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.