When North Korea takes over the world, or at least a small city in the USA

Red Dawn (2012)

The first thing I thought when I heard about this remake was why the hell would someone remake Red Dawn (1984)? It's a cold war era propaganda wrapped with a ridiculously idiotic story. As the cold war is over you are left with the ridiculously idiotic story and unfortunately this movie doesn't even try to bring anything new to the table. Actually it just simplifies it and switches the Soviets to North Koreans, that leaves not much to go with. So the story is that one day this small town somewhere in the USA gets invaded by North Korean troops and some local teenagers start to fight back. Calling themselves the Wolverines after their local football team they start a guerilla war against an army and of course kick ass. This movie is just beyond stupid, it's like the creators of this are thinking that no one in the audience has any brain activity. Maybe their target audience are the vegetative state patients at a coma ward. At points I was actually cheering for the North Koreans for putting some of those annoying kids out of their misery. It's badly acted, most of the characters are extremely annoying, it's horribly shot with a shaky camera, it's edited by a 12 year old with ADHD, it's directed by a stunt man and like I said the story is just ridiculous. Though at points it gets so bad it becomes funny, so I did find myself laughing a few times. But in the end it's a horrible movie with a few unintentionally funny moments.
11%

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%

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.

African childcare

War Witch (2012)

Finally had the chance of seeing this as I've been wanting to see it since I missed it last year on the Helsinki International Film Festival and even more so when it grabbed an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. I must say I was moved. This is a story about Komona, played brilliantly by Rachel Mwanza, a 12 year old girl living a child's life in her peaceful village. However one day the rebels attack the village kidnapping all the children as rebellion fighters and killing everyone else. Komona gets an assault rifle shoved to her hand and the first thing she's forced to do is to kill her parents. Needless to say this movie is grim. It follows Komona for 2 years as a child soldier, but it turns out she's more than that, she's also a witch who can see the ghosts of the dead, which makes the rebel leader think she's the key to victory. This movie is gripping and an extremely brutal portrayal how war effects children making them grow up faster than nature would allow. At first I was a bit puzzled about the whole ghost thing, but as the movie has almost like a documentary feel to it I understand that it needs those moments to escape from the cruel reality, otherwise it would just be too much and they fit the story very well. What I didn't understand was the romantic comedy part of this movie. I mean sure everyone needs love so I can understand that being even in middle of all this madness, but why the comedy? It just felt wrong, kind of like the movie saying don't take it too seriously, it's all fun and games. Then again as it takes quite a shocking turn after that part I guess they tried to maximize the effect of it with a bit of light hearted fun. I just think it didn't work as intended. Technically this movie was surprisingly good, it looked and sounded great at parts, and especially the documentary feel was a huge plus. I haven't seen the other contenders on the best foreign film part, but I'd say this is a very strong contender for the Oscar.

89%

I actually got a feedback asking for trailers for the movies I review. I though it's easy to watch them from the imdb link on the name, but sure I'll put a trailer with the review from now on.

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.

Battle: do we really need to see this same old crap again?

Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

I must say I really have no idea why I went to see this one. I knew I would most likely hate it and curse myself afterwards because I wasted my money on this crap, but still I went. Guess there was a part of me thinking that just maybe they would once make a good sci-fi action movie and this movie surely had some potential for it. I liked the idea that it's a war movie but the human army is just fighting alien invaders, but as so often this also was filled with utter brain numbing nonsense. I mean a movie which would follow the chaos in the eyes of a military unit would have been just fine, but first of all this movie falls for the old trap of over explaining. I mean aliens are quite fantasy in them selves, do we really need to know why they are doing what they are doing? And do we really need to get it spelled out for us? And why the hell do we always have to follow the guys who turn out to be the biggest heroes of the whole war? Bah. So basically it's a movie that follows the same script as any of it's kind, first the humans take a beating, then the common man rises and finds the weakness, they fight back and kick alien ass. Woohoo, America rules, marines are kick ass, god bless the army and all that shit... And it really didn't help that the movie looked like a stock studio movie without any finesse to it. It felt like the director had no sense of how to frame the story just slapping the camera where ever it ended up in. The acting was not great either, but then again the dialog they were given didn't surely help it. Intriguing idea fitted with a bad script told straight forward without any idea results in a bad movie.
20%

