Father and son on a vendetta

Shogun Assassin (1980)

If you know how this movie was made everything should tell you this is nothing but cheap exploitation made for the dumb audience to get a quick fix of some sword swinging action. Robert Houston got the idea to re-cut two movies from the Lone Wolf and Cub series into one short action filled romp. Namely these two Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972) and Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972) with a tiny bit from the third one as well. All that dubbed into English and with a new swinging soundtrack. So it doesn't sound good on paper, but even in fear of getting some mortal enemies from the fans of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, this is better than the first two parts together. First of all this movie gets the setting up of the story done in a fast and effective way, unlike the original series where it tends to drag on for way too long. Second this movie adds a whole new dimension to the story with the narration by the Cub, which of course is done to explain some of the missing parts, but it actually works wonders for the depth of the characters. And the dubbing, it's one of the best I've seen in any movie dubbed from one language to another. Apparently they used deaf people to read the lips and try to guess what they were saying and then basing the dialog into words that fit the story and the mouth movements. Quite ingenious if you ask me and it works brilliantly. Now most of you who know me and my hate towards remakes and cheap copies are probably wondering how the hell can I like a movie like this which takes a piece of classic cinema art and "destroys" it. Well I see it as a remix, just like in music, most of the time they are not exactly great, but sometimes they can be even better than the original and this is one of those.

Anyway this movie tells the story of Shogun's decapitator, Lone Wolf, who with his son, Cub, seeks revenge on the Shogun who murdered his wife. The Shogun uses all his power to send out ninjas, warriors and assassins to stop the Lone Wolf, but a great samurai warrior with a vengeance on his mind is not stopped so easily. The story is very simple, but there's surprisingly much depth to the characters, mostly because there was so much material to go with I guess it was relatively easy to build strong characters out of those. There's no shortage of action and the body count goes absolutely crazy towards the end. But still there's drama and tragedy behind the showers of blood and decapitated heads. The movie is simply beautifully shot, some of the frames are works of art worth placing on your wall. Too bad the Brittish DVD I watched was from a print that had seen it's better days. There are also a few scenes that are just pure brilliance on the psychological side as well, for example the warming up scene after escaping the burning boat. And call me crazy, but I like the rather simple soundtrack too. Actually the only thing I don't like about this movie is that it credits only Robert Houston as a director while ignoring Kenji Misumi who directed the original movies. Sure Houston cut this version, but still some credit to Misumi who made the amazing source material would be welcome. Anyway I really like this movie and even though I've seen it many times by now it still works wonders. That's a sign of a true classic.
91%

This movie just might possess you

Possession (1981)

This is not an easy movie as it plays on your deeper emotions rather than your rational thinking. So if you won't let yourself go with it, you will only get utter nonsense out of it. It starts out as a family drama where the marriage of Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna (Isabelle Adjani) seems to be over. It follows Mark as he struggles to cope with the new life without his wife, it seems that he's slowly starting to lose his mind. But then the movie turns to a surrealistic horror story which builds the crazy plot towards the surprisingly action packed cathartic ending. All the while you are constantly wondering what the hell am I watching here. But the beauty is that it's intriguing, you don't care that the plot makes not much sense or that the acting is at points extremely over the top and even corny. It's shot quite brilliantly and the music fits the mood nicely. Both of the lead characters do a great job at their parts, even though, and partly because, there is so much deliberate over acting. And the supporting cast is not one bit worse. This movie is definitely not for everyone and the first time I saw it I just found it silly, had a few laughs about how bad it was but nothing else. On the second time it scared the hell out of me and on this third time I was surprisinly moved by it. That right there is an indication of a brilliant movie when you can experience it multiple times with completely different feelings. Now there are some things I don't find working in this movie, but to be honest I guess I just haven't figured them out yet, maybe next time they won't bother me at all. This movie has surely grown on me and I think it will grow even further the next time I watch it somewhere in the future, so I will leave the scoring of it a tiny bit of room to grow as well.
95%

A misunderstood satire

Showgirls (1995)

Well the story is about a girl called Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) coming to Vegas with nothing more than the clothes she's wearing and a passion to become a show dancer. She meets Molly (Gina Ravera) who helps her out with a place to stay until she can get her dancing career going. Soon enough she's competing for a spot in a show with the biggest star of the business Cristal (Gina Gershon). Then of course money and greed step in and things go wrong. Simple and even stupid story, but yet so familiar from quite a many Hollywood fame and fortune movies, this is just told with a bit more exploitation. This movie rocked the Razzie's in it's days with 13 nominations and 7 wins, but what made it even better was that Paul Verhoeven himself actually showed up to receive the awards for worst movie and worst director. And that's something special right there. It also failed miserably on the box office, even though it later became the highest grossing NC-17 movie of all time. But this movie was a huge success on home video, reeling in more than 100 million dollars, that's pretty clear indication that people rather watch "porn" at home and not at the theaters, even if it's a satire wrapped in softcore sex like this one.

But that's not all this movie is, it's actually a lot more. Even though there's no goofball comedy or witty jokes, this movie is a comedy. It's a satire about the roles of women in many Hollywood movies, the fact that it's done in an exploitative manner is probably why many people seem to miss that point. After all most Hollywood movies are male made male fantasies, they are just politically correctly covered in less exploitative themes. So when this movie hides nothing and couldn't care less about being politically correct it's misunderstood, either intentionally or unintentionally. Those who intentionally misunderstand it see that this could just as well be any other movie out there where a woman is trying to earn a living, just replace the usual romance and comedy with sex and drama and that scares them. Those who unintentionally misunderstand it just can't see the big picture behind the tits and asses. The big picture of course is that satirically every woman in this movie who thrives for success is nothing more than a sexual object for men and advance through their career by deceiving other women. Sure many people see that as a flaw in the character development, but it's the ending which really ties the satire together. I won't give out any details even though you can't really spoil a movie like this. When the movie ends with it's themes of empowerment of women it's just pure comedy brilliance. It's of course tragic as it makes you realize how similar many other woman characters in other Hollywood movies are, but still you have to admit it's also funny as hell.

