Living in the shadows of those who we never meet

So much shit is happening that it inevitably turns against itself and the result can be rather tedious. And in all the chaos and hair-raising techno thrills, you lose the plot so easily that the high octane action is the only fuel to feed upon. And for fuck's sake, this monster, clocking in almost three hours, is the only the first part of the movie. 

History is a long list of failures

The first scene and its 20 minutes (or so) was electrifying and really bloody good. And they had digitized the young Harrison Ford pretty much to perfection. Unfortunately, the film then transformed into a silly and downright stupid adventure. Indy and his goddaughter crisscross the Mediterranean sea – and beyond – while hunting down an Archimedes’ Dial. And, of course, the fucking nazis are after them!

The mafia. They're like cancer. No cure.

Ex-government badass Robert McCall has one more mission to accomplish and he gets stuck in South Italy to fight against the Camorra evil people. Not bad, but terribly cliched little thriller and action-packed only temporarily. Reunites Denzel Washington with Dakota Fanning after Tony Scott’s riveting Man on Fire (2004), when she was 10.

Laugh at whatever you find funny

Yeah it's good. Maybe Ricky Gervais has established such a high standard that Armageddon left me a little disappointed. It's not as vehement and vulgar as most of his performances, not even that funny either, but guaranteed to make you laugh. And his ridicule on Woke culture is spot on.

A terrible revelation of divine power

The cast of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is outrageous, it's almost as monumental as the length of the film. But three hours is structured so meticulously that it's hardly an issue. Doctor J. Robert Oppenheimer was building a bomb to end all wars. They built a base (Los Alamos) in New Mexico to test this new weapon and called it The Manhattan Project. And it was the greatest scientific gamble in history. We follow Oppenheimer's life from university days to being a war hero and accused of being a hardened communist. And it's mesmerizing.

There is no now

Khaled is applying for asylum in Finland. But it's a strange and even a hostile place. Thankfully he befriends, at least sort of, a restaurateur Wilhelm and things aren't as bleak as they seem. You'll recognize the style in a heartbeat, it's trademark Aki Kaurismäki. Deadpan humour everywhere, but it comes with a serious undertone. Just brilliant. 

Caught in a whirlpool

A new prison guard no one has hardly seen before is left behind in a prison riot and he has to lie his way out to the inmates that he's one of them. An inside man is an asset to the negotiators, but what happens if the truth is revealed? Cell 211 is a rather violent Spanish prison movie with plethora of twists, but silly loopholes too.

Tomorrow the world

Victory is a strange city in a middle of a desert where husbands go to work in a secret project to a mysterious employer and unsuspecting wives are content as their roles as housewives. Until one of the ladies suspects something's not quite right in the neighborhood and intends to find the secrets of this earthly paradise. Don't Worry Darling, by Olivia Wilde, is an entertaining yet creepy dystopian movie of things being perfect yet completely out of place. An unsatisfying ending turned it down a notch though.

An excuse for evil

Sick satanic cultists kidnap the daughter of a devout Christian cop and he's obviously very grief-stricken. He wants his wee girl back and decides to infiltrate the satanic organization to raise the odds. Nick Cassavetes's God Is a Bullet is in many ways embarrassing.

Too much beauty to quit

Ok, I thought this would be good. Starring people like Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling and Bob Hoskins. Stay (2005) is written by David Benioff (Game of Thrones) and it's directed by Marc Forster (World War Z, A Man Called Otto, Stranger Than Fiction). But it's a fucking mess. A confusing mystery thriller with no proper plot to speak of.

Brethen of the sunburned hands

Watch Tommy Wirkola's I onde dager (2021) or Christopher Smith's Severance (2006) or Christopher Landon's Happy Death Day (2017) instead. Patrik Eklund's The Conference is only quite good and funny splatter comedy of a team-building conference turning into a sadistic nightmare. There's a masked killer murdering the participants. Violent and bloody, but just not good enough.

Done waiting

The first hour was amazingly good, almost in mesmerizing manner. It was proper and thoughtful apocalyptic mystery horror. After that it was almost as the fuel had run out. The ideas most certainly did. Nothing happened. Nothing exciting and sensible at least. And then it just ended. Abruptly leaving too many questions at its wake.

