Watched 2017

All brain and no heart.

Not nearly as bad as its reputation would suggest.

A splendid little movie with some beautiful little cinematic moments and amazing actors. Except young Robert Downey Jr. who's really outclassed in the film.

A little boy wishes that his lawyer-father can only speak the truth for a day, and moderately funny antics ensues. Though I think lawyer dad's problems might run a bit deeper than a truth telling complex.

Time to dig up this dead horse.

I was pretty hesitant to watch the legendary "worst movie of all time", cause I don't generally get much entertainment from famously bad movies, like Plan 9 from Outer Space. Usually they end up being just plain old boring.

The Room on the other is somewhat interesting. Sure the dialog is completely and utterly insane and there's no story worth mentioning, but the technical side of the movie looks and feels like someone stitched together footage from film school directing assignments. The set(s), the lighting, camera work, blocking, acting, pacing, editing etc. just screams "I dont' know what I'm doing but I'm trying". With a decent director and a comprehensive plot, this film could have probably pass itself off as a cheap, cheesy melodraama.

But anyway, after about 30 minutes of shaking my head in disbelief, the novelty wears off and I get bored, because, again, there is no story is this film. It's characters showing up to a house, talking either sextists stuff how women are crazy or how Johnny is the best man that has ever existed, and then leaving. It's literally nonsense for an hour and a half.

Then again, I watched it alone, which is probably not the way to do it. With a group of people, I can certainly see the appeal of The Room.

SPOILERS!

SPOILERS!

MAJOR SPOILERS!

I was really kinda asking for this.

I allowed myself to get sucked into the hypetrain even though none of the trailers looked anything special, nor was I really interested in the shenanigans of the main cast in the first place. Only one of the characters really had any potential, and it didn’t show at all on the trailers. Only one of the cast showed any climpses of possible greatness in the promo materials.

I knew that after the previous two films, changes were very slim that this film would prove to be anything more then adequate.

And yet, here I am, writing this: The Last Jedi was a crushing disappointment.

First off, it’s a really bad sign when you wish for the loud (JESUS CHRIST movies are so loud these days…) and overly long opening battle scene to end so you can get to the, um, maybe 30% of the plot that seems interesting in any way, and that is the Luke and Rey plot. It’s starts of fine, Luke’s an old, demoralised, crotchety bastard, that doesn’t want anything to do with the story. He wants Jedi to end. This is all basic “subverting expectation” stuff, but still, it's a very good starting place for Luke.

The problems start with Rey, who’s still a wet blanket, babbling on about the how the Resistance needs Luke while he drinks seal mammal semen—I mean milk. There’s still nothing engaging about her, she’s a Mary Sue, an audience stand in. Kinda like young Luke, yes, but at least Mark Hamill had some real acting moments. Daisy Ridley is just so one note. Atleast the movie reveals that her parents were nobody who gave her away for boozemoney, which is a good twist. I was honestly expecting her father to be Luke or Palpatine, or something boring like that.

Her Jedi training begins, and for a moment, my hopes are raised: the scene is both funny and subversive! And then the scene ends.

Um, okey, that’s it?

Yep! Now let’s go see those other characters that I care nothing about! Like Finn and what-ever-her-name-is girl. Okey, that’s pretty harsh, she’s actually quite likeable, but anyway, the adventure at the planet Kitsch begins. And my God, it’s so lame and forgettable little filler plot, and a total waste of Benicio Del Toro.

I’m usally not a nitpicking guy (really, I’m not) but man oh man, the silliness of the Fleet plot. The First Order fleet can’t catch the Rebel fleet… WHEN THEY ARE LIKE A MILE AWAY IN SPACE!? The First Order can't call one extra ship to jump right next to the Rebel fleet and blow them out? The whole thing visually just looks so stupid and because of that, the tension doesn’t really work. It’s like two golf cars going 3 miles per hour and the one can’t catch the other on a straight road. SO MUCH TENSION!

Yeah, that's nitpicky stuff, Star Wars has never been about the hard scince of space travel, and the actual plot on those ships isn’t too bad, even though all the conflicts could have been solved easily if people, y'know, TALK TO EACH OTHER. However, it's nice to see the action-man character Poe being wrong and getting called out… but the film ends up ignoring all his monumentally stupid mistakes. Poe is a flawed character in a good way, but the problem is that he doesn’t have a story arc, he doesn't learn, he doesn't change. He gets the happy ending without having to work for it. All is forgiven!

So lets go back to the Luke and Rey plot.

Oh, the training ended already?

Oh.

Luke and Rey have some decent scenes together but they are far and few between. It’s like the plot loses all of its steam after the opening and after that it’s just plot exposition and backstory, it doesn't feel like any personal connection is growing between the two.