The acting is from bad to worse most of the time, though funnily enough the black actors and actresses gave out by far the best performances. I'm willing to bet my money on that being deliberate as many from this cast can do and has done a whole lot better. And that's just another indication of this being a satire. My only complaint is the running time, at a bit over two hours this is on the edge of becoming boring at times, but luckily there's plenty of eye candy to balance out those few moments when the comedy stalls. This movie is pure camp brilliance and a great satire, though obviously hugely misunderstood.

90%

Probably the best war adventure ever made

Where Eagles Dare (1968)

This has been one of my favorites for about as long as I've watched movies. It's brobably the best war adventure ever made and a movie I find myself comparing others of it's kind against. And as I'm a fan of Alistair MacLean's novels and as the screenplay of this was written by him, there's not much to not love about this. Now there of course are problems with this one, it's not exactly historically accurate and it does have some believability issues as it's quite a bit over the top in terms of heroistic action. So if those are things you can't get over, I'd suggest looking into other war movies, but if those are something you can live with then this is one hell of an action packed adventure. The story is intriguing to say the least, it has a fair share of twists and manages to pull out surprises even to the last minutes. Now sure it's a bit far fetched and some of the twists are borderline ridiculous, but yet it's an exciting thrill ride. Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood are tough, so tough infact that they could take down the whole Nazi army by themselves and funnily enough that has never bothered me, I belive they actually could be so tough. That boosted with great music and brilliant cinematography makes this an unbelievably magnificent movie.

99%

A little giallo gem

 The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)

Well if the last six movies from the Shameless collection were not that great, this movie pretty much makes up for all of them. This movie by Sergio Martino is among the best giallos I've seen. Life is not easy for Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech), she is troubled by nightmares of her violent ex-lover Jean (Ivan Rassimov) and one day Jean returns to haunt her. While her husband Neil (Alberto de Mendoza) seems to never be around a lover, George (George Hilton), steps into her life, but when Neil returns things become even more complicated. Amongst this mess of relationships there is a serial killer on the loose and it seems the killer is also after Jean. Sure as in many giallos the story isn't this movie's strongest point, but in this one it's surprisingly intriguing. That even despite the multiple twists at the end which almost turned into comedy in their out of the blue way of pulling the rug under the feet of the viewer. But like in most giallos, the style and atmosphere make up for what the story might be lacking. The cinematography in this one is pure brilliance and very diverse, even amongst other giallos. That in addition of the great music by Nora Orlandi, which was a surprisingly strong effort from her, makes this one a true beauty. And then there's Edwige Fenech. Probably the best giallo actress in the whole genre and certainly the most pleasing for the eyes. The rest of the cast wasn't bad either and somewhat surprisingly for the genre there were even some great performances in this one. For every giallo fan this is a must see as it's one of the best in the genre.
98%

Those grumpy old men

Grumpy Old Men (1993)

This is one of my all time favorite comedies and I find myself revisiting it from time to time as I did again today. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau appeared in 10 movies together and I think this is the best of that lot. These two grumpy old men have had a grudge for over 50 years with each other and one day when a woman called Ariel (Ann-Margret) moves next door things escalate to an all out war between them. Sure this movie follows quite common paths and is even predictable, but it doesn't matter at all as it's pure magic. I can't think of a better comedy duo than Lemmon and Matthau and seeing them going at each other like this is something absolutely hilarious. Now I know this movie might not be for everyone, but for me these grumpy old men arguing are simply brilliant. Time hasn't been kind to the movie, but still I found myself laughing like the first time I saw it. The predictable plot and some of the nowadays cliched jokes don't matter much as this is pure warm hearted entertainment.

92%

Grumpier Old Men (1995)

Of course there had to be a sequel for the brilliant first part, but luckily this time it's not bad at all. Despite the story taking a few unneeded turns which kind of drag the movie along, this comes close to the original. This time Sophia Loren plays the woman who starts a chain of events which lead to the peace between the grumpy old men being broken and it's all out war again. Again the predictable plot troubled a bit, but then again I guess I could watch Lemmon and Matthau going at each other without any plot at all, they are just so hilarious. This is a great sequel especially if you like the first part as it's basically more of the same.

79%

The filmography of Quentin Tarantino

As these were not here yet and since I just watched most of them once again, I'll write my thoughts about them here briefly. Sorry about the short reviews on some of them, but really if a movie is perfect there's not much else to add to it. I'll only include the movies directed by Tarantino, even though many of his scripts directed by others are considered as his movies. Maybe one day I'll revisit those as well. You can find my review of Django Unchained here.













Reservoir Dogs (1992)

This wasn't the first Tarantino movie I ever saw, actually I didn't even know about it's existence before I saw the one below. But after that I stormed every video rental shop in the city until I found this. I remember once I finally saw it I was actually disappointed, I mean I still thought it was a good movie, but as I was expecting another Pulp Fiction, I was let down a bit. That of course has changed since then and nowadays I think this is a brilliant masterpiece. Not only is this the best "heist" movie ever made but it's also one of the best crime movies ever made. Can't really say anything about it that hasn't been said a million times, so I'll just say it's a brilliant movie and I'd rank it as Tarantino's third best film.
98%













Pulp Fiction (1994)

