Watched in 2013

This wasn't the disaster I was expecting it to be, to be honest. I was expecting a really embarrassing, overly sentimental tearjerker but at least it isn't that. Sure there are stupid scenes and parts of the plot are not believable (well yeah, the whole premise is obviously completele unbelievable as well), but on the while the film isn't really bad.

The movie tells about a neo-nazi that falls in love with a woman who has a black son from a previous relationship. By the way, I wish meeting women would be as easy as the films makes it out. A lone man sits in a cafe, complaining to the waitress about how dumb he is and unable to get a job and how he doesn't have any money, and she instantly asks him for a date adding that "he might get some ass if he plays his cards right". Yeah right, never worked for me. I never did claim to be stupid though. Hmm, maybe I should try that.

I don't know what to think about the depiction of violence in the film either. Sometimes the audience is clearly supposed to feel good about the violent solutions for the characters' problems. And neither does the violence ever lead to anything serious, like people getting hurt (except when it serves the purpose of the story). I kind of like the fairly silly ending with violent and horrific deed ending with a comedic tone. Somehow it works ok, even if it reminds of a episode of some sitcom or cartoon series with all of the main characters laughing to some poor joke, or something.

I wasn't expecting to say this, but aside from some stupid humor and plot elements (stealing grenades from a military base isn't really believable, and neither is the scene in which after being threatened to be blown up with one of the said grenades, people are able to act completely casual as soon as the situation is over) the film does manage to tell a decent enough story about love winning over hate and racial prejudices.

P.S. I can confirm that Jasper Pääkkönen does have a rather large penis, as has been reported in the social media after the release of the movie. At least it's clearly more envy-inspiring than his acting talents.

In the third and final part of the films about Pepe el Toro, we suddenly find ourselves watching a boxing film. The idea is a bit awkward yes, but in the end it works much better than I was expecting. And it doesn't help that the film begins in a weird way as we find out that (big spoiler coming!) Pepe's wife and children have died in a bus accident and he's single again. What a way to just wipe off his family without even showing the accident or anything! I'm guessing they couldn't get the actress to play Pepe's wife and had to think of something else. But oh well, as a film of it's own the story does work nicely, and at least Pepe's loss is somehow part of the story later on.

EDIT: I just found out the actress that played Pepe's wife had died shortly after the first two films. Well, I actually do think it's better this way, and they chose to explain Pepe's loss this way and not just recast the role with another actress. It's still awkward though, and surely it would have been better to just make a stand alone boxing film and not make it a sequel to the other two films especially since it's quite different from the two other films anyway. But I guess there was a market for another sequel.

The movie shares a LOT in common with the first Rocky film. The central themes are pretty much the same, with the poor protagonist raising up from nowhere to challenge the big boxing champion and all that (well yeah that's true with almost any boxing film, but but the style of the film is fairly similar in other ways too). During the final fight I could almost hear the rocky theme starting to play in my mind. What a nicely made boxing scene though, and actually mostly looks like real boxing, much more so than in the aforementioned Rocky films for example, but still it manages to be very frantic and effective!

So yeah, much better movie than I was expecting, and while again starting slowly, it turns out to be another very entertaining melodrama about class differences with boxing serving as a backdrop to the story.

EDIT2: Haha, I only now realized the director of these three films, Ismael Rodríquez, also made Autopsy of a Ghost later on in his career, the terrible film I also saw earlier this year. Well, at least he still had a talent of making creative opening credits scenes!

This is the sequel to Nosotros los pobres, a mexican melodrama dealing with class differences and the life of poor working class people.

Basically this is pretty much the same as the first film in style, but much better. The film does start a slowly, but once it does, it's mostly pretty damn great. Especially the last 30 minutes or so are really powerful cinema. Sure the film is a bit off a miss mash of different types of material, ranging from light comedy to deep tragedy, but it's consistently well made and entertaining all along. Like I said, especially the final quarter of the film is pretty amazing, with really powerful scenes depicting tragedy and violence.