How I unleashed a Polish comedy

How I Unleashed World War II (1970)

I was recommended this movie by a friend and to be honest I was a bit worried what it will be. Though surely I was intrigued to see it, but the thing about foreign language comedies is that some of the comedy might be lost in translation if you don't understand the language. Another thing is the cultural differences, the comedy might drive from a culture that's not familiar to you and thus make you miss the point. So a Polish comedy about World War II was surely interesting, but I was worried that some, or worse yet most, of the comedy might not connect with me. Turned out my fear was for nothing, the comedy in this one was quite universal and very funny at it as well. The movie was divided into three parts, each about one hour and fifteen minutes, but as it's one big story and each part continues right where the last one left, the movie is intended as one four hour fun ride. That was yet another thing that worried me, at start I thought I'll watch one part a night at most. Well I ended up watching them all in a row in one night. So that already says something. It's a story about a Polish rifleman called Franek who probably has the worst bad good luck in the world. He starts off by falling asleep in a troop carrying train and wakes up behind the German line to see the first bombs of the war. There he's slammed into a Stalag where he eventually escapes after multiple tries only to end up as a slave worker in Austria where he escapes into Yugoslavia only to end up in trouble again. And that's just the start of it, he goes through most European countries and even Africa in the French Foreign Legion in his attempt to return home to fight the Germans. So the long run time of the movie is well justified in the variety of the adventure and even though I must say it could have been a bit shorter I certainly didn't get bored at any point. Credit from that must go to the nice feel good mood of it and Marian Kociniak who carried the movie quite well. Also I have to give some credit for the cinematography. Even though the transfer on the DVD wasn't the best, some of the scenes looked quite brilliant. Even though some of the themes and comedy was "borrowed" from movies like The Great Escape (1963), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Where Eagles Dare (1968) and such, there still were enough of quite fresh and innovative parts as well, so it's not a ripoff in any means either despite the familiar themes. It's not perfect by any means and it could have been a bit shorter, but still it was truly funny and well entertaining to make that four hours more than worth it.
85%

To see Afghanistan and die

Two highly praised documentaries about the war in Afghanistan. One American and one Danish. I decided to watch them back to back and see which is better.



Restrepo (2010)

National Geographic cameraman spent a year with U.S. soldiers in middle of the combat in Afghanistan's deadliest valley. We follow the action from the soldier's point of view as the camera is always with them, but there's also interviews cut between it filmed later in Italy. Those interviews explain the feelings and fill in what the camera didn't capture. I thought it was kind of tacky as many of the events that are described in the interviews seem more interesting than the ones captured by the camera. First thing that came to my mind when the men were introduced was that these are all just kids. But I guess that's how it is, fresh meat for the grinder. The documentary captures the modern warfare mentality quite well and all the horrors of it are well present. Weirdly enough the document didn't capture any enemies being killed, only U.S. soldiers and civilian casualties are shown. The only Taliban that's allegedly killed is only shown by a spotter who says so, even the shooter doesn't know wether he killed him or not. Kind of sad picture from the U.S. Army. But that's exactly why the whole concept of that war is seriously idiotic. I have to say I was a bit disappointed at this documentary, I read that it would be one of the best anti-war documentaries but it wasn't anything that special. It used way too often those easy routes to build drama, mostly with the interview parts, I mean if you can't capture it in the battlefield it can be left out. As there were very strong moments captured in the heat of the action, it would have worked brilliantly just with those. Now those interview parts just seem a bit too cheesy. My hat goes off for the maker of this documentary, being up there in the front line with just a camera takes some balls or some sort of a serious mental condition.
65%



Armadillo (2010)