I did fleel little sparks in my soul when Luke talked about the arrogance of Jedi Order and their views on the Force. "Yez, finally the Force gets expanded beyond the old Good and Evil -binary system". But no, the scene comes and goes, Luke doesn't go into any detail and it's forgotten. In the end, good guys are good and bad guys are bad.

Rey and Kylo have some good moments together (which are hampered by Ridley’s limited range) which advance the plot in an interesting w--

BACK TO THE FILLER PLOTS! SPACE AND JOKES AND CUTE, FURRY THINGS!

Oh Kylo Ren, you had such potential as a character (read my review of the The Force Awakens), but you are just crushed in this movie. It’s almost like he switched places with Poe, where Poe got all the stuff to do but Kylo got an ending to a story. A contrived ending but still, it could have been great if Kylo would have actually done something during the majority of the film that would have made me care and expanded him as a character. When he and Rey have their little team-up, I was hopeful. "Maybe, juuuuust maybe, this is going to lead into something new."

"Please...?"




No.




BUT HEY LOOK, IT'S BB-8 AND IT'S DOING SOMETHING STUPID, ISN'T THAT FRICKING FUNNY!?

Disney is on the fast track to homogenize every major filmseries there is, and that’s a huge problem… but really, Star Wars movies haven’t been good since 1980. Everything moviewise after The Empire Strikes Back has been a letdown and The Last Jedi is here to finish the job for me.

Now with Disney in charge, Star Wars is another Marvel-franchise: jokes and action mangled together, cancelling each other out, leaving me numb.

The Last Jedi takes some risks but for the most part those feel like plot trickery insted of smart subversions. The movie's like a car moving on a big, straight road, passing every major intersection but every now and then car takes a small detour that, in the end, leads right where the big road would have taken him anyway. Those are the types of risks The Last Jedi takes with its journey.

Like with the fact that there’s isn’t a grand lightsabre duel in The Last Jedi, but still, there are like five other duels that mimic those. It feels a very controlled risk, like Luke dying in the end. It feels like a giant “have a cake and eat it too” moment: The film wants take some risks, like with the clever execution of the Luke-Kylo duel, but plays it safe in the end when Luke dies. What is the point of that trickery if you'll just gonna kill him of anyway?

LOOK, TWO SUNS! IT’S POETIC!

So long, Luke. You deserved better.

(Until 2025 when you are digitally recreated for the in-between trilogy)

Creed is good, except the parts where it tries too hard to be a Rocky film, like with the ending fight that's very standard and uninspired. Otherwise, the film's a text book drama film heightened by excellent actors.

Mad Max has one of the most beautifully detailed open worlds I've seen. Too bad there isn't much to do in it.

The fighting system feels appropriate but takes some time to get used to. It feels like there is some real weight to it. Likewise, the driving feels natural and it's probably the best part of the game.

The characters and tone are spot on, but the story is super weak and the ending is a big slap in the face.

Also, Max himself is a real wet blanket, with non of the charisma of Gibson or Hardy. Thank god for Chumbucket, the resident Gollum of the game, he's always a delight.

Combining comedy and horror elements is one the trickiest balancing acts of cinema, and Krampus does a commendable job for the first half but after that it starts to get muddled and the tension evaporates quickly.

Jesus Christ...

What a piece of shit this movie is.

The heroes are nuts, the lawyer villain is right, horror elements are hammy and full of cliches and worst of all, it coldly exploits the story of a real life person, Anneliese Michel, to preach it's anti science message.

Goddamn you. You were on a fast track to become one of the best films I've seen in awhile but then you blew with the stupid, sappy ending.

It's good. Almost everything about it is good. Not fantastic, not extraordinary, just... good.

Good.

(I guess this what most people feel when they watch MCU films)

At first, Liar reminded me of Breaking Bad with it's tight plot and heavy, meaty themes but after watching several episodes Liar just didn't engage me like I thought it would.

It took me all six episodes of the first season to figure it out: It's so repetitive, so many dialog scenes consists of
- I'm gonna get him
- you shouldn't
- I will
- okey then
and it circles around every episode. There's simply not enough going on even for six episodes. The characters are pretty one-note, expect for one who dials up the villany to 11 at one point, and with that the plot points go from good to questionable and then to outright silly.

The ending felt really confusing, almost like the makers had some production issues and were forced to wrap it up quickly, but then I found out about the next season. No wonder the episode feels like a prologue instead of ending.

It's not all bad though. The acting is good and like I said, the series has a strong openning and the initial mystery kept my attention. It's just too bad the initial complexity starts to get flatten the further the series goes on.