I still remember when I first saw this at the theaters, something I guess I'll remember for the rest of my life. I saw it at this crappy small basement theater because I was 17 at the time and the movie had an age limit of 18, but they were cool enough in that theater to not care so much. So me and my date who was a year younger got in without any problems, even though they generally were quite strict about those age limits even back then. Now that I think of it and starting to feel all nostalgic I shouldn't call the theater crappy, I actually wish there still was theaters like that today. They had character and their own feel to them, unlike these multiplexes today. Anyway the reason why I remember it so clearly is because I was totally blown away by the movie. It was something I had never seen before and didn't even think that there could be movies like this. This was one of those movies that changed me in a way. For better or worse that I don't know, but ever since I saw it I've sought out more of these 70's exploitation movies. Seeing this movie today I found some scenes not working as well as back then, like that foot massage discussion seemed to be surprisingly dragging and uninteresting. Then again I still think the second half of this movie is probably the best comedy ever made, so it balances it out more than well. Pretty much a perfect movie, Tarantino's best and one of my all time favourites.
100%













Four Rooms (1995)

For this one I'll give a proper review as this seems to be the one most people haven't seen from Tarantino's filmography. Then again this is only one fourth of a Tarantino movie, but still I think it belongs to this list as there's a clear segment and story of the movie which he wrote and directed. The problem with these kinds of movies is the difference between the makers, which usually makes the movie rather uneven. And that certainly was the problem with this one as well. There was an attempt to glue the stories together with Ted the Bellhop (Tim Roth), but unfortunately that was one of the weakest parts of this movie. Tim Roth has never done a worse performance, so much over acting and his character is all over the place all the time. Might be partly the fault of the four different directors, but still it's a weak effort. Anyway this movie has a very bad start as the first story by Allison Anders is just plain crap and even though it's only 15 minutes or so it's still way too long to give any hope for the rest of the movie. The second story by Alexandre Rockwell worked a bit better, though as the bar was set so low by the first one it wasn't much of an effort. Again bad acting and a useless story, though not as painful to watch as the first one. The third story by Robert Rodriguez is where the movie finally gets going and there's some actually funny moments. Antonio Banderas was also very strong, pulling out the best performance of the whole movie. This third story was the strongest one in the movie, apart from the ending of the fourth. Then the fourth story by Quentin Tarantino, it's actually quite a weak story as the basic idea of it is copied from Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Then again that's not the real problem as the idea is what sets up the absolutely drop dead hilarious ending of the movie, it's just the 20 or so minutes leading to it. The dialogue, even though it's nicely flowing as you'd expect from Tarantino, is just plain boring most of the time. Luckily the ending saves a lot, but still it felt like Tarantino didn't really put that much of an effort for this. All in all the movie is not good, with one great episode, one good episode, one bad episode and one just shit, it's way too uneven and mostly badly acted. It's actually a shame as replacing the first two episodes with better stories and better storytellers and someone focusing on directing Tim Roth this would have been a great movie.
45%













Jackie Brown (1997)

Before this movie came out I had become a fan of the 70's exploitation flicks and Pam Grier was one of my favourite actresses, with Coffy (1973) as one of my all-time favourite movies. So expectations were high as always and this one surely delivered. This movie is a bit of an oddity in Tarantino's filmography as it's his only adapted screenplay and it's told in quite a linear format. But that actually only adds to the beauty of this movie. I haven't read the book by Elmore Leonard so can't say for sure how good the adaptation is, but as a stand alone movie this is absolutely perfect. This one probably has the best mood of all of his movies and the best soundtrack to boost it. Tarantino's second best movie.
99%













Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)












Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

I'll put these two together as that's the way they were meant to be, one four hour action extravaganza. I was really blown away by these when I first saw them, but I must say these are the ones I have most seldom revisited out of Tarantino's works. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be amazing, it's just that four hours is a long running time for a movie no matter how great it is. So my only gripe with these is the length, even though watching them again I really can't think of a single scene worth leaving out. It's very hard to place brilliant movies in any order but I'd say this is Tarantino's fifth best film.
95%













Death Proof (2007)

Tarantino's take on a slasher, though this time the usual knife is replaced with a car. The cast is great as always, even though it's a Kurt Russell show. The biggest problem of this movie is that Tarantino kind of forgets that slashers need to have people dying on them, not just chatting along. Sure when the killing starts it's brilliant, but really there's too much talking and not enough action for a grindhouse movie. Tarantino's worst, but still a good movie none the less.
75%













Inglourious Basterds (2009)

The absolutely brilliant cast carries this hilarious movie with maybe Brad Pitt's best performance ever to boost it. The thing that troubles me with this one is the continuity errors, there's way too many of them and even multiple times in one scene. I don't usually complain about things like that and I've seen plenty in Tarantino's other movies as well, but for some reason I keep spotting way too many of them in this one. But that's small details as this is Tarantino's fourth best movie.
97%

Sorry about the short reviews, but really long praising posts are rather boring to read and well I kind of expect most people have already seen these movies.

Vampires indeed are a laughing matter

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

This is one of the finest horror comedies ever made and even though I already know all the best jokes by heart I still find myself revisiting this from time to time. That means this is a true classic that has stood time very well. The plot is simple, a professor and his assistant travel to a small village in hopes to slay some vampires and they end up in a heap of trouble. It's very straight forward even though it does have quite a few twists in it. And that's actually one part which makes this movie so great, it works as fun brainless entertainment but on the other hand it also has some very clever twists in it as well. Then there's the comedy and what a brilliant mix of goofball and witty it is. This movie looks simply stunning and luckily the prints of which the surprisingly few DVD's that are around were made from are in a good shape. My only complaint about this movie is the music, even though it's great most of the time there are a few moments where it goes all crazy and starts to annoy me. But that I can surely live with as this is truly a classic masterpiece.