Right from the first shots of this documentary I knew that now we're in a totally different level, this looks absolutely stunning. The documentary follows a Danish platoon for six months in their forward outpost in Afghanistan. At first it looked like it can't compete with Restrepo in intensity as the outpost wasn't in the middle of the action, but I was quite wrong. It actually captures the action and the insanity of war way better than Restrepo did. Again we follow young boys being put through the hell of war but this time the story stays with them on the moment, there are no interview inserts and that works brilliantly. What we see is absolutely devastating, the document doesn't sugar coat the horrors. For example those aerial shots you've seen in the news where missiles hit buildings on the ground, they look quite a bit more shocking when you see the people there who get hit by it. But it's not just long distance fighting, the camera is with the soldiers in the trenches when they get ambushed and when they make their first enemy kills. A scene that raised an uproar in Denmark about the behaviour of the soldiers in a situation where they kill five enemies in a ditch. Again my hat goes off for the crazy film makers who risked their lives to make this. Luckily this time they actually made something very special. It's a shocking and provoking documentary about modern warfare and the insanity of it.
86%


Both of them do serve their purpose, but Armadillo is just in a league of it's own when it comes to which one would be better. So if you can read subtitles watch the Danish one and even if you can't, I'd still recommend it.

Pasolini's view of the world

I actually had only seen 2 films by Pier Paolo Pasolini before, Teorema (1968) and Salo - 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Couldn't remember much from either of them, except that Salo was seriously fucked up and Teorema was some sort of weird drama. So I decided it's time to check some of the others as well and got the 5 movie Pier Paolo Pasolini Collection to see if there's something in there. It's not the definitive collection of his best work, just some notable ones. But it should give some idea wether the rest of the movies are worth checking out.



Mamma Roma (1962)

This is Pasolini's second feature length film. It's a drama about a middle-aged prostitute who has saved up enough money to quit her old job, get a new "proper" job, a new apartment and most of all get her son back. Well things don't of course work out as planned. This is a solid little drama with a good cast and a lot to say about the way the world was heading back then. It has a quite nihilistic feel and even though the people seem to be singing a lot, they might not be exactly feeling fine. So the basics are working quite well for this one, but unfortunately it didn't work as well as it could have done. Actually I got quite bored at times, even though this is not a long movie. That says a lot about the pacing of the movie. Solid effort none the less and surely promised more to come.
67%



The Decameron (1971)

This is the first part of Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, the other two you can see below. This one was just a mix of short stories piled together without much sense to it. Some bits of comedy and some nice criticism towards the church but mostly the movie focuses on stories were it can show some tits and asses. Nothing wrong with that, I love movies which criticize religion or politics, especially funny ones, and I like tits and asses, but the problem was the pacing. The movie manages to get utterly boring before it gets funny again. The few good moments this movie had were so far apart it's really not worth watching for those either.
36%



The Canterbury Tales (1972)

Just like the first part this also is a mix of short stories, but this time there is at least some attempt to bind them together with this man who is writing them down. Well again the criticism is very present and we get quite a lot of tits and asses. This time the comedy is a bit more present and is quite dark at times, surely a plus for that. Also there were a bit more of those good moments so it worked better than the first part. But again the pacing is off and the slow storytelling gets very boring at parts. The ending was quite hilarious with the devil pulling out stunts even goatse would be envious, but getting there was a bit too boring.
47%



Arabian Nights (1974)

The third and final part is the most complete of them all with a proper storyline behind it. It's also the easiest to watch without falling asleep. So the pacing is a bit better and the comedy is fairly ok to keep you entertained. Tits and asses pop up frequently also to keep the interest up. Far from a masterpiece but still was worth the watch. Though I think I won't be watching it again any time soon.
59%



Salo - 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

What I remembered from this movie were that there's some gay sex, people eat shit and nails and that there was some old hag telling dirty stories. Oh and lots of skin. I remembered it to be repulsive and offensive. Well it's all of the above and then some. The biggest surprise I got from watching this one again was the comedy. I really didn't remember it being any funny, but damn this is like the grimmest dark comedy ever made. It's so over the top in fascism, nihilism and shock factor that I just had to laugh at it. Simply hilarious. Under the exploitative surface it's actually a parody about fascism and basically people with power. I mean a scene with the bishop fucking a young girl with the president jumping in to fuck the bishop in the ass while the magistrate is jerking off a boy tells a lot. Sure this parody could have been told in a bit more easily approachable way but still it's quite great for what it is. Surely not for everyone, but once you get the point it gets quite hilarious.
79%


Watching these 5 movies still didn't make me a fan of Pasolini, but maybe the rest of his movies are worth checking out as well...