Watched this a while ago, but didn't remember to write anything about it. So it's fairly unremarkable, but its main character sure isn't. For more information, watch this excellent analysis:

Apart from obvious CGI blood, some groaner lines, and the final overindulgent fight scene, it's one of my favorite action movies. It keeps the tension high throughout and, despite the shoestring budget, it's a really good-looking film.

You know what's the secret for liking shot-for-shot remakes? Not caring about the original.

Okey, that's a bit harsh, I've seen the original only once many years ago, but I remember not being terribly impressive. If anything ever revolutionized the horror film genre for me, it was the remake when I was 15. And it still holds up.

The acting is great, characters are flawed and nobody's really right in the end. It's simple, direct and to the point, with little filler. The overt sosial commentary in the end feels pretty ham-fisted, but beyond that, the film's great.

When I first heard about Rogue One, my immediate thought was no story could possibly be less interesting than this. And then the Han Solo movie was announced.

Anyway,

This movie should be taught at film schools to demonstrate what happens when none of your characters in your three-act story have an arc, and are generally as disposable as toilet paper: Your movie becomes fucking boring. Even if it does looks way better then The Force Awakens.

The early seasons are collectively the best James Bond spoof ever made. After that it gets kinda repetitive but it's still funny as hell.

Not a movie but whatever...

This game pretty much encapsulates the entire series after Call of Duty 2: Crazy fast speed action, super melodramatic moments, nonsensical plot and hilariously over the top voice-acting wrapped in a "this is a serious depiction of war y'all" packaging.

At least this one doesn't feature those embarrassingly tone deaf death screen quotes like "In war, truth is the first casualty". I guess the game developers took that one to heart when they read it.

World at War feels borderline satirical of war games, actually, given that beyond of it's flashy exterior, it's quite boring. Fun to play in small bursts, sure, but mostly dull 'cause there's no tactics involved, you're just shooting away anything that moves over and over and over again and move on only to hear Gary Oldman give another crazyass speech during a cutscene.

World at War just might be a real statement of the banality of war.

Or maybe it's just bad.

I wasn't originally planning to see this in the cinemas but then I was offered a free ticket. So why not?

But what to do since I just re-read the book and watched a rather thought-provoking adaptation? I knew I wasn't gonna be horrible engaged in the story, nor dazzled by the contemporary war-film esthetics, but could it be that the film would provide some new interesting angle to a well-known story?

Pfff, yeah right. This movie is as provocative as a McDonald's meal.

Well okey, it's not a bad movie, thought it certainly has its fair share of eye-rolling moments, such as wholly-original-totally-not-contrived family and love subplots. But beyond those, the film's adequate. I would actually say the opening acts of the film work surprisingly well. It establishes the main characters out the group and for a while it follows their stories and knows what to cut from the source material. But at some point, that focus is lost and it becomes a collection of scenes I know all too well, and two of the three established main characters get lost in the shuffle.

And in the end, it can't resistes the call of the Finland 100 Years patriot spirit.

P.S. Pirkka-Pekka Petelius can't catch a break.

P.P.S. Staring is ACTING!!!!

So Hellraiser has some really neat effects, concepts and music, and the story is quite interesting. Unfortunately, Hellraiser is not scary in the slightest and is all around pretty clumsy.

I feel torn.

On the one hand, it's quite refreshing to see a war film that's this unsentimental and undramatic. The film has no score and next to a modern bleak looking war film, it looks almost over saturated with color. There's simply no glamour in this depiction of war, not even in that "look how horrible (yet exciting) war is" kinda way.

On the other hand, it might go too much into that direction. The film feels like a series of unconnected events. This character comes, this character dies, next scene. I dont feel much of anything, no connection to anyone.

In the book, you feel the characters but this adaptation feels like an imitation, actors voicing lines without context.

And yet, the film lingers in my mind. Am I trying to find excuses to like a film that's not very good? Or is this film, to quote John Green, "so intentionally unadorned and unsentimental that it's aiming to shock us out of our passive perspective?"

I dunno.

It's pretty damn good.

Watched the monochrome Black and Chrome Edition, director George Millers' preferred version of the film.

The film begins with a short introduction by Miller, where he talks about how much he wanted to do this film in black-and-white after seeing a monochrome version of The Road Warrior. Just goes to show you not all dreams are worth chasing.

The Road Warrior does look way better without color, actually, but I think it's more to do with the fact that the black-and-whiteness conceal the relative cheapness of that film's visuals. Monochromeness gives that movie an extra punch.