98%

An educational film like no other

Detachment (2011)

Tony Kaye is and interesting director to say the least. He made the brilliant American History X (1998) and probably the most comprehensive documentary about abortion Lake of Fire (2006). Both are must see films and critically acclaimed. But what makes him so interesting is the number of unreleased movies he has made. There's three more films he made between American History X and this latest one of his, but none of those three have been released. From what I've read the studio dumped one of the movies, called Snowblind, because Kaye filed a lawsuit against the studio. Kaye himself didn't like the fact that Edward Norton had American History X recut, so Kaye decided to withdraw his name from the film. The studio didn't agree to that so Kaye sued the studio for over 200 million. I personally can't see why would he do that as American History X is pretty much a perfect movie as it is, can't really see it could be any better with different editing. Anyway this pissed the studio off and apparently it just kept, and is still keeping, postponing the release of Snowblind. Then there's a movie called Lobby Lobster which hasn't been released, for what ever reason. And finally Black Water Transit which got stuck in the post production as Capitol Films went bankrupt. With two straight out masterpieces and a ton of mystery his filmography looks extremely interesting, so when he finally got something new released I was surely looking forward for seeing it.

This movie would have made it to my top 10 of 2012, but unfortunately I just saw it now so it didn't. I'm not going to go into the plot that much as this movie is much more than a story about a substitute teacher, it's a story about the flaws in the educational system, teenage problems, parental control and ultimately evolution of the human race in the "civilized world". That's actually only a small portion of what this movie is about, but you get the idea, it goes a lot deeper than your average school drama. What this movie portrays is sad and what it implies is just plain grim. Even though it points out all the flaws in the system and asks all the right questions, it gives no answers and that's actually a great thing. It shows that there are alternatives and a possibility of a better tomorrow, but people need to thrive for it themselves, there's no magic bus ride to it. The movie is told in three layers of time, one kind of a present day recap of the events, the actual storyline with Henry the substitute teacher in the focus of this movie and one from the childhood times of Henry. The movie moves between these time lines quite effortlessly though sometimes it clearly wants you to get mixed between them, kind of like trying to guide you wrong before revealing what's actually going on. That's another thing I loved about it was that it shows you something, but implies something other as well, kind of like letting the viewer decide how far into the darkness he/she wants to journey. The cast is simply amazing, especially Adrien Brody, but pretty much everyone in this movie gives out a stellar performance. Actually my only real complaint for this movie comes from those chalkboard animations throughout the movie, they were quite unnecessary and basically just reminded you that you are watching a movie. I guess someone thought it needs a break from the grim subject, for me they were just distracting.
94%

Best of 2012

All of these best of a year lists seem to have some sort of rules. Mostly it's the movies that premiered that year, but that would leave 2 great movies from my list as there are festivals where the lucky ones can see the movies before the actual premiere. So I've decided to make my own rules and included all of the new movies that I saw in 2012. Might be a bit unfair on the case of those 2 as they have not yet got their proper premiere here in Finland, but in many other countries they have been playing for quite a while now. Then again that also includes many 2011 movies in my list as there was no way of seeing them before 2012 here, many of those have been on the best of 2011 lists of others. So these are the 10 (well 11 actually) best new movies I saw in 2012.


 










10. Dredd (2012)

I was a huge fan of the comics as a kid and after that horrible piece of garbage starring Sylvester Stallone, I didn't have my hopes high for this new adaptation. But much to my surprise it was absolutely brilliant. Quite true to the comic it's ultra-violent with tons of dark comedy and a suiting in-your-face attitude. Once the action starts it doesn't really stop until the end credits roll, what more can you ask from an entertaining action movie?
80%













10. The Raid: Redemption (2011)

Had a huge trouble choosing between this and Dredd as they are so similar in many ways. Where Dredd has the dark comedy at it's side, this one most definitely beats it on the martial-arts aspect. They are both like insane roller coaster rides that knock the wind out of you and as there are so many similarities to them I can't really choose, both of them deserve a spot on this list.
80%













9. Skyfall (2012)

I know, what the hell does a Bond movie do in a top 10 list? Well it's the best Bond in ages, maybe even THE best Bond, though would have to revisit most of them to say that for sure as it's been a long while since I saw some of them. What I can say for sure it's the best looking Bond ever, thanks to Roger Deakins' brilliant cinematography. It also has one of the best Bond villains, played by Javier Bardem. And not only those but it's simply a great movie.
82%













8. The Artist (2011)

Leaving the theater I was thinking that this might be the best movie of the year, but then it hit me, this is a one viewing only kind of movie. Next time you see it it's not nearly as good and eventually it might prove to become quite dull. Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely magnificent and well worth watching but it's really not the kind of movie that you'd want to see from time to time until the end of the world. It kind of already gave you everything with one viewing and if you'd watch it again you'd just pay too much attention to the little details. Well at least I would, so I'll just treasure my memories from it and leave it be in the future. And like I said, those memories are well worth experiencing and then some, hence the spot on this list.
85%


 










7. Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Feel good movie of the year. Sure it goes to almost glorifying poverty and does have some issues, but you just don't care as it's such a gorgeous and magical movie. I guess what I'm most at awe about is that this is the director Benh Zeitlin’s first movie, even many veteran directors couldn't pull off this kind of a perfect blend between dreamlike fantasy and gritty realism.
87%


 










6. We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

Well I guess this is the feel bad movie of the year. Absolutely devastating story done in a way where the drama almost turns into horror. Haven't read the book so can't compare them in any way and after seeing this movie I kind of don't want to read it either. Tilda Swinton pulls out the best performance of any of the movies I saw in 2012 and she didn't even get a nomination for the Oscar.
89%













5. Killer Joe (2011)

Wow, didn't see this one coming, out of nowhere the old man William Friedkin comes around the corner and gives you a punch in the face you won't forget. By far Friedkin's best movie since 1985 and one of the best movies in 2012. In many ways this movie has the same unforgiving attitude as his last masterpiece To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) even though the movies don't have much else in common. Just about everyone in this movie gives out a stellar performance and the direction is quite brilliant. I could almost hear Friedkin saying “well you asked for it, so here it is in your face”.
90%













4. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Well I've become kind of a Wes Anderson fanboy so not a big surprise this one ended up in here. However it's a great movie, even without the fanboyism, it's a bittersweet coming of age story with real depth to it, of course not forgetting the comedy of it all.
91%


 










3. The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Second movie directed by a first timer on my top 10 list, it's definitely been a wild year and so is this movie. One of the best comedy-horror movies in ages and by far the best of the year. I know here also the fanboy factor comes into play as this movie has more references to horror movies than you can count, but it's not only that. This movie just keeps on giving, growing bigger and wilder by the minute until the end which is almost orgastic. And as far as witty and clever films come, this is in a league of it's own.
95%













2. Hugo (2011)

Martin Scorsese doing a children's movie, what has the world turned into? Well, to a lot better place I must say. This movie is pretty much cinema perfection, technically flawless, entertaining, thrilling, emotional and thought provoking. It's also like the best cinema history lesson you could think of. Sure as a filmaholic I could have wished for a bit more depth and details to it, but for the average moviegoers who haven't seen any of Melies' films it's perfect. You could say it's the movie Melies deserves and then some. This would have been by far the best movie of the year, but then I saw the one below and had the bittersweet task of dropping this to the second best of the year.
99%


 










1. Cloud Atlas (2012)

Well I guess the hell froze over and my idol mr. Hitchcock is turning in his grave, but the Wachowski's actually made a movie which is so groundbreaking it deserves my utmost respect. Not only is this movie the best of the year, it's the best of the decade and one which should set the standard for the upcoming “Hollywood spectacles”. Now most of you might think I'm crazy as there are problems with this movie, it has some big plot holes, it's a bit uneven, it could be a bit shorter, it's overly melodramatic, it borders cheesy at times and even the messages the movie delivers are a bit too obvious. Also the cast is not exactly brilliant, I mean most of them are great, but for example Tom Hanks was Tom Hanks on most of his characters. But all of that is nonessential as this movie does what most of the big Hollywood movies try to do, appeal to everyone, and does it brilliantly. It has something for everyone mixed in to the script like most of the big films nowadays, but the trick is that it's all essential for the bigger picture. Now, there have of course been movies which blend and bend the genre boundaries. There have been movies which have multiple intercutting story lines. There have been movies where the actors play multiple roles. But I have never seen a movie which has all of the above and the separate story lines not only support each other, they also build each other and together build a master story line which turns out to be quite an experience. So the parts you don't usually really care for are so much easier to take as they all together create something larger than what I've used to seeing in the cinema lately. It's like they took the whole conventional cinema apart like Lego blocks and built something fresh and inspiring out of those pieces. I must say that Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski's have some balls to pull off this kind of movie, even though one of them is missing his/hers nowadays (ye bad pun I know, sorry). It's not easy to make a movie that in a conventional sense should fall apart and actually make it work. The art of cinema needs movies like this to keep it evolving, it's not perfect by any means, but someone will come along and take the ideas of this movie and move them closer towards perfection. For that reason alone this movie is nothing short of a masterpiece.
100%


That's the list for 2012. I know the Finns have to wait for a few more months to see Cloud Atlas but I had to put it in as well, but hey, at least there's something to look forward in 2013. I of course haven't seen all of the movies released in 2012, but I think I've covered most of them and especially the most interesting ones. Lots of great movies got left outside the list, but 10 is such a small number and it wasn't that hard to choose those in the end. It's been a surprisingly good year in movies in 2012 and I'm surely looking forward for 2013 as there's some very promising movies coming. Lets hope I can keep this blog a bit more active this year...

Walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything

Sin City (2005)

When I first saw this I loved it to death, but as time has passed and I hadn't seen it in about 4 years, I decided to watch it again. Well I still loved the ultra-noir style of it, even though this time I noticed a couple of shots that didn't really fit the mood that well. I love the comics and I must say this is the best adaptation possible. The visual style is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a live action movie adaptation of the book. Can't say the same about the music, then again as comic books don't have soundtracks, it's all in what you personally prefer. I always imagined a jazzy soundtrack to it, but the one it has wasn't that bad either. The cast is stellar and mostly fit the characters brilliantly. Though I thought that Clive Owen didn't really match Dwight from the comic, he was a bit too emotional for the role, but luckily he is a good actor so it wasn't that big of a deal as he manages to pull off a good performance. The stories aren't the best of the comics, but they mix together nicely so I can understand why they chose these. Marv's story steals the show as he is by far the most entertaining character of the comics and Mickey Rourke does a brilliant job at the role. In fact that story steals the show so much it makes the other stories seem a lot weaker than they really are. And that kind of makes the movie uneven at times. But then again as the pace is fast non stop thrill ride you won't get bored for a second. It didn't work as well this time as it did before but still it's one of the best comic book adaptations and a brilliant movie in itself.
90%

The filmography of Michael Bay

I was thinking which director's filmography I should go through next and at first I thought I'd take some other master of the art out of the best of the best. But then I thought it's not good to just focus on the brilliant directors as watching a masterpiece after a masterpiece tends to raise the bar too high for everyone else. So that's why I decided to take a look at Michael Bay. The man who is associated with explosive hyper active action, racist type casting without any character development and idolizing Americana. Not forgetting helicopters flying slow motion in the sunset, the light streaks and flares to spice up dull conversations or the camera that just doesn't stand still for a second. I must say I have a hate/love relationship towards the man. At best he does properly funny action movies which are very entertaining, but at the same time he has no idea how to tell a good story or build drama or characters for that matter. Even the action has been bad in his later films where it's just a CGI mess with no sense of what's going on. But I must say they are still fun, intentionally or not. His commercial and music video background shines through his movies, and that's what they basically are, a mix of commercial product placement and music video. So for what ever it's worth here's Michael Bay's filmography.



