Appreciation of life

Almost too brilliant. It's melancholic, intelligent and vulgarly funny. The show ponders the misery and absurdity of life, with a healthy dose of laughs - and sadness. A perfect tragicomic feast.

Looking into the abyss

The fighting scenes and all the action bits are choreographed to perfection. To a certain extent it's great, but somewhere along the line all the action becomes excessive. The real story of a kidnapped boy was lost in the smoke of explosions and gun powder.

Never hate your enemies

The Godfather III lacks the fluency of its predecessors. It's quite decent but not on the same ballpark with the I and II which in a way are like the same movie as they look alike and the rhythm and pulse are the same. III is the oddball, a bastard son, doesn't do justice to the legacy.

Dealt with bum cards

Like the Coen brothers apparently pitched it to the lead star Billy Bob Thornton, the story 'It's about a barber who wants to be in the dry-cleaning business'. Nothing more complicating than that. There's also a little murder to story. And more death and accidents. Simple stuff. Fun entertaining low-key crime noir.

Monkeys on juice

Ok, hands down, one of the best TV mini series ever produced. Probably doesn't go down to anyone else beside Swedes and Finns, but that's their problem. It's a satire that strikes straight in core of the truth what happens each day and night in the ferries cruising between those countries. If you are a Finn or a Swede you recognize your friends, relatives and neighbours in it. First you dig and laught at it, but then recognize yourself and feel a cringe of embarrassment. Savagely funny.

If history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone

The Godfather movies (I and II, in particular) are so good that you'd watch them until the end of time. After 3 hours and thensome, you are disappointed because it ended so quickly.

When he crawled out he was a mental wreck

It's kind of funny that I had The Legend of Hell House (1973) movie by the player for months just waiting to be watched and I had the Richard Matheson novel Hell House on the shelf in line to be read for months as well. I didn't connect the dots before. They are the same damn thing. Old school horror of a haunted house that is being investigated by both a scientist and a psychic. It's pretty creepy and atmospheric.

Compensating inferiority feelings

A professor Jonathan Hemlock has retired from killing people for the government. But apparently he's so good at his former profession that they want him to kill again. The one last assignment sends the professor to Eiger Mountain to kill, or 'sanction', a hostile agent. Lots of jovial shit for an espionage thriller, but thankfully it's all good. I had left happy only after seeing the scene where Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy share a moment on top of a mountain.

The instrument of Armageddon

A James Bond movie directed by Lewis Gilbert in 1977, starring Roger Moore as the agent 007, Barbara Bach as the Bond girl Agent XXX, Bernard Lee as Bond's superior (the head of MI6), Desmond Llewelyn as 'Q' (the head of Q division), Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny (MI6 secretary) and Curd Jürgens as Karl Stromberg, the main antagonist, and Richard Kiel as his henchman Jaws. The theme song performed by Carly Simon. British intelligence and Russian KGB are co-operating because both countries have fucking lost their nuclear submarines. Anglo-Soviet co-operation must endure before the warheads are fired.

Million miles from yesterday

Well, I put this on and started drinking whisky (quarter cask Laphroaig and Kavalan single malt). The Dark Knight Rises (2012) is massive. Lots of explosive things going on, so perhaps becoming intoxicated wasn't the smartest thing to do. There's the Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), the antagonist Bane (Tom Hardy), thieves are absorbing Wayne enterprises and breaking into Batman's (Christian Bale) armory, Bruce Wayne going bankrupt, the butler Alfred (Michael Caine) signing off, there's plans destroying Gotham city into ashes, with a neutron bomb!  It's so action-packed that it's almost confusing. I don't blame the whisky.

Time gives character

A family get-together, a wedding, in a beautiful little village in Spain. Despite heavy rain and a power cut, the party after the ceremony is beautiful and joyful. Until one of the guests, Irene, a girl coming all the way from Buenos Aires, Argentina, goes missing. And it's the beginning of a kidnapping thriller. The mom (Penélope Cruz) is distraught, but she and her childhood crush (Javier Bardem) leave no stone unturned finding the girl. Trouble is no-one or everyone, themselves included, is a suspect. Little flawed but a welcome change, thrillers outside Hollywood look somehow much more real.

Time is running out

The state the world is in currently (Covid-19), it's pretty relaxing to watch nature documentaries. It's comforting to know that the climate and the animals in the forest and the fish in the sea feel better when humans suffer. In Luontosinfonia (Nature Symphony) they've used humans as a soundtrack backing up the stellar beauty of Finnish nature with symphonic orchestra and quite a lovely voice by Johanna Kurkela. Although, annoyingly, the music drowns the sounds of nature.