The structure of the story is again the weakest point of the movie. There are basically two main stories here, one dealing with the class differences with the poor and the rich, and one with a criminal from the first film craving for revenge with the protagonist. The latter gets much less time and feels a bit like just a way to get some extra tragedy to the story, but on other hand it works so well in the end that it doesn't bother you much. All in all, a great film.

Also, I love the creative opening titles, which are similar to the first film. In them, children find a book and one by one turn the pages that have the credits.

Pedro Infante plays a triple role of each brother of a triplet, each raised separately from the others and thus having very different views on life. One is a priest, one serves in the military and one is an outlaw.

The plot starts unfolding quite slowly in this Mexican comedy, probably too much so considering that this is a two hour film. It doesn't help either that some of the comedy isn't too good, especially the sidekick of the priest character is rather annoying and the humor relies mostly on him being dumb. On the other hand, there are comedic elements that work here too, for example I really enjoyed the scenes with the outlaw and his daughter. The daughter is badly raised and for example in the first scene of them togeher, she has his revolver, points it at him and shoots. When she misses, she starts crying. When asked if she is crying because she got scared she answers that "No, I'm crying because I missed". This sort of macabre humor about the daughter continues trhoughout the film. The ending joke also left me amused. There can't be too many films from 40s that have a scene dealing with feelings of homosexuality and incest, even as a joke!

And then there's also a cute love story, singing and a finally some half serious drama as well when the plot starts to unfold, and of course the characters mixing as they disquise themselfs to look one another and so on, as you'd expect from a film like this. And Infante does pull off really nicely playing the different kind of roles. So it's all quite a mix of different types of material. It's mostly fluff perhaps, but in the end, it all works quite well and leaves you in a good mood. Also, visually the film is really beautiful.

Valkoinen peura is perhaps THE Finnish film I felt most that I should have seen already. It's cult status is very strong as one of the most unique films in Finnish film history, and especially of the period it was made in. Yet, I can't help but to feel a little bit diasappointed by the film, given my expectations of a masterpiece.

The film is quite beautifully shot, with strong contrast black and white image of snowy lapland. The film also nicely captures a dreamy feeling, relying mostly on images telling the story instead of dialoque. It's a shame then that there isn't much of a story and what there is isn't all that great. There isn't much of a logic in the film for one thing. And I don't know, it might be beside the point in a film like this to expect logic, but it's still a little jarring how the central consept of the film is something that you can't find much sense in.

What happens in the film is that the protagonist, a wife who is disappointed by the sex life in her marriage, seeks help from a shaman. The shaman then tells her that she must sacrifice the first living creature that she encounters and no reindeer men could resist her after that. She sacrifices her deer and after that randomly starts turning into a white deer who lures out men to follow her, and then turns into a vampire and kills them. I suppose some sense into this plotline could be made. Witchcraft is bad, and she got a curse instead of what she wanted or something like that. But the problem is that all this feels a little far fetched and also it feels very random how she sometimes turns into a deer, and sometimes doesn't even when there are men around. Ok, I get how she turns into a deer because a white deer could be something reindeer men can least resist, even less so than beautiful women, but that doesn't explain why she turns into a vampire as well. It just feels that the writers couldn't think of what to do with the idea after that point and thought "Well, maybe she could kill those men. AS A VAMPIRE!". Despite all the weirdness in the plot, it's also really predictable how the film ends. It's not a bad ending either, it's just very obvious one and thus feels a bit of an anticlimax.

Despite all my harsh words about the movie, it surely is a very unique one in the film history and a memorable good movie without a doubt. The photography is beautiful, the music is nice and the storytelling with not much dialoque works nicely. For me it just didn't completely live up to its reputation as a whole as it feels so incoherent.

Keanu Reeves plays a chocolate salesman who returns from WWII to his wife he barely knows. He wants to get ahead in his life, but the wife only wants money, and so he leaves for a business trip to sell chocolate. He then meets a woman who throws up on him in a train. Much humor about smelly clothes follows, and the couple start to fall in love.