Bad Boys (1995)

His first movie actually already has everything he became famous for. There's the sunset, the low flying helicopter, no character development, product placement, light streaks and big explosions. The story is simple crap and surprisingly even Bay himself has said that he didn't like the script. But that's not the point in this movie, it's the action and the comedy. Which it has plenty of both. The chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is quite great and they actually put up a buddy act that's one of the better ones I've ever seen. And that's the real driving force of this movie, without it this would be just another crappy B-action flick. Speaking about the action, it's nice to see that at start Bay didn't have his hyper active shooting style and the action actually makes sense on screen. So yes the action worked quite well also. What didn't work in addition to the thin story was the character development. Or the lack of it, there is absolutely none. Luckily the characters are so strong to begin with that you really don't need it that much, but that did leave the characters way too one dimentional to bring any drama into the action. The main duo is certainly great and Joe Pantoliano and Tcheky Karyo were quite ok as well. But the damsel in distress, Tea Leoni, was completely useless, her role was basically to look good. It's actually hilarious in the end where she's inserted in all those slow motion shots where the two cops walk with their guns drawn. Just what's her purpose there? Well that gave me laughs, even though I guess it wasn't intended that way. Despite it's quite serious flaws, it's still an entertaining and especially fun action movie. So it does what it's supposed to do even though it doesn't give you anything extra.
66%



The Rock (1996)

Say what you will but this is one of the best action movies ever made. Having said that, this movie is also the movie where Bay first introduced his frantic editing style with most of the shots not more than 2 seconds long and rarely visiting the same angle twice. Something I've later started to hate from the bottom of my heart. But for some reason this is one of the very few movies where it actually doesn't matter at all. This movie is just tons of fun. The overly cheesy patriotism of USA turns into comedy and supports the movie as an extra comic punch very nicely. And believe it or not I really like the story behind all the explosions. I don't mean the story of a lab rat and an old fart fighting a team of highly trained marines, that's pure comedy, but the driving force behind the characters. The bad guy is actually a good guy with a noble cause but with bad means for it, the old Brittish agent wrongfully imprisoned for most of his life and even the lab rat were all genuinely interesting characters. Something you can rarely say in a movie like this. The casting is one of the best of it's kind, Ed Harris, Sean Connery, David Morse and even Nicolas Cage back in the days when he at least still tried to put some effort into acting. Add to those the old legends like John Spencer and Philip Baker Hall and of course my favourite hero actor from the 80's, Michael Biehn, and you have a stellar casting. Another thing that I absolutely love about this movie is the soundtrack, Hans Zimmer's best by far and one of the best I've ever heard. Pure brilliance every note of it. The movie has some idiotic moments that are not saved even by the comedy, but to tell you the truth I can't remember them even though I've seen this movie about 10 times already. That's saying something about the entertainment values. And even though this movie kind of populised the highly annoying fast cutting in action movies, I still can't stop liking this movie, it just works.
98%



Armageddon (1998)

So after making one of the best action movies of the 90's, Bay decided to make a movie about rednecks saving the world. I could write a novel on how hideously horrible this movie is, but to be honest it stinks so much that I don't want to waste my time and energy on it too much. First of all the whole concept of the movie that astronauts, some of the world's smartest and most technically trained men, couldn't drill one god damn hole in the ground is just silly beyond belief. But no, rednecks are the guys who can drill anything, drilling holes is an art after all, so they rather send them in space. The rednecks are of course stereotypes with no depth at all to them, you have your over protective father, reckless hero type, a cowboy, a divorced father with a gambling problem, a sex addict, a dumb fatso who lives with his mother and a big black man right from the days of slavery. It actually made me angry how insulting this movie is towards people, if Bay's world would be the world we live in, then please just let the asteroid wipe us all out. And it's just not the rednecks and the racism towards black people and rednecks themselves, the Russian cosmonaut was just as appalling. It says a lot about the movie that Billy Bob Thornton, a great actor but quite characterized as a redneck, is cast as the director of NASA. Fuck yeh! Ok, so the characters are horrible and even though there are some good actors in this most of the cast is horrible as well. Though at most parts I blame the script and the direction, not the cast. Of course Ben Affleck is hopeless no matter what, but for example I have never seen Steve Buscemi giving out a worse performance. He's a fucking character actor, usually playing himself, so that has to be an achievement. And when I say the script is bad I mean it stinks so bad it makes dog shit smell like roses. Just one example, the pilot pulls a gun on Harry and Chick says "What are you doing with a gun in space?". Nothing wrong with that except that they have freaking miniguns on their spacebuggythingies. Oops, guess they forgot... Well it's just one example out of hundreds, but as I said I'm not going to waste more time on this shit. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen and actually now seeing it for the second time it borders on being brilliant as it really is so bad that it becomes funny. But I'm not going to give it that honour just yet. Though one thing I must still mention, for some weird reason this movie is in The Criterion Collection, a collection of historically important movies from around the world. The Rock (1996) is in there also from Michael Bay and that I can understand why as it really is one of the best action movies, but why this movie is in there I have no idea. Maybe those people at Criterion have a very twisted sense of humour or something.
1%



Pearl Harbor (2001)