Pink Chuck Norris

Four guys are on a constant morphine trip and wish to continue the habit therefore they decide to rob a bank. However the dudes are morons and constantly pestering each other, so it's no wonder their gig goes sideways. A reasonably funny crime indie from 2009, Timothy Olyphant as the "mastermind" of the heist.

Flame of malignance

A petty gangster is keeping the nice people of local businesses on their toes in a small Italian coastal town. Dog groomer Marcello, who is friends with everybody (even with the gangster himself), is caught in a such moral crossfire that only a severe backstabbing can dissolve. A lowkey Italian crime thingy, shot to perfection and absolutely stellar performances by Marcello Fonte and Edoardo Pesce, but despite all the brutal shit going on, it couldn't really keep the tempo alive the whole time.

A hardened rusty nail

Absolutely zero expectations. In fact, thought of getting a tough guy picture of some Steven Seagal or Vin Diesel wanna-be. Well yeah, there's a tough guy Cain (Scott Adkins), an incarcerated boxer, but it's of a bit different nature. For one, it's a British movie and that only gives it a bit more edge and it's a bit more straight-forward bashing of heads. This boxer dude has a 20,000 pounds price on his head, so with prisonful of hardeded criminals, he has his hands full and somehow gets his way of revenge outside the prison as well. Kind of cool.

Riding a whirlwind

Jonah Hill's directional debut. A depiction of 90s skater kids who loiter around L.A. streets and parks partying, drinking and smoking. Particularly it's coming of age for the youngest one of the gang Stevie aka Sunburn. Harmless albeit decent drama, it looks pretty real as well.

Night is darkest just before the dawn

Joker single-handedly makes the city of Gotham into burning chaos where no one feels safe and everyone thus is utterly scared of this inhuman clownlike freak. Batman and prosecutors and the police are also petrified because the adversary keeps on executing insanely clever tricks to kill people and their fight against injustice seems helpless. A real action-packed fucker.

She's a real man-eater

Can't help it. Every once in a while I make a decision that I'll only watch guaranteed good movies. The movies that has a certain buzz around them or are highly rated. Time is too valuable to waste it with shit. Then couple of days go by and I'm already inserting a new Nicolas Cage B-thriller into a player. Primal's current IMDB scale is 4,8. All hell breaks loose on a cargo ship full of unique animals (including venomous snakes and a white jaguar) and one mass murderer. Pure B-movie garbage fun. Cage does these, it's part of his enigma, but Michael Imperioli, missed seeing him in movies, he should fucking fire his agent. And Famke Janssen, once thought she'd make a proper career, but now she, sadly, looks like a wax mannequin only.

The secrets of scary people

I reckon, I wasn't that jazzed about Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy before. Entertaining movies alright, but for me easily forgettable. However, after seeing brilliant Todd Philipps' Joker last week I thought of giving them another chance. Batman Begins (2005) continues where Joker left off, from a different perspective. A billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) builds his winged mystical figure from a scratch and fights againts Gotham's drug syndicate and someone who is dumping poison into water supply. Better than I remembered.

The red of the dying sun

Benni is a 9-year old problem child. She's loud, angry, impassionate and violent. All fucken hyped up. Dangerous to herself and others. Therefore she's institutionalized and going through many special schools, surrogate mothers and welfare workers. A new special needs assistant Micha may have a solution and new ideas for her health. Not my turf these kinds of movies, but it's admittedly a harrowing story, executed so well that I almost forgot I was looking at a fictional film. The lead star, Helena Zengel, the world is her oyster now, lots of film awards looming on the horizon.

Such a happy little boy

Everyone has raved over this to hell and back, so I figured - and kinda hoped - it could never fulfill the expectations. But. Joker is exceptionally good. It's tragic. It's violent. It's grotesque, disturbing and sadistic. Built beautifully and subtly towards explosive hysteria. And, boy, Joaquin Phoenix, does he deliver.

Safe from the blessings of civilization

Classics or not, I usually don't open up to black and white movies of the yesteryear. Stagecoach (1939) wasn't nowhere near quite as fierce and entertaining western as I remembered, but, anyhow, one of the greatest of its time, the John Wayne - John Ford collaboration at its finest.

In the end, the son suffers the sins of the father

This is presented as a 'near future' feature. People have colonized The Moon, even Mars, and are orbiting between planets with terrible ease. Elite astronaut Roy McBride's dad has been hiding in the dark side of Neptune for couple of decades and recently been behaving all too weirdly. The son is determined to find him. It sounds wild and crazy, and it is, it's fucking ludicrous nonsense. Even if the movie offered space monkeys, moon pirates, Martian recording studio, all that kind of wacko stuff, it bored the fuck me out.