Getting rich from a dying old bitch

Luckily people aren't so stupid that they laugh at this kind of shit. Otherwise it would be an insult to intelligence. There's absolutely nothing clever in The Estate's comedy, it's just infantile and borderline obscene. People want to become beneficiaries of a terminally ill woman and win her heart and wealthy estate over. Downright fucking terrible.

Casa nostra

Pietro and Bruno. Buddies. Estranged for years but friends since childhood. When an important person to both of them dies, they intend to make his dreams come true and build a house up on the hills of Italian Alps. Le otto montagne aka. The Eight Mountains, by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, is an epic piece and the fact that it's shot in the Italian Alps, Turin, and Nepal over seven months, the cinematography is absolutely stunning.

Button in the worst possible spot

The last season (9th) season of Seinfeld. As before, I'll probably rewatch the entire series sooner or later. Funny, and rather strange to a comedy sitcom, how ‘the show about nothing’ has stood the test of time. The coolest entertainment. When I have nothing else to do and every other option sounds tiresome and shitty, Seinfeld kills the time perfectly.

Fate is a placebo

Reckon the world ain't quite ready for this right now, but it will age like fine wine. Like a proper crime noir should. David Fincher's The Killer is a very simple revenge flick, but shrouded with such magic and enigmatic mystery that you can't shook off that easily. A contract killer's assassination job goes to shit and his employers take action and suffer the consequences. A wonderful little thing.

A home grown rainbow

Finnish-Bulgarian movie Laupias taksikuski (The Good Driver), by Tonislav Hristov, looks like a Finnish-Bulgarian movie. It's untalkative and not too uplifting story of a poor taxi driver in Sunny Beach who wants to move to Finland to regularly see his 18 year old son. To make better profit, he drives Syrian refugees which is illegal and quite dangerous. It's not good or bad, you just shrug your shoulders after finishing it and do something else.

Catching lightning in a bottle

Different than any climber. Doing things that people thought could never be done. Pushing the limits. Comfortable on mountainous terrain. On hindsight, too comfortable. Marc-André Leclerc 1992-2018. He died doing what he loved so much. Frightening experience to watch his solo climbing tasks. Everything in Peter Mortimer's and Nick Rosen's The Alpinist predicts his death.

Too much sun will burn

On a recruitment door-to-door mission couple of sick cultists from the Colony of the Redeemers of Last Chance involuntarily join a role playing game in the home of a family they just have infiltrated! The other players are in character and don't know the true nature of things. None of them do really. Lunastajat, by Niko Kelkka and Miro Laiho, looks like bunch of Theatre Academy dropouts are ending their unemployment and making a movie.

It's hard to keep track of all the scumbags

Deep-sea researchers fight against megalon sons of bitches and outlaw diving squad stealing priceless minerals from the bottom of the ocean! Special effects people and Jason Statham stunt doubles had a field day. Nothing exciting translated to screen though.

Summer of sorcery

A gay couple move to a suspicious little town where people seem bigoted or downright hostile. They encounter unexplained aggression against their privacy and become both paranoid and scared. Particularly the author of the two, traumatized already by the events that happened a decade ago, is really shitting his pants. He sees homophobic devil-worshippers everywhere. Spiral, a horror movie by Kurtis David Harder, starts interestingly enough, but falls apart quite soon after.  

Where does all the ungratefulness stem from?

It's not easy for Pearl. A farm girl. Husband in Europe fighting in WWI. Daddy stricken with disease. A tyrant of a mom. But she still has dreams, does Pearl, and nothing should come her way chasing those dreams. They don't often, if ever, give Academy Awards for horror movies, but they should reward movies like this, Mia Goth alone is amazing. It's a deliciously wicked movie by Ti West that was, curiously enough, shot at the same time as X (2022).

Golden age of the lowland

Season # 2 of Luottomies. Just about perfect entertainment to pick up when you don't know what to do. Cringe-worthy fun Finnish comedy.

The watchers of the altered state

Really impressive and satisfyingly wicked supernatural horror. Four Norwegian kids in the same neighborhood discover their psychic powers and such mysterious magic in the hands of children is a dangerous thing. Riveting Nordic low-key cinema, chilling atmospheric horror to the bone!

Humans have only one ending

Someone has opened a portal. There is a rip in the continuum that is the membrane between Barbie Land and the Real World. It must be fixed or else the perfect girls and boys are about to look like ordinary people. And their world becomes sad and mushy and complicated. Barbie has to go to the real world and find the person who is playing with her. She never should have taken Ken with her. High expectations, but a big let-down in the end. A strong start turns into dull endeavor pretty quickly.