Ok, this movie is supposed to be some kind of a big homage to the soldiers of the war and the people involved with it. I saw an overly long cheesy piece of crap that does nothing even remotely like that. It's just about the same as if Bay would have taken a dump on the entombed U.S.S. Arizona. The thing is that the only sympathetic characters in this movie are the Japanese, now I must say I was surprised that they weren't depicted as monsters and for that I have to give it some credit. But really everyone else seems to be one dimentional obnoxious idiots. Anyway, the movie starts off with a quick buddy establishment, we are given glimpses of the past to make us belive that Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are good friends. Well I kind of missed that part which should bind them together, at a later point it didn't matter much as they are supposed to be mad at eachother, but then they are supposed to be buddies again and it just doesn't work. The buddy bit just a small problem compared to the "romance" that is what I would imagine a 12 year old girl might write in her diary. And we have to endure this torture for the next hour or so. I can see that they are trying to go for the 40's romantic movies with that, but really why would someone even try to do that? The modern audience expects a bit more depth to the romance than they did back then. The concept of a romance hasn't changed one bit since then, but the way people buy it surely has, so I just have to wonder what the hell were they thinking with this horse shit. So then the bombs start to fall and all hell breaks lose. Luckily the sound effects were loud enough so people who fell asleep in the first hour and a half should wake up by now. But what we get is not a dramatic recreation of the attack, there's certainly no drama in it, hell there's no feeling at all. It's nothing but an explosive war masturbation by Bay. I can imagine him getting all excited like a little kid about all the shit he can blow up while making it look as "cool" as he can. What's "cool" about an attack that killed more than 3000 people? Well unfortunately after the overly long action sequence the movie isn't over and we have to endure an hour more of this utter garbage. There of course needs to be a payback from the attack so the movie can end with an up note, not that there was any tragedy in the attack in this movie in the first place, but lets just imagine there would have been for good sport. Well the two "buddies" are supposed to bind together again, but again I missed it. Was it after they beat eachother up and woke up in the car? Was it while they were killing the Japanese in the air? Was it when they got recruited for the secret mission? Or was it when Doolittle asked them if everything was ok? I mean come on, the viewer has already lost every bit of interest to these characters at this point so why even bother going further. Well they bomb some Japanese factory, Hartnett gets killed, Affleck gets the girl and USA kicks ass, woo-fucking-hoo. They conviniently "forgot" to mention the real reason why Japan surrendered, the two a-bombs. But then again as that would make the audience see how the mighty US of A answered a sucker punch with quite an inhumane act of monstrosity and you can't have that in a movie about heroes. Saddest thing of it all is that the total amount of money spent on production and promotion of this movie roughly equaled the amount of damage caused in the actual attack. They would have made a better homage by spending that money on the veterans themselves and some new history books for the schools.
2%



Bad Boys II (2003)

Bay takes another swing at the Bad Boys and of course the budget is now a lot bigger so there's tons more of everything. After the last two monstrosities this movie actually feels like a breath of fresh air and seeing it right after Pearl Harbor (2001) it feels like a masterpiece. But it's certainly not a masterpiece, it's just an ok action flick. So how does it compare to the first part? Surprisingly well actually. The chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is still there, even though it not as funny as it was in the first part. They are clearly trying too hard at parts and it goes a bit overboard, but they still have their moments and give out plenty of laughs. The story was still crap, but maybe a tad better than the first part. Not like anyone would have expected a realistic take on things anyways so it doesn't matter that much. I didn't like the main villain, played by Jordi Molla, he was lacking charisma needed for the part and thus it was kind of a miss. Rest of the cast is quite ok with some familiar faces from the first part. Even though it can't top the first part in the buddy act, the action in this one is so over the top that it's crazy. There's three huge car chases all well worth mentioning. The first one with the car transport truck is quite great with all of it's carnage. The second one is brilliant in it's macabre dark comedy with all the bodies flying around. But the third one is just insane with the Hummer crashing into everything in it's path. Total destruction and that's what I liked about this. Michael Bay likes to blow shit up and call me crazy but I enjoy watching that money burn. So this is a good sequel and even better than the first part, but still it's lacking in too many other departments except action, so it's nowhere near as good as The Rock (1996). The saddest thing is that after this movie the big budget R-rated movies pretty much died. Well they didn't die, but only a very few were made since. Which is a shame of course.
69%



The Island (2005)

After the explosive violent and surprisingly brutal fun ride Bay went back to the more easy going action. This is a story about a man and a woman who find out they are clones, made only to act as spare parts for the people who ordered them. The company which breeds the clones assures the public that the clones are vegetables without any feelings, but yet they must raise them as "normal" humans because of some nonsense about the parts not working if the person is kept sedated. The two clones escape and set on a mission to uncover the whole business of cloning people for medical purposes. I actually liked the story quite a bit, the moral dilemma of taking "spare parts" from a copy of yourself to extend your own life. Also the vanity of mankind that a woman would buy a copy of herself to give birth to a baby so she could keep her form. But that whole cloning dilemma isn't really a new idea and actually it was ripped straight from The Clonus Horror (1979). Now this movie is actually better than The Clonus Horror (1979), but as this movie doesn't mention any connection to it, it's basically the same as a stealing the idea which kind of watered it down. Anyway into the nice idea there's inserted this absolutely ridiculous action adventure plot that is just too silly to keep the interest up. Sure there's tons of action and explosions, it's Michael Bay after all, but I really got just bored watching it as there was no feeling to it. Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson try to do their best with the crappy dialog they are given and do a fairly ok job regarding the script. Rest of the cast were quite disposable. The ultra fast editing gets very boring and the movie looks like a Michael Bay movie looks, tons of light streaks, overly saturated contrasty imagery and the camera doesn't stay put for long. Quite a waste of time and money.
23%



Transformers (2007)