Death over abandonment

This 50-year old narcissistic woman, a proper nutcase, Claire Millaud (Juliette Binoche), a professor in university, creates a new identity for herself as a 24-year old model entrepreneur and hooks up with a young guy in the internet and they both get overly excited with this new relationship based entirely on lies. It gets crazier by the minute and Claire needs therapeutic councelling. Another social media movie with pretty good twists to stay exciting.

The queen must ride alone

Nordic pagan ceremonies can be a little intimidating for Yankee students. For instance, it may be a little extreme to witness human sacrifices in Midsummer masses. But like they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Read and heard lots of negative commets of Ari Aster's (Hereditary) second full feature, but fucken liked it, oppressive horror at its finest.

See you on the other side

Cheap and kind of hilariously weird end of the world movie. There's this evil wind that hunts down humans and turns them into pillars of dust. There are only few people alive, including one lucky boy who has a scanner that detects and defers the evil wind and with a handful of other survivors, he's determined to study the fuck out of this terrible force of nature. It's like a bad Twilight Zone episode.

Wind whispers gently to the shore

The life and times of the legendary Finnish schlager and country & western singer Kari Tapio (1945-2010). It seems that they took the easy way here. The storyline is snatched from Wikipedia and they thought putting old costumes and wigs is enough to make picture of the times in the seventies and eighties. That's why the movie looks like a farce. Kudos for the lead actor Matti Ristinen who pulled it through with talent and respect though.

Hammer to the skull

What do you do when you suspect your own dad is a serial killer? Sure enough, the dad Don Burnside (Dylan McDermott), bondage porn as a hobby, is suspiciously wacko, but the murderer of dozen of women? The son needs more evidence and fortunately there's another teenager hooked up with the same unsolved case. A fun little B-movie, tension is built nicely and suspense is plentiful. Stupid ending though.

Creating own reality

In the post 9/11 world, United States of America attack Iraq on false pretense and fabricated lies. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. Millions of others lost their daughters, sons, mothers or fathers just because U.S. government wanted the war and no-one could stop them. It's all yesterday's news, the movie is yesterday's news, but it's a good reminding that the culprits, the mass murderers and war criminals, are still not prosecuted. And it will happen again. Because history will repeat itself.

Tribe to a nation

The Bailiwick of Jersey was the only piece of British land that was occupied by Nazi forces in WWII. The Germans sent hundreds of Russian soldiers of war to work there at labour camps. Another Mother's Son (aka. Saints of War) has a little too much British drama feel to it as it follows the steps of one Russian fugitive and the people who protect him in an isolated place full of hostiles, but makes a decent film nevertheless.

The grand roar of thousand woes

While investigating the wrong-doings of an oil company, two Swedish journalists (Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye) willingly endanger their lives in volatile Ethiopia where army, rebels and different military organizations are killing each other like there was no tomorrow. Illegal entrance and terrorism activity are rewarded with 438 days of incarceration in Papillon magnitude. I reckon I have book of this case somewhere, I ought to read it now.

From cradle to grave

It was pretty desperate. I got really obsessed with finding something funny in this movie that I couldn't stop watching it. It was useless. I merely observed the decline of Hollywood comedy. Just fucking repulsive.

Apex predator all day

It's pretty fucked up in the hurricane season when there's alligator farms in the neighbourhood. It's absolute nightmare stuff if you for instance get stuck in a basement with these monsters! All things considered, Alexandre Aja has done a pretty intense alligator thriller here, it's nothing too special, but suits his résumé (Piranha 3D, Haute Tension, Horns) just fine. A threadbare genre, but managed to come by with a few fresh, hilariously gruesome scenes as well.

The farther away, the hazier it all gets

After 27 years Pennywise has fucking come back. Not cool. Not cool at all. The teenage survivors, obviously adults now, coming back to the small town they once left behind, Derry, Maine, have to live the same nightmares allover again. Or maybe they have now the knowledge to fight against the bogeyman and finish it, for good. But, petrified beyond belief, can they actually do it? Almost three hours of cheesy horror, it tries to be frightening and cool, but never ain't.

If you survive war, you survive anything

Well, it's more telling and impressive than thousands of fictional war movies put together. The World War I opens up in front of your eyes the way you could never have imagined before. You almost smell the mud and the shit and the rot and the death. Amazing breath-taking footage. Oustandingly well done in the restoration department by Peter Jackson who dedicates the movie to his grand father William Jackson, sergeant who served in the British Army from 1910 to 1919.