The cosmic wilderness

It's been a while now with the Wes Anderson films, it's style over substance. Granted, his works have never been for everyone. The quirkiness in the storytelling is original, remarkable and, often, quite funny. The actors and the stars who are aplenty must certainly have the loveliest time doing something different for a change. Like Bryan Cranston said, filming this movie was an actor's dream camp. But there's hardly anything rewarding for the people on the other end of the line.

The height of conceit

Those NASA bastards. To retain their funding and public admiration they fake a Mars landing. Those knobheads! Dunno how I've managed to miss this gem of a movie before! It's a bloody thrilling conspiracy film! Loved every minute. Directed by Peter Hyams and starring Elliott Gould, James Brolin, Sam Waterston and Sam Holbrook to name a few.

We are connected

It seems something extraterrestrial is lurking in the Swedish countryside. Aptly titled cultish amateur group UFO Sweden is obviously very interested in quirky incidents, but none is more determined than Denise whose father apparently was abducted by the aliens. They need some concrete evidence to convince everyone else as well, otherwise they are considered loonies and possibly sent to an asylum. The movie, in the X-Files territory, is cool and charming, well worth a watch, but nothing overly spectacular. 

If you put peace out in the world, you get peace back

It's like a class union of assassins. A train trip from Tokyo to Kioto. Everyone after a bagful of ransom money, fighting against each other to survive, each somehow connected to The White Death, a Yakuza crime lord. And there's a snake on the train! A non-stop ride but hardly any substance. Jokes and bullets fired from left to right, but missing targets. Something close to early Guy Ritchie pieces. Just easily forgettable popcorn entertainment.

This family is from the ghetto

Dunno why everyone made such a deal about it. The story of Richard Williams, the father of renowned tennis players Venus and Serena Williams, ain't interesting enough for a movie. And quite frankly, Will Smith portraying him, can’t do anything to save it. In fact, he’s borderline terrible. Handing him the Academy Award is just someone's bad joke. I'm sure the story is fabricated and sugar-coated to hell and back as well.

A dying man scared of the dark

An old notorious gunslinger J.B. Books has an advanced cancer. Once he hears of his condition and inescapable destiny, he checks in a guesthouse in Carson City to wait around to die. His enemies however think he is not going to die fast enough. A Don Siegel film starring John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, Hugh O'Brien, John Carradine, Richard Boone, Scatman Crothers and James Stewart.

There's no present like time

A pointless follow-up to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The manager of the establishment Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel) wants to marry the love of his life Sunaina (Tina Desai) and expand his empire. The film greatly concentrates on that. Otherwise is much the same as the first one. Richard Gere joins the cast.

To outsource old age

There's a somewhat derelict old building masqueraded as a luxury resort and hotel for the British elderly in Jaipur, India. A pleasant film. Not quite necessarily make you want to retire in India, but the cast (Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup, Penelope Wilton and Maggie Smith) does their best to sell it.

Geography is destiny

Not quite convinced of John Krasinski as Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst and intelligence officer. Don't see any specific reason either. Maybe his boyish looks or his past roles needlessly confuse things. Either way, the show - Jack Ryan TV-series - is good so far. Not great but more than watchable stuff on the post 9/11 espionage. Heard something completely different from the second season.

Do not shit where you eat

Porter just wants his money back. Mel Gibson is at his absolute best in Brian Helgeland's Payback (1999). He portrays a street-wise tough at nails no-shit-giving crook seeking revenge of the wrong-doings against him. He is out to there to make things straight with heroin dealers, sado-masochists, crooked cops, mobsters and such! And it makes terribly entertaining crime noir.

Cooped up in iddy-biddy dark places

Mafia wants to kill a witness whose been transported to Switzerland. They send a police officer there to protect and escort her back to Phoenix. Love and Bullets includes a few iconic movie stars, namely Charles Bronson as the cop, Henry Silva as the cold-blooded assassin of the organized crime and Rod Steiger as the mob boss. Sadly, a pretty forgettable movie otherwise.

Respect the spirits

Six friends hold a seance via Zoom during COVID-19 lockdown, but things go fairly shitty really fast. Makes a terribly cool scary picture. The runtime clocking somewhere in sixty minutes is perfectly enough. Host (by Rob Savage) wastes no time in its paranormal horror.