This film is painfully predictable, and what's worse, the plot twists are always very mechanic. A big spoiler here, in case you wouldn't see it coming: the protagonist finally leaves his newfound love, because he feels guilty about cheating on his wife. Well, what do you guess happens when he gets back home? He finds his wife with another man in her bed. So, now the protagonist can go back to his new woman without feeling guilty about it and the audience can feel the same way. Except that I just can't see how that would happen in real life. And what if the wife hadn't cheated on him? Actually, with questions like that the movie could have been more interesting. Now it's just fluff. Also, I can't see any reason for the war flashbacks to be in the film as they don't really add anything to the protagonist's character or who he is.

Reeves's acting is really bad but I did like the Mexican actors and their performances, and the Mexican immigrant theme was one of the few interesting things about the film for me. The cinematography is absolutely beautiful as well.

Based on the opening text in the film, warning audience that the film tries to give a accurate portayal of poverty and poor people, one would expect this to be more close to Mexican version of Italian neo-realist cinema. It turns out the film is not really neo-realist in style though, but more a melodrama with some fairly far-fetched twists in the story. The tone of the film isn't too consistent either, which is another weakness. Sometimes the movie feels lighthearted and comedic, but when it's dark and tragic, it's very much that. As an example of the comedic part of the film are two drunk women, who are used as a comic relief throughout the film.

Despite the weaknesses, this is an entertaining and interesting film, and compared to most Hollywood films of the same period it has much braver portrayals of sexuality and violence.

Biographies are my least favorite type of movies by far in general. Of course there are exceptions but I just find most films of the genre to be either too liberal with twisting facts or that they otherwise are just formally a mess or don't have any interesting center theme. Badding is a bit of all of the previous, and the fact that Badding's music has never been important to me hardly raised my interest in the film. So yeah, I had absolutely no interest whatsoever to see this film as I don't even like Pölönen as director, which you should keep in mind when reading what I thought about it. Someone with more interest in the subject can find the film better.

What does this film tell me of Badding, his life, and what made him a great artist? Well, nothing much really. He was shy, not too good looking and had a friend (played by Peter Franzen) who kept stealing his woman. Except that Franzen's character is obviously mostly made up (which pretty much was his role also in Matti, though even much more annoyingly so). In the end we are left with several very uninteresting conversations with Rauli and the Franzen character that probably have very little to do with any historical facts. There are also some embarrassing tries at humor in the film, which doesn't help.

"This isn't true, this isn't lies, this is a fairy tale" is said on film opening, telling the audience that a lot of facts have been twisted. But I just don't see how seeing the film as a purely fictional story makes the film any better. I bet if you would ask someone who didn't even know who Badding is to ask the film, he or she would most probably just be baffled and wondering questions like "why did this man become a successful artist" or "what does this film try to tell us with the story". This just isn't a coherent stand alone story about anything if you don't know who Badding is, and if you do, it doesn't tell the real story.

Rewatch - half a star less to ****

Decided to watch the extended cut again on Blu ray this time with my brother. Yeah, it's still a great adventurous fantasy film, but boy is it LONG, and the structure of the film, propably due to the source material (which I have never read), isn't too great in either. I'd say the extended cut is propably better, but it's still a bit of a chore to sit through when you remember most of what happens. I doubt I will watch this again soon, unless there is a very good reason for it. Despite the problems it's all a lot of fun and the attention to detail is impressive. Even the CGI, which I normally don't like to see too much in films, looks consistently good here. So yeah, it's a really well done, stylish, and entertaining film, and easily among the best high budget mainstream genre films made. For once it actually feels the huge amounts of money used has been worth it.

I always remembered this as the best of the three films but let's see about that when I some day find the strenght to watch the other two.

Rewatch - no changes in rating.