Hope and health

This could have been so much more. Chinese Cheng and his son Nunjo are visiting Lapland, Finland, and thus the movie kind of deals with the most obvious cultural differences - language, cuisine, behaviors - imaginable. So much so that the assets of the film; the breathtaking landscapes of the northernmost parts of the world and the Finnish heavyweight actors (Vesa-Matti Loiri and Kari Väänänen) don't get enough screentime. Still, a warm and beautiful little thing of the magic of friendship and nature.

Too qualified to be happy

A headhunter has to learn how to prioritize when his family is stricken with a tragedy. Without guns and ammo and people to kill Gerald Butler is maybe a little out of his element, but it's a sappy little film, so everything's forgiven.

Save it, wolf fucker!

A small town police officer investigates a misdemeanor case, but turns out there are evil satanists lurking in the woods and they, in a baptism of blood, turn the poor sheriff into a werewolf! A proper B-movie. Manna from heaven. The world of cinema wouldn't be the same without them. Lots more entertaining than most of the professional shit they are churning out these days.

Shamans of sperm

To serve science, radical experiments are taking place in outer space. Deathrow inmates are selected to be used as guinea pigs. Their spacecraft is heading towards a black hole to find out is there a way to utilize its energy. And the people, they are never coming back. Boring shit when they all are aboard, tough shit for Monte (Robert Pattison) and his daughter when everyone else on the vessel has perished.

Forward to the curse of dimension

Like alcoholics have their Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) fellowship, the theme of this movies is that mercenaries and hired assassins have their own similar organization Killers Anonymous (KA). Whoever brainstormed this fucking thing must have thought the idea is hilarious. Well, it isn't. Most dumbest shit of a script this year so far.

Moments of struggle define us

Once again the life of the president of The United States is in grave danger, but he's lucky to have a secret agent Mike Banning by his side. However, it seems that someone's framing Banning for the attempt of killing the big chief. Unfortunately the story is written so poorly we knew all the details of the film before we even had to see it. Pretty cool action though.

How black a heart can be

John Rambo has set foot in the Arizona desert training horses and digging tunnels for fun. That is until his friend goes missing in Mexico and it seems Mexican mafia has kidnapped her. So Rambo goes against the notorious drugs and prostitute cartel who are armed to teeth. Luckily Rambo is pretty good at the killing business.

War is not over

I understand the anger and frustration people felt with the final season of Game of Thrones. It feels awfully rushed and there's some obvious mistakes and everything. There are only six episodes and the first two were boring shit and the rest mindless chaos. But I kinda liked it anyways.

Fallen on the highway

Three Beers was a bar in a student village of Turku, Finland, for something like thirty years. I lived next door to it for few years and frequented the pub. They demolished to place and are building something more modern in its place. And people are sad and angry. And they interviewed the people who loved the place so much.

Passenger seat's not the best way to transport a corpse

Season 2 of Mindhunter. Easily on the top 3 shows running currently. FBI profilers investigate serial killings and study the gruesome phenomenon interviewing notorious killers (Charles Manson, Ed Kemper, et al.). And it's mostly based on true events. Absolutely killer stuff.

All the best people shave twice a day

Somewhat a bore. A 14-year old Lolita (Sue Lyon) makes grown men go all crazy and get totally obsessed with her. Based on a Vladimir Nabokov novel, directed by Stanley Kubrick, yet it's still waste of time.

One man euthanasia clinic

Don't bother checking it out, but I've seen a movie with the same exact concept before. A guy is so desperate to end his life, so he hires an assassin to do it for him. "Outsource a suicide", as they put it. Anyways, this makes a dark comedy and it's pretty funny as the soon-to-retire hitman (Tom Wilkinson) turns out to be somewhat of a fuck-up and the guy he's supposed to kill suddenly gets second thoughts. Nothing overly exciting, but satisfying enough.

Horror in the highlands

Didn't watch the season # 3 like a true fan and sat it through immediately. Took my time with it, too much so, and got all too confused of the plot a few times. Took the last few episodes like a trooper and liked what I saw.

Slaves of the sea

A drama of bunch of singing fishermen and a recording label honcho who falls in love with the group and one of the citizens in a picturesque village of Port Isaac, Cornwall, England. A feel good film that is extremely enjoyable to watch.

Toxic moon vibrations

I don't understand the zero ratings and otherwise negative feedback. There's nothing amiss here. It's an offbeat zombie movie done with good taste and subtle black humour. It's filled up with interesting characters like Tom Waits as a hermit, Steve Buscemi as pro-Trump farmer, Iggy Pop and Sturgill Simpson as undeads and Tilda Swinton as an undertaker. Also people like Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Danny Glover and Rosie Perez in the roster. The earth has fallen off its axis and that has caused a full-on zombie apocalypse. Wicked fun. Directed by Jim Jarmusch.