The funny side of war

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

I think we all have those movies which kind of grow with you. The ones you love as a kid but don't lose their effect as you grow older. This is one of those movies for me. Loved it as a kid and somehow I just never got bored of it so I watched it again every once and a while. Hadn't seen this in almost ten years so I decided to watch it again. It hadn't lost a bit of it's effect. Still one of the best action adventure war movies ever made and a genuinely funny at it to boost. The cast is stellar and the characters are nicely exaggerated to make them fun but not overly goofy. Don't really know what more to say, this is already a classic and definitely worth watching if there is actually someone out there who hasn't seen it yet.
98%

The wacky world war II

1941 (1979)

Spielberg doing a goofball comedy is something worth seeing all by itself. Sure it is kind of a flop, but there's still something in there. Loved how the casting is done in this one. You have your comedy legends like Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and John Candy playing the U.S. army, while Kurosawa's main man Toshiro Mifune and the horror icon Christopher Lee are on the opposing side. Stellar cast throughout and you can even see young Mickey Rourke in there. So the cast is not the problem, the problem is the nonsense story or the lack of it. There's tons of things going on all the time and the movie jumps around these smaller story bits trying to get everything in the mix. This creates quite a mess. Now it's not that bad as it's a goofball comedy after all and yes it's actually funny at parts, but yet would have hoped for a bit of more control on it. The comedy is quite slapstick most of the time and ranging from very poor to very good. The funny thing is how Spielberg even makes fun of his own movies in it. The beginning swimming bit with it's Jaws (1975) references was quite hilarious. All in all this was an entertaining no brainer and actually worked better this time as it did last time I saw it. So maybe there's a bit of classic somewhere in this nonsense also.
60%

A revolutionary life

I saw the first part in theatres when it came out but never saw the second one. Decided to watch them both in a row as they are kind of a one big story. Got the double edition DVD at a bargain bin, but I'll still review them as separate pieces as that's how they were originally released.



Che: Part One (2008)

Not going to take any stance on the subject matter and how accurate the movie was. There are people who praise the guy and people who say he was nothing more than a murderer, so I'll leave it to just that. So the movie is very character driven and the revolutionary war is almost just a side plot while the movie focuses on the people. That's of course a great approach for a drama, but it also creates a bit of a dilemma. As the character is portrayed as quite one dimentional, pure righteous man who does no wrong and always comes up with a solution to a problem, it tends to get a bit boring. Sure he has his weakness in the form of medical condition, asthma, but he never gets any dilemmas, he never makes a wrong decicion and never needs to face the consequences. That's a huge part of making people more human. That aside, Benicio Del Toro does an amazing job at playing the man, brilliant performance. While the main character is quite one sided, luckily some of the supporting characters are a bit more versatile and create a lot more interesting moments than the main man himself. The story is quite a usual story about a small man rising to be larger than life. Steven Soderbergh's guerilla moviemaking style fits the movie surprisingly well and the mixed styles supported the story quite well. In the end it's a somewhat solid drama which at parts strugles to keep the interest up throughout.
69%



Che: Part Two (2008)

Where the first part was quite straight forward with a very one dimentional character, this is a bit different. Things don't go as planned and the character gets a bit more depth to it. The story continues where the first one ended, after the first war we follow Che to Bolivia to another revolutionary war. Things start over and at start I got a bit scared that this would be just like the first part, but luckily it manages to bring something new to the table in form of depth in the character. The cast is again quite brilliant and the style remains the same so nothing more to add to the first part. Good continuation to the story.
81%

Helsinki International Film Festival 2010

The festival ended almost a week ago, but was a bit too busy to write it up, so here it is. Luckily this year there wasn't any mix up with the tickets so I got to see the ones I wanted.



Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008)

Didn't see this at the festival as I had already seen it on DVD before, but as it's in the festival program I'll put the review here. I really like this documentary as it's a brilliant mix of things that make you laugh and cry, mostly at the same time. The similarities to This Is Spinal Tap are very clear, though where Spinal Tap was a mockumentary this is the same thing in real life. And that's the strongest thing about this documentary as the characters are so easy to relate to you can feel their enthusiasm and pain much better than for an actor trying to portray them. I can only hope to have the same burn inside me to follow my dreams when I get 50 as these guys have. Great feel good movie and it kinda made me a fan of Anvil, not because of their music, but because of the people.
85%



Dogtooth (2009)

This one sounded so insane I had to go see it. Quite insane it sure was, certainly not your average Greek family movie. It's a story about a family whose parents are over protective to their almost adult children. The children live in a fenced area and never have any contact to the outside world, except for the son who gets sexual favours from a woman who is paid to do so by the dad. Outside influences start to sneak in and things get ugly. The acting is top notch and the characters are quite interesting to say the least. It's shot in a weird way with the camera just slapped somewhere for the most of the scene, sometimes even cropping off heads and other key parts. First it was kinda annoying, but towards the end it actually started to work great for the mood of the movie. All in all a brilliant movie, very disturbing at parts, but yet quite entertaining too. Best of the festival.
92%



Mother (2009)

Lots of mixup with this one. First they got a print with only German subtitles so they cancelled the screenings. I of course then used my ticket to another movie, but then they got an English subtitled print and had new screenings. Luckily I got it squeezed into my schedule as I was looking forward for this. Joon-ho Bong made the absolutely brilliant crime drama Memories of Murder and the surprisingly good monster movie The Host so needless to say my hopes were up for this one. It's another moody crime mystery, but this time the focus is on a mother trying to save his retarded son from prison for a murder she believes the son is innocent to. Again the pace is slow, but unfortunately where it worked brilliantly on Memories of Murder this time it tends to drag the story a bit too much and I really got a bit bored at times. This movie has it's moments and they are quite strong ones, but they are a bit too far apart so your interest kind of almost fades in between. Towards the end the movie picks up a lot of momentum and is actually very good, but unfortunately getting there takes a bit too much time. All in all better than average crime drama, but could have been in a bit more compact format.
67%



A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (2009)

Remake of the Coen brothers' Blood Simple, but this time with a Chinese setting. I really like remakes that take the story to a new setting and put some new cultural influneces in it, they are most of the time the nice breath of fresh air to the old story. This one does just that, but unfortunately it's not really a great movie. The characters are just too goofy and go over the top too much. Sure that's common in Asian movies, but for a subtle dark comedy that doesn't fit too well. Also the pace of the movie was off, at points it dragged on a bit too much and then it rushed to go slowly again. The movie looked great and some scenes worked great so it's not a total miss, but unfortunately it's not a hit either.
54%



The Illusionist (2010)

I really liked The Triplets of Belleville so I was really looking forward for this new movie from the same guys. It looked stunning as expected and the mood was perfect. It left me with a nice warm hearted feel. But unfortunately it wasn't brilliant. The story was way too short for the length of the movie and would have worked a lot better as a short movie. Was worth the watch but really didn't leave me wishing for more, so I don't think I'll give it a second try.
60%



The Temptation of St. Tony (2009)

This movie has the best first half of all the movies I saw in this years festival. Brilliantly shot moody dark comedy and lots of those "what the fuck?" moments. Unfortunately it also has the worst end half I've seen in ages. All the comedy is lost and it turns into a surreal boring nonsense that just drags on while you keep wishing it would end. Would love to give it 0 percent, but the beginning half was so brilliant so can't slam it to the ground. Still have to say that the Estonian language sounds quite funny at times.
39%



Life During Wartime (2009)

A sequel to Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse. The cast is different but the characters are the same so it makes it a bit hard to follow unless you have the other two in clear memory. So better watch them before seeing this. I didn't and it got a bit confusing at points. Liked the other two a lot and was looking forward for seeing this one too, but unfortunately this was kind of a miss. Didn't really bring anything new to the table and felt like kind of a pointless sequel. As a stand alone movie it's quite bad, as a sequel it's kind of pointless. Maybe if you watch all three in a row it would work better, but now it just didn't.
45%