Part a pseudo documentary about how people spend their lives in the city during sundays, part a fictional film about a group of normal citizens played by unprofessional actors. Pictures of the Germany of the time are pretty, and there doesn't seem to be any marks of the Nazi uprising either, although there is one scene that seems to make some sort of commentary on the subject. The story is simple and has no particular point to make: it just serves as a backdrop on displaying some themes of sexuality (and women in quite revealing swimsuits for the time). There is especially some commentary about male sexuality in the film as especially the other of the male characters only seems to care about women as someone to have sex with, and not about their feelings. A bit of feminism displayed here as well then.

A very nice diversion of the fairly common documentaries of the time about life in a city (Man With a Movie Camera, Berlin: Symphony of a Great city etc.).

A short film about the destruction caused by volcano eruption + earthquake in Oaxaca in 1931. Seeing Mexico of the time is very interesting and the film material of the of collapsed buildings are pretty yet sad and tragic. There isn't too much of a interest in the documentary as a piece of cinema besides for the historical aspect and the fact that it's directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein though. As a movie it isn't very cinematic and there isn't anything special to speak of: the editing is mostly very unnotable and there isn't even much movement in the film, and sometimes it feels you could just as well watch some photographs of the event.

A cheesy 50s/60s science fiction movie with actors in silly looking monster and robot costumes. It's quite a lot of fun though, and a lot weirder than your typical scifi film of the period.

Two women from planet Venus (swimsuits apparently being their space uniform) are sent to kidnap men for their planet, as all the men had died because of an accident. Apparently any kind of males do as the women have already at the beginning of the film kidnapped a few male monsters from different planets. The spaceship then gets damaged and is forced to do an emergency landing in Mexico for the time the repairs take place, and the film turns into some sort of western/horror/scifi hybrid. After this all sorts of things, some of them very surprising (such as a revelation about one of the women halfway in the film), happen, and in the end the women from Venus learn what love means and how kidnapping men is wrong.

I didn't really like the comedic central male Mexican character and the love interest of the women in the film, but the great sets, cute effects and the monsters in the cheesy yet cool costumes are fun to watch. And even the Mexican cowboy has a couple of good scenes, especially the ones in which he sings, making the film almost musical in parts. The ending with a joke featuring the robot character is nice and made me chuckle as well.

This Mexican crime film tries hard to imitate Argento and other giallo films, but fails quite miserably to be any good. There's just very little to enjoy here as the film lacks style and is mostly just very boring. Nothing of interest seems to happen, and there are also far too many scenes of people talking to each other, often in phone. I did enjoy the music which sounds like something straight from a horror themed video game, but it's really overdramatic compared to what happens on screen. At first it reminded me of the weird use of music in Argento's films but then I realized that the film actually tries to be suspenseful whenever the music plays, which it never is.

The dialoque and the acting are also very stiff, and the very simple and easy to understand story is overexplained at the end. And then as a last insult the movie ends with a completely nonsensical twist. I might have been a little harsh on the rating, but I just couldn't find anything memorable in the movie as it all feels so average in every way.

Another rewatch. Still no changes to rating.

I watched this with a group of non film enthusiasts. Seemed to work quite well, and maybe even better than I expected. I'm still not entirely sure about the character of Franklin, who must be one of the most annoying characters in movie history. Intentionally so yes, but why we need to have a character like him in the movie, I'm not entirely sure. Still, the way the movie becomes more and more disturbing as it goes on just gets me every time, and in the end I could feel how disturbed the people I was watching the film were as well. So it works, and It's easy to call it one of the most disturbing horror films ever made. And it's great how Hooper does it with very little actual gore. The ambient soundtrack, the editing etc, the crazy actor performances instead doing all the work.

Oh, and I watched this from a Blu-ray with a projector. Looked really great! Would be great to have a home theater like that one day.

A film that is almost one nonstop action scene, with hardly any story at all. As for the action, it's really good. Sometimes there could be a bit more variation in the fights, but mostly it's all very stylish, violent and entertaining. A nice film, just don't watch it expecting to find a story.