I loved Transformers as a kid in the 80's. I had pretty much all of the toys and the cartoon show was the high point of the week. Then of course I grew up and got other interests so Transformers was left behind. Even though I knew I wouldn't be the target group of this movie anymore, I still wanted to see it. My expectations for it were very low, mostly because of Michael Bay. And surely enough it wasn't a good movie, but much to my surprise it wasn't a bad one either. This is a movie I would have loved to death when I was 10, it has everything I loved in movies back then. But now as it takes a bit more than explosive action to get my attention I saw a bit too many things I didn't like. First of all this movie is racist. I mean if a guy like me who is whiter than white from a country like Finland can see that, then there really has to be something wrong with it. All the black people in this movie are portrayed as one dimentional stereotypes who are there just for entertainment values for the white folk so they can feel better about themselves. Even the robot, Jazz, that's clearly another black stereotype is the only one to be killed. Only black person who doesn't seem to be type cast is the soldier with the credit card, though his character's biggest moment is screaming "left cheek!" over and over again after which he disappears. Not exactly a world image you want to give to your children. That being said I still liked Bernie Mac as the used car salesman, he was simply hilarious. And in general the comedy in the movie was actually quite good. John Turturro's character was also hilarious and he did a great job with the part. Shia LaBeouf was also a nice surprise and pulled off the hero role quite well. Which can't be said about Megan Fox, sure she looks great but can't act at all. Also Jon Voight was quite bland, though the dialog given to the character wasn't helping the part one bit. Then the main thing, the robots. Well I think they looked somewhat ok. I mean I would have hoped for a bit cleaner versions of them, now they just had too much going on in details that it was hard to make sense of them. But that being said they did look a lot more realistic than the smooth cartoon or toy versions. The reason why I would have hoped for a bit cleaner versions is that they are never really introduced apart from Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. Now they just tend to blend in with each other and it makes it sometimes hard to tell them apart. And that's where one of the major problems of the movie lies, the way the action is shot. It's just one big CGI mess. There's tons of stuff going on and it's shot with a hyper active shooting style, that results in a total chaos which makes absolutely no sense at all. Sure the kids might like it, but the thing is when you have no idea who hits who and where, you really lose interest and just watch the fireworks without any idea of what you are supposed to see. And what's up with the Autobots, am I the only one who thinks everyone else but Optimus Prime were completely useless? Sure they shoot, do flips and set up a show, but mostly they just got their asses kicked while Optimus was the only one who managed to actually kill the Decepticons. This movie also features one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen, right up there with Jar Jar Binks, that little robot that just doesn't seem to die. So there are huge problems with the movie, but still I didn't get bored and had some fun with it. It even managed to raise the little kid in me as I almost cheered when we see Optimus Prime for the first time. But unfortunately in the end it's still a bad movie with some quite good moments.
42%



Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Didn't see this one when it came out, but decided to watch it now as I'm going through Michael Bay's filmography. Being a sequel to a big action movie it of course tries to top it by being even bigger. There's more robots, more army, more action, more explosions, more goofy characters, more product placement and more "Bayhem". And of course the robots are bigger, the army has bigger weapons, the explosions are bigger and the goofy characters of course are a bigger nuisance. But the movie just doesn't go bigger, it also goes smaller with tons of smaller little robot critters which are there to show how diverse their race is or some other nonsense like that. Just as I had declared that little robot in the first one as one of the most annoying characters in the history of movies, this one goes better. There's actually 3 robots that all are way more annoying than the one in the first part. There's the "twins", two robots that make you want to go and get a can of gasoline so you can burn yourself from the misery of watching them. And for fucks sake they even have goofy teeth, one with a golden tooth for that matter, what the hell does a robot do with teeth anyways? That little toy car robot is no better, even worse actually, but luckily it spends quite a bit of time in a box so we don't have to watch it. Apart from those the new robots seemed quite ok, even that old fart Jetfire who was also idiotically stereotyped, but at least he didn't make me want to go on a killing frenzy. But as before it really doesn't matter much how good the new robots were as you don't really see them, only glimpses of them spinning around while fighting. So the annoying CGI mess action continues right where it left on the first part and is actually even worse on this one. Most of the time I had no idea what was going on when shit blew up and CGI mess was spinning on the screen. I'm not a young kid with ADHD so I can't keep up with this lightning cutting pace. Then again if it was a bit slower and smoother it would bring out all the mistakes and inconsistencies of the action, so I kind of understand why they use it. But instead of covering up the mistakes, maybe they could have just properly planned them and shot them in a way that they would look good. That's Michael Bay's worst problem (well in addition of being a racist and sexist and all the other stuff), he just can't direct action. I actually watched the extras of the blu-ray i rented and there was a big segment on this huge explosion that made the Guiness book of records as the biggest explosion ever shot with live actors next to it. In the movie it's nothing special, you've watched non stop effect assault for the last 30 minutes with a hideous fast pace cutting. So when this big bang comes it looks like a nice breath of some easy action, not spectacular or huge or anything like that, only that it's nice that we actually get to watch a shot more than 2 seconds. On the extras however it looks absolutely brilliant, but in the movie it's simply lost in the "Bayhem". Not going to go into the story, it's what it is, not like you could write anything about the meaning of life in a movie about transforming robots so lets leave it to what it is, entertainment. The cast is the same and those who were good on the first one are good here as well and Megan Fox didn't learn how to act in the two years in between so nothing has changed. I must mention the huge amount of mistakes there are in the movie. It clearly was rushed to get finished as you see the cameraman's shadow on multiple occasions and that one slow motion explosion where Megan Fox goes transparent is just something hideous. Also many of the effect shots are very poor. For example when the Devastator is digging up the machine from the pyramid, the falling "stones" look like something I could do better on my own computer. I would love to bash this movie to the ground for the horrible piece of garbage it is with all of it's product placements and formulaic exploitative nature. But I still found it to be somewhat entertaining, however a good movie it surely isn't.
30%


After watching all of the Bay movies again I must say I'm more on the hate side, despite him making one of the best action movies of the 90's and two fairly good action flicks. The thing is that the shit he has also poured out smells so bad it tarnishes the glory of those few good ones. Well anyway that's something to think about when Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) comes out. I'm not going to see it in the theatre as I'm planning on keeping my promise of not watching any sequel/prequel/comicbook/cartoon/toy/remake/etc. movies in the theatre this year.