad intentions. It's stuff of nightmares. These masked strangers are no good. At times, The Strangers, by Bryan Bertino, is truly bloody scary. Entertaining breath taking horror. Too bad though that all the characters are stupid beyond belief.

In grandiose splendor

This is a 1992 documentary film directed by Werner Herzog. Shot in post-Gulf War Kuwait. The imagery of it is devastated and lifeless landscape. Oil fields in flames. It's an apocalyptic vision of destruction in the wake of war. The images are powerful, almost hypnotizing.

Whistleblowers, oracles and prophets

Conspiracy theorist's wet dream. A massive nationwide cyberattack kills thousands. A former president George Mullen (Robert De Niro) is appointed as the head of Zero Day Commission to investigate the attack, find and imprison the fuckers who did it. The series started out well, the slow-burning pacing was exciting, and the performances were brilliant, but the final moments (the last two episodes) watered it down.

Privacy has been dead for years

A lawyer is caught in a crossfire of mobsters, corrupt politicians and National Security Agency officials. He teams up with an old-school hacker to formulate a plan to separate the righteous from the unrighteous. Enemy of the State is a brilliant Tony Scott thriller from 1998 where everything is somehow overshadowed by the dazzling performance of Gene Hackman.

Forlorn friends obliterated

Disappointing. A few deliciously nasty and disgusting scenes thrown here and there, but they can't keep the movie together. The film is constructed on unexplained bits, so by the time it's finished you are as unlightened as in the beginning. And just like the first time, the ending is just weird.

The space is space, it doesn't change

A man builds a time machine and travels forward into the time, thousands of years into the future revealing a volatile society where things called The Morlocks raise humans as cattle and feed upon them! The Time Machine (1960) is classic science fiction film and a bloody good one, directed by George Pal. Rod Taylor in the lead.

Homeward bound

Gabby Petito wanted to be an internet star, but her asshole boyfriend Brian killed her. She first went missing and there was a nationwide search and she was found strangled in the desert. The boyfriend went missing as well and killed himself later. It all was all very well documented before this film, but these true crime thingies are still compelling to watch for some reason. 

You can't escape from yourself

A body horror film by Coralie Fargeat. An aging celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle creates a younger version of herself by a drug. The drug has its side effects and misuse unveils somewhat sickening consequences. The Substance is entertaining, a grotesque satire quite similar to David Cronenberg works, but the ending, bludgeoned to death with blood and gore, was a bit off the rails.

We're all still just cave dwellers

A family of three meet new people who are cool at first, but turn out to be aplenty different. Not necessarily the most original of thrillers but pretty good scares here. Speak No Evil by James Watkins (Eden Lake, Bastille Day). A remake of the Danish-Dutch film (by Christian Tafdrup) of the same name.

Hail Satan, shoot dope, kill children, fuck the pope

The craziness of the first thirty minutes of Ari Aster's Beau is Afraid was spectacular. With a runtime of 2 hours and 69 minutes, the black nightmare comedy has its needlessly confusing and dull moments. And falls short with its logic at times. Being weird for the sake of being weird doesn't quite cut it.

Burn the future

They say Swedes are so full of themselves that they are annoying. Apparently they were like that already in the 16th century, so much so that Denmark had to wage war against them. Mikael Håfström's Stockholm Bloodbath started out great, like a wicked comedy, but turns out to be a weird mess in the end. And not very good.

Rhapsody without war

There's a sad undertone in La passion de Dodin Bouffant's (The Taste of Things), by Anh Hung Tran, culinary journey. They sure do feast, devour and cook exquisitive food in the film, honoring the art of food and preparation of it to the bone, but the human drama in romance and death are there in the mix as well. Cooked with passion, culture, love and cuisine. An excellent watch.