Fury Road on the other hand just feels drained without the rich color palette, especially the night scenes. There are some moments early in the film that do benefit from the hight contrast bleakness of the black-and-white image, but when the chase begins, it feels like the lack of colour is sucking a way the clarity and grandness of the action. Maybe it's just me but I actually found it more difficult to follow the quick-cut action in black and white.

Fury Road is still a marvelous film, but I don't know if I'm ever gonna watch the Black and Chrome Edition again.

Rewatched for the first time since the theatres and it doesn't look any better. It could have been awesome but The Force Awakens just plays it WAY TOO SAVE, even with the risks.

Everyones mentioned the blatant similarities to A New Hope and I concur for the most part, but what annoys even more is the band of characters, who range from bland to fucking irritating. I'm looking at you BB-8, go back to the saturday-morning cartoon you came from.

The only exception is Kylo Ren, who doesn't feel like he even belongs to his film. A character who battles againts the call of the LIGHT SIDE, someone who can go from a calm and controlling to a raging lunatic in a instant, and who is desperate to prove that he can be just as cool as Darth Vader and fails miserably in the end. That's amazing and I'm not surprised at all by the amount of shit he got from the fans who just want to see another cool dark lord. Kylo Ren is too good for this film. He needed a counter balance, a hero to stand up against him, and boy, that's where The Force Awakens drops the ball.

After watching the film twice, I still can't remember anything about Rey, other than the fact she carries a staff. That's it. Daisy Ridleys lackluster performance doesn't help any, but Rey's just so bland to begin with. An orphan with a grand destiny, woopdy fucking doo.

You know who needed to be the main character? Finn. A kidnapped child forced into military service, cannon fodder for the First Order, a first time look into to a mind of a stormtrooper. And what's his role in the story? To be a red herring for the marketing and a comic relif.

After freezing in his first combat experience and witnessing the death of a fellow stormtrooper, you know what he does? He MOWS THEM DOWN BY THE DOZENS and laughs afterwards. After that his role is to hit on Rey. What a guy.

There are some good scenes and great visuals to be sure, but the heart is missing. It doesn't feel Star Wars, it feels more kin to a modern MCU film with its tonal shifts.

The Conjuring is very okey, even though the evil doll made me burst into laughter.

Say what? It has its own spin-off?

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What

Oh man, I had such fond memories of watching this when I was a kid but man, it doesn't hold up. The first act works quite well, but then the boring filler plot kicks in and the movie instantly goes down hill. The third act salvages what it can but it's mostly too late.

There's just so many things in this movie that don't make sense and violate the film's internal logic. Like why the hell is there a cartoon cat? Is the in-universe Jack Slater film series suppose to be a comedy? I know why it's there ofcourse, it's a cheap joke, but that's what I mean, the whole film is about cheap jokes and references.

When Charles Dance's character monologues how he could go inside any movie and bring a movie monster in the real world, I was thinking don't bother man, you can just go back where you came from and bring back T-1000 and Catherine Tramell cause they too seem to exist in the Jack Slater universe.

AND what kind of kid in the real world runs to the movie theater when he was robbed and threatened with a knife like an hour ago. That's one jaded kid...

Jay Bauman mentioned this film in a episode of Half in the Bag, so I knew I had to see it. It took five frikking weeks to get here, I watched it and to my suprise it was one of the tamest horror films I've seen in years.

And then it gave me nightmares.

Lake Mungo is a style over substance movie, but not in a bad way. The story is engaging enough on it's own, but it's the documentary film wrapping that makes the film work really well.

I guess you could call Lake Mungo a found footage film (the main characters literally find a missing footage in one point) but it's not that, not really. It's a horror mockumentary, and the stark contrast between the no-nonsense soberness of the documentary style and the slow-moving images and the subtle sounds of horror films somehow turns the most mundane images of ghosts into nightmare fuil.

So Finland has its first superhero film and it's laughably bad.

Super derivative of every superhero movie ever made, the tone is all over the place and the dialog makes my ears bleed. Oh, and some of the most obvious twists I've ever seen. I don't even remember what the hell the story was about.

A fun drinking game would be "spot the giant tungsten spotlight hidden in every factory/warehouse scene"

Don't. You'll die.

Hidden has an excellent premise and an intresting twist, but that's about it. It's stiff, over explaining, not scary and it has an annoying Hollywood movie kid in it.

A man and a woman argue a lot and learn facts of life in the end. It's surprisingly sweet and tense film, hindered a bit by boring creature desing and low-quality CGI.

Two thirds of this film works quite well with its likeable characters and genuinely disturbing and innovating uses of the found footage genre, but after that the movie starst to fall into every pitfall of the genre and the ending is just lame.

Btw when did Louis Herthum became the offical "Farmer Dad" in every American TV show and film?