Top of the world

Wasn't it quite brutal. Raoul Walsh's White Heat. From 1949. James Cagney is a mean and violent son of a bitch, a frightening figure for both cops and fellow criminals. A perfect psychopath. A brute force of nature. Makes intense film noir.

Obsolete and unspoken

A Finnish-Iranian action movie. Nothing can go wrong. Right? A hero fire fighter becomes the Persian Chuck Norris after his wife is kidnapped and suddenly he has enemies everywhere. Little embarrassing the whole charade, but somehow an appreciating effort nevertheless.

The ones who left in time

Caught from Netflix. A 3-episode piece of the murder of Laci Peterson. Horrible tragedy, disgusting details of the life and death of a beautiful young woman. Happened in 2002 and now twenty years later, Laci's mother and friends speak out, revisiting this terrible thing.

Dreams between two worlds

What a bleak little Aussie indie. It's b&w, so the heavyheartedness is emphasized even more. A cop investigates an unsolved 20-year old case where a small town girl had been kidnapped, possibly killed. No funny moments here. Hardly anything really.

Fortunate men taste the same misery as the unfortunate

Fuckers kidnapped the wrong son! But a wealthy businessman still decides to pay up. It builds up a proper thriller. Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) is the best detective reasoning I've ever seen. The story unfolds slowly but once it gets going it's a mesmerizing and magical ride.

A dusk of damnation's pride

John Knox is a mob hitman. He's diagnosed with a fast-moving form of dementia called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It's worse the Alzheimer's they say. He needs to retire. Go away. But before that Knox has few things he gotta do right. Including saving his son from trouble. Nothing's amiss in Knox Goes Away, directed by Michael Keaton. It's a cool thriller.

A psychic jail for the rest of eternity

The Ghostbusters team stumbles upon a mysterious orb that is a magical prison for a phantom God called Garraka. And he's the ruler of the undead and can free ghastly forces from the depths of history. Pretty scary, but because there are two or even three generations of ghost hunters fighting side by side, it's a walk in the park really. 

Paint it black

It started as an art exercise, an art school student digs deep into his subconsciousness and he starts seeing crazy nightmarish things. Elsewhere, his dad is experiencing more or less the same shit. Some of the jump scares were cool, but in the end Insidious, by Patrick Wilson (his directorial debut), is rubbish.

War in heaven

A 2021 James Bond movie directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, starring Daniel Craig as the retired agent 007, Lashana Lynch as the officiating 007, Ralph Fiennes as Bond's superior M (the head of M16), Ben Whishaw as Q (the head of Department Q), Naomie Harris as Miss Moneypenny (secretary to M) and Rami Malek as the main antagonist Lyutsifer Safin. Theme song No Time to Die performed by Billie Eilish. James Bond has retired, but his old pal Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) in the CIA needs his help. The consequences are devastating.

Space does not cooperate

A super fun and exciting movie. As was the novel (by Andy Weir). Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm in Mars and he's left behind by his crew. Once he manages to signal to Earth he's alive, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring Watney home, until then he must rely on his ingenuity to survive. Ridley Scott's The Martian sits among his best works.

Let's go be immortal

It's hard to believe this is a true story. A Gran Turismo (a driving simulation game) player develops into a full-blown race car driver. Not only it's cool story, it makes a perfectly entertaining movie as well. Its told with passion and expertise. Great acting, particularly by Orlando Bloom and David Harbour.

Bullets in the chamber

What a load of crap. A stupid film. A computer geek, former hacker, sits on a chair filled with explosives. He stands up, he blows to kingdom come. He's blackmailed to hack into high-level banking systems and breach their firewalls. And while doing so everyone in the world thinks he's a terrorist blowing shit up. Hot Seat is another plotholed movie, the only fun thing is to find the goofs. They're aplenty. Starring Mel Gibson, Kevin Dillon and Shannen Doherty. Otherwise, the acting is horrible.

No stranger to danger

There's something else. We find out that Kong and Godzilla are not the only great beasts in the world and Hollow Earth (an internal region inside the world). In fact, Kong is a pretty mellow chap as a whole, Godzilla has more temper. But nevertheless there's more terrible titans terrorizing the planet and endangering its future. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is brainless fantasy junk, but it's entertaining.

Kids are little cunts

A screenwriter often visits his parents who passed away in a car accident when he was 12. Such a critically acclaimed drama, All of Us Strangers, by Andrew Haigh, but also a slow-moving boring affair.

Who's not pagan in some matters?

In 11th century Normandy, a knight builds a defensive fortress in order to guard the borders against barbarians and falls in love with a local pig farmer woman. The story is quite nice and for a 1965 film, the action bits are brilliantly executed. Too bad all the characters were despicable.

Messenger for the ghosts

The Danish original, Gustav Möller's Den skyldige (2018), was flawed as shit. Some changes in this Hollywood remake, but they couldn't find and fill up the most gaping holes in the story. However it's in spite of everything quite exciting. Unfortunately it also proves why Jake Gyllenhaal just yet ain't an A-list actor.