(Untitled) (2009)

Wasn't planning on going to see this one, but decided to go as I had some spare time. Well not really sure was it worth it. It left me with nothing at all but still it kept me entertained through it. Some quite funny and witty remarks towards the art scene, but nothing out of the ordinary. All in all just barely worth the watch if you're into arts in any way, the rest can skip this.
42%



The Snow Queen (2010)

Another Estonian movie. The less you know about this movie the better it works. Unfortunately I read the description from the festival brochure and it pretty much told everything that happened in this movie. The mood in this one was brilliant and that mystical feel would have worked so much better had I not known what it was about. Was worth the watch and kept my interest up even though I knew the "twist".
63%



The Eclipse (2009)

At start I was kind of lost in this one as it had German subtitles and they spoke with an Irish accent, so didn't really understand at the beginning. Luckily the accent went a bit more understandable so it didn't matter. The "horror" it had was just cheap scares and really no tension building at all. So it wasn't scary enough to be a good ghost story. But it didn't have enough depth to be a good drama either. So it was just a mix of both without really being anything. But it wasn't a crappy movie by any means, it was quite entertaining and worth the watch.
60%



How I Ended This Summer (2010)

You don't see a movie with only two characters that often, so this was a nice change. It had a nice mood and it was beautifully shot with the scenery almost being another character. The tensions between the old traditional man and the young guy were quite good, though at parts the younger man seemed a bit too stupid and naive. Then again I think it was the plan from the beginning to really have those two world views colliding. At parts the movie could have been a bit faster, but the slow pace mostly worked for the good of the film. Well worth the watch and most likely will give it another watch later.
79%



Cell 211 (2009)

Oh this was a positive surprise. Wasn't planning on going to see this one but went as I had some spare time. I'm sure glad I did. One of the best prison movies I've seen in a very long time. Intense and smart movie that dodges the usual plot holes quite well and even manages to be quite thought provoking. Sure there are some smaller details that didn't really work but all in all a great movie and I'm sure to get it in my collection.
87%



The Killer Inside Me (2010)

As you probably know I love film noir so this went to my most wanted list when I saw the trailer. First of all the thing that bugged me the most, Casey Affleck. I really don't like his "acting", if you can even call it that. But being bad, he still somehow seemed to fit the role quite well and at points even seemed to give out a good performance. The mood and the story are spot on brilliant. It's also quite beautifully shot and quite entertaining, at parts even a bit shocking. Maybe the cast could have been a bit better, but the rest worked like a well oiled machine.
82%



City of Life and Death (2009)

One of the most striking war movies I've seen in a long while. And one of the best anti war movies I've ever seen. A story that needs to be told made into a great movie. Can't really say anything else. A must see for everyone. Even though I gave this 95 percent, it's not the best of the festival. Flawed ranking system I know. This is one of those movies that you need to see and you will most likely watch again in the future, so it deserves a brilliant score, but it doesn't deserve the best of the festival. The best movie of the festival is of course something that takes you completely off guard and wipes the floor with your expectations leaving you wondering what just hit you? This was predictable, you knew what to expect. It's striking and thought provoking for sure, but it's also somehow safe but not in a bad way. Any way you look at it, it's a brilliant movie about a story that needs to be told and thus a definite must see.
95%



Mr. Nobody (2009)

Closing film of the festival. Heard a lot of good from this movie so I had my hopes up a bit too much I guess as it didn't really deliver. It was a nice movie with a good mood to it, but as it tries to be a bit deeper look into the human life it really is a bit too shallow and that's where it fails. It was well made and the cast was quite ok. Some scenes were quite nicely done with a bit of camera tricks and CGI, so there was plenty to keep you entertained. But in the end it really didn't bring anything new to the table. Worth watching once.
70%


All in all a great festival once again and managed to see a wide variety of movies. Will be there again next year, that's for sure.