Rewatch - no changes to rating

A rewatch very soon after I saw it the first time, which is something I usually try to avoid. I wanted to show this to my brother so I didn't mind, and I did enjoy the movie this time as well despite it being still very fresh in my memory.

This supernatural crime film with horror elements is an extremely silly one, but at the same time really entertaining for most of the film. Oh, and I watched the 1984 version of the film, which is technically not even the same film than the 1968 film, but IMDb only has a page for the original film. The 1984 version actually has lots of newly filmed scenes added and replacing the the original footage shot in 1968, propably making it a very different film than what it used to be. Shamefully, I still have to say I'm not 100% sure which of the scenes are from the original film and which are new, but I think I got most of them right this second time of watching. And I have to say it looks like most of the good stuff is from 80s, and the original film was propably fairly boring, and even the original material in this film is the most weakest part of the film. Still, the very unorthodox way of combining material from different years is quite fascinating, if sometimes very crude.

A quick example of the silliness of the film: in the beginning, we see a couple talking to each other. The man tells the woman that he loves her so much that if he ever was to die before the woman does, he would come back from beyond death to take her with him. Way to be romantic! The woman then tells that she suspects the man cheating her and that she has hired a private detective to tail him. The man doesn't seem to be surprised, or even mind this, but proceeds to kiss the woman!

In addition to the scene described before, we have lots of memorable scenes to follow, and all the silly twists and turns in the story are all lots of fun. For example the story includes Satan, black voodoo, possession by a spirit, court hearing about the possession etc. And the ending... I won't give it away, but the ending of the film is sort of pure genious in its macabre silliness, and makes me laugh and appreciate it hugely at the same time. In short, it's something you propably will never ever forget, and alone makes the film worth your time.

Youtube link to the full movie (with optional subtitles)

Ted is your typical R-rated romantic comedy. You know, the kind of film in which a couple tackles with the problems in their relationship, while we get to see lots of sexually flavored jokes. In the end, everyone learns about life and we get a happy ending, and how all this happens is quite predictable from the very start.

How this particular movie tries to do to differ from all the others is having a CGI talking walking teddy bear as a central character. So yeah, the film tries to be somewhat similar in some ways to the American indie cinema of recent years with having that kind of quirky aspect to the story. More quirkyness comes from all the pop culture references, the campy flash Flash Gordon film from 1980 at centerpiece of attention, so far as having Sam J. Jones, the original Flash Gordon, appear in the film playing himself. I did kind of like the Flash Gordon references, and the scene in which Mark Wahlberg's character flies with Flash in his fantasies, with an imitation of 1980's effects and all. But most other film and pop culture references in the film don't work too well, as they aren't really clever and are simply mentioned, as if that was enough to raise laughs, which usually isn't the case.

All in all, a very watchable film, but not much more than your typical mainstream comedy that tries to be something more, but doesn't really succeed in raising above the clichéd story arc.

This film is pretty amazing as a gimmicky stylistic experiment, preceding Blair Witch Project and other POV-films. This isn't horror though, but a lightly comedic arthouse softcore pornography drama, or something like that.

The film opens with a few shots of the protagonist, Virginia, hiding a video camera under a table. After that, the entire film is seen from point of view of the hidden camera. All the cuts in the film are hidden much like in Hitchcock's Rope: usually both of the characters in the film step out of the screen and there is a hidden cut, but once there is even a shot when the male character Marcelo hangs his coat over a chair, hiding the camera's view. Sometimes the hidden cuts don't work perfectly as some of the things on in view have moved in between takes, but it's a small quibble. There's are also some tricks with the POV idea, like Marcelo tipping the camera in a tilted angle when he notices it, so we get to watch the center dramatic scene this way, almost as a homage to filmmakers using the tilted angle in dramatic shots.