Whispers in the pandemonium

Finnish commando and gold digger Aatami Korpi eats Nazis and Ruskies for breakfast. He's a one-man death squad. A German officer Bruno is a resilient little fucker hunting him and the purest of Lapland gold Aatami is carrying. However, good men are hard to kill as they just refuse to die. Sisu is a revenge flick like no other. A spectacular feast set in WWII northern Finland. Funny as fuck as well. And such a mad ride of a movie that I watched it twice in couple of days.

Rage turned inwards

Steve Buscemi's character - Anthony Soprano's paroled cousin Tony Blundetto - is a major figure in The Sopranos season # 5. Likewise Andriana (Drea de Matteo) who gets deeper with the Feds. There's also an alarming power struggle between the New Jersey and New York crime families. Still one of the greatest shows ever made, damn near perfect.

When the sky makes no sound

The Association is a badass institution of organized crime. It's an international crime syndicate dedicated to extortion, smuggling and murder. In Amsterdam, they kidnap a wee children Angie. Luckily Angie's family has ties to ex-military people, like a giant of a man Matteo (Rico Verhoeven). Black Lotus is a B movie fair and square, a barely watchable fucker, reminiscences of the Steven Seagal movies of the yesteryear.

Flicker in the water

Beach houses are nice. But not the ones that are by the sea infested with an alien life form that generates some kind of mysterious fog when the twilight sets in. People have to get out of there fast. Surprisingly tedious horror with only couple of deliciously nasty scenes.

Songs from the nameless road

The guy just wants to fix his piano. Then sell it. And fuck off to Europe. Anywhere safe from the ISIS fuckers in Syria. He embarks on a dangerous quest across the country to find keys to his beloved instrument. Quite harrowing and exciting, but only quite.

Knockin' on eternal flame

In the aftermath of a little murder, a bagful of suspects emerge and a one good cop (Benicio Del Toro) is caught in the crossfire. A solid crime movie. Not an amazing thing, but after a slow-moving start, the last 30 minutes were rewarding at least.

The price of giving orders

Alright but a bit annoying. A homeless gay man joins the army. At first the place is a Full Metal Jacket type purgatory, but once the initial shock and prejudices are thrown outta window, they all are good fucking Marine buddies at an amusement park. Inspired by a true story.

Entombed within your own body

Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is like glue that holds the small town of Easkey, Ireland, together. He has the answers to all the questions expect for the one that asks who wants to kill him. A strong Irish drama counterbalancing the shit I've seen of late.

The long road under the midnight sun

I read and heard that Andrei Alén's Hirttämättömät is shit. But this bad? You couldn't create anything this stupid, not even if you put an effort. It's a comedy that doesn't make you laugh, moreover it makes you hate everyone involved. If it's based on improvisational comedy, the actors don't have any sense of humor, or intelligence for that matter, if it's scripted, the same with the writers. The worst movie of the year. A travesty of cinema.

A ghost in search of a graveyard

I'm afraid the endless fights and ultra violence don't leave a lasting remark anymore. Sure, it's all executed and choreographed well, but the action is so excessive that it's downright boring. The cool and wicked John Wick character that once was has long gone. The franchise has shot itself in the leg.

Time to face gravity

A James Bond movie directed by Lee Tamahori in 2002, starring Pierce Brosnan as the agent 007, Halle Berry as the Bond girl Jinx Johnson, Judi Dench as Bond's superior 'M" (the head of M16), John Cleese as 'Q' (the head of Q division) and Toby Stephens as the main antagonist Gustav Graves. The title song performed by Madonna. North Korean terrorists, diamonds and one international space weapon endangering the future of the world. James Bond at its cartoonish worst.

Something ominous

It's a fun bloodbath. And a wicked ride. A couple head to a cabin, and each has intentions to kill the other. A dark humour comedy at its finest. Directed by Tommy Wirkola, known by his Dead Snow pieces.

Ain't gettin' no older than tomorrow

A bank robber intends to find and kill his former partner in crime (now an acting sheriff) who betrayed him. One Eyed Jacks is Marlon Brando's directional debut from 1961 and it's stellar piece of work. Amazing cinematography and damn interesting drama. One of the greatest westerns.