In addition to the gimmicky POV-nature of the film, there is a lot of metafictional approach as well. For example, as the film unfolds, we learn that Virginia is filming his meeting with Marcelo because she is doing it for an exam of some sort, for her studies. Virginia gets caught filming, and the couple proceed to discuss things like how eroticism and good taste don't mix in filmmaking. And indeed, it feels like the director of this film tried to prove this very thing is actually possible, by making a highly stylistic, clever, intelligent film with themes revolving around pornography, loose relationships and even one pornographic scene. And the final scene that ends the film! I won't spoil it, but it's a really really clever twist and a nice way to explain the film's full title as well as making some things in the film logical, but still not really negating everything that has happened before. Instead, it serves as a clever commentary on pornographic film industry.

I had moderately high hopes for this one, as it seemed intresting, but all of those expectations were exceeded by far. Highly recommended and deserves to be much more well known among cinephiles.

A very tiring mess of a film. Basil Rathbone, in his final role, plays a 400 year old ghost who gets a chance to redeem his soul by making a woman love him. Accompanied by his earhtly remains (a skeleton) he then tries to do this to a company of people who are trying to find a sum of stolen money in his mansion. John Carradine plays Satan.

The humor of the film mainly consists of fast forwarding the image, adding funny noices in the backround and people looking/talking in a funny way. As you propably guessed, none of this is even remotely funny. Also, expect a lot of "jokes" about Satan and his tail. And if you think that the weirdness of this film makes it at least interesting to watch, think again. All of this is so annoying and simply boring to watch that the 1 hour 46 minutes that the film lasts feels like forever.

I did kind of like the opening credits with string puppets of skeletons, ghosts and witches dancing to (go go?) music. I don't think it's quite enough to warrant an extra half a star though.

The opening credits

Edit: ok, I decided to raise the rating I gave the film by ½ a star, because of those opening credits. At least it's something memorable, and in a good sense. But trust me, that's pretty much the only part of the film not painful to watch.

An entertaining trash film about a punk biker gang terrorizing a city. The film has a weird structure in which each other scene is about punks being punks, with hardly any plot at all: robbing, raping, killing, partying etc. and then each other scene about cops doing their work, which also doesn't have anything to do with the main plot. Only when there is about half an hour of film left, these two storylines merge when the cops are sent after the punks.

The film is most entertaining when we get to see the punks being rebels, but the cop part of the film is unfortunately quite boring for most of the time. But yeah, punks with the outrageous Mad Max costumes and the leader punk Tarzan (!) are always fun to watch, even when they are just driving around the neighborhood, yelling and cheering, which they do a lot in the movie.

The most memorable scene in the film is a hilariously weird rape scene in which some of the punks rape a few women, while the others go play some instruments (drums and electric quitars) in an adjoining room, and then we are cut back and forth between the musical punks and raping punks, the music they are playing serving as the soundtrack. Also, the title theme is quite catchy, and the filmmakers obviously knew that, using the theme in every other scene with the punks in it.

The aforementioned rape scene

This parody of Tarantino-esque movies took me by surprise. It's actually quite funny, and I especially liked all the intentionally silly stuff that break the fourth wall, such as bad sets, bad back-projection (and with the same backround video twice in the film!) obviously stuffed animals in place of reals ones etc. One scene in which the movie actually stops for a while and we get to read a message about the scene being fake is kind of overdoing it though, but most of the time this parodic quirkyness works. The overdone sentimentality and dramaticness of the story is fairly funny stuff too. There are some cheap jokes that don't really work, but most of the movie was a real positive surprise for me. And I loved the french new wave parody hallucination scene with the stuffed white mountain lion talking deep stuff to Will Ferrell's character.

A very interesting melodrama with a Rashomon-preceding theme of truth and how it is different depending on who is telling the story. Acting is a little stiff, which is not surprising given it's an early sound film. Thankfully visually the film is very lively: shadows, nice camerawork and stylish editing are all used exceptionally well. I love how couple of the scenes are told twice from different perspectives when the two characters tell their story. Very ahead of it's time. A hidden masterpiece in my books.