Reviews

First you mess up the lives of millions of people through slavery and then you make sure they can never recover by just being racist, whether systemically or just personally. That's the way of the colonizing European powers.

A sign of a good movie: I get retrospective about my own actions. I teach students from all over Europe, Africa and Asia (with a random student from South America thrown in), so am I fair with them or do I harbor racist thoughts similar to many of the white characters in this movie? I would hope not, but science does say otherwise. We are racist by nature, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be better about it.

Hondo's own history has probably informed the movie quite a bit. He was born in Morocco, but his mother was from Mauritania and Hondo emigrated to France at a young age. There he found that similarly to the main character of this movie, he couldn't find work in his chosen field (as a chef), so he was "forced" into filmmaking.

Anyhow, the movie itself is a an interesting debut from an area we hardly ever see movies from. It mixes straightforward realism with a little bit of surrealism, which becomes more obvious near the end of the movie. Sometimes characters break the 4th wall on purpose, sometimes by accident, which makes this somewhat hard to immerse yourself in, as you (at least I) begin to secondguess what is deliberate and what is not. It isn't too distracting though.

While this mostly deals with racism, it does get into intersectionalism, at least to an extent, even if it wasn't really a concept back in the 60s (as far as I know). Class is also a major factor in the events, but other groups are not discussed (not that one movie needs to "fix" everything).

I did like the movie quite a bit, even if the seams are somewhat visible. The movie manages to juggle many topics without dropping any balls. The main character is portrayed as very sympathetic and you do understand his blight. It is a pity that the movie was almost lost for a time.

I found this movie on SIght & Sound's Critics' Poll of 2022. Considering the discrepancy between the popularity in that poll and the number of voters on IMDb, this has clearly made an impression on the way few people who have seen this movie.

And it is good. It is very open about the damage racism, slavery, corruption and colonization have inflicted upon the titular West Indies, but it somehow manages to do this in a kind of a fun way without the dissonance between the themes and the approach feeling in any way contrived.

You get the feeling that while this might not be the literal historical truth, it is defiinitely the spiritual historical truth. Things might not have happened exactly like this, but as a musical, you forgive that. It's close enough.

Many of the characters are more like.archetypes than actual characters, but due to the nature of the film, where the same actors play pretty much the same roles through 400 years of history, that works very much for the benefit of the film.

This is very much a movie I would hope more people would have access to.

Yes, this can be exhausting, but it also definitely has good qualities to it.

The two things I especially liked is how it doesn't forget to be humane and how the hints misdirect you, but in a good way.

First, the humane part: This is a mystery movie and in the western traditions this means that the human victims are forgotten and the whole plot is presented as a puzzle the detective is trying to figure out. This one reminds you what it's actually all about.

Second, the misdirections. When you've seen enough movies, you begin to identify the things that the moviemakers drop in the movie for you to notice when they become important. This one does that, but in an elegant diversion. I did not feel cheated, like I would in a less well constructed movie.

At the same time, the twists keep coming and they come often. It isn't hard to keep up rationally, but emotionally it's hard to keep invested in all of them. The movie does let you catch up with the ending, but there was a big stretch where I found myself not really interested in what was going on.

All in all, a pretty good watch. The story might have been better served in a miniseries, because that would let the twists simmer a bit longer to make the story more palatable.

I also do like it that we now have a better access to Chinese movies. They bring a bit different approach to stories and genres, which can be refreshing.

What do I mean by "these movies"? There's a sort of genre known as Oscar-bait. They are dramas about a multitude of subjects, which are easily approachable to the to the people voting for Oscars. Now, I'm not claiming that this movie is Oscar-bait. It sort of follows that same formula, but it is not driven by ego like true Oscar-bait. And that's what I have a soft spot for: those movies that are very personal for the people behind it, but they lack those artificial moments of pathos, which always take me out of those movies.

You know quite early where this is going. There aren't really surprises here, but that's not necessary, because it's about the characters, not the story. And sure, you don't see all the specific incidents coming or how the exactly movie gets to all the points it wants to go.

The point is that we understand the Iida character and her worldview enough to symphatize with her. The movie does fail a little in showing us how she became as jaded as she did, but you can infer that pretty well. It feels like a defense mechanism more than anything else.

Of course, there's also the history of the Skolt Sami, as well as the other Sami peoples, during the last century or so. We, as a nation, should definitely study and record everything we can about what happened to them before it's too late. The last I heard a politician speak about this, his stance was that "we are not ready yet", so he was probably protecting someone instead of being on the side of the victims of forced assimilation, which is a form of genocide our country participated in. That should not be just actively forgotten when there's still a chance to document it.

This is where the importance of art comes in. We need movies like this to remind us of these things.

The movie centers around two different characters: Bill, a man in his early 20s, who is hustling in order to maintain his family and his relationship with his two sons from different mothers, and Matho, a much young boy, who's life is spiraling due to drugs and unstable home life.

I was hesitant to like this movie at first, but Bill won me over. At first he just seemed too obtuse, but over time you learn that he just takes that role when he needs to maintain a relationship. In reality, he is a smart and affectionate young man, who might be somewhat too impulsive, when he sees opportunities, but on the other hand, he needs to make money somehow. He is no father of the year, but maybe if he could just find some calm in his life, he would be.

Matho is a simpler character. He is rebellious and while early on he isn't the leader of his little friend group, he raises to that position later. On the other hand, life keeps dealing him a bad hand over and over again even at his very young age.

For most of the film, their paths are separate and despite the relatively small community, they don't even know each other.

We see a lot of examples of the native American culture they come from. I can't really claim to understand all the metaphorical aspects of certain motifs in the movie, but at the same time the characters have also lost their connection to them, so they don't understand them either.

In many ways this feels more like coming from European tradition of film making than American, as the focus is on the characters, not the story, which is just a vehicle for us to get to know the people.

On the other hand, it's also about the wealth disparity these people experience and the repercussions of that. Crime is casual. Many of these people just do it. It's all around them. The few interactions they have with people outside of their culture are quite racist and there's a strong feeling of their people being used.

Overall, definitely worth a watch, if you are into sort of Oscar-baity dramas, but without the baggage of being real Oscar-bait (thus transcending that pseudo-genre).

Sisu is a complicated concept. In a way it is pure stoic perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, but it is important to note that it is not just determination. It is also cleverness, that manifests itself when you most need it. Sisu is finding the solution to a problem, no matter what. This movie is definitely about that. Aatami, our "hero", finds the way.

Being old enough Finn to have known many people of this generation, this isn't even that much of an embellishment.

The movie is quite simplistic. The Finnish characters don't even talk until very late into the movie (which is actually another insight into Finnish culture). You have a goldminer with gold and a company of Nazis hunting him. You can't really go wrong with this storywise. You just have to make the characters and the action interesting enough. Do they? Yes. This might me kind of mild in the age of superhero movies and the more traditional action movies copying the superhero movies, but it works. In some ways kind of refreshing to keep it all more grounded.

While this might be more meaningful to me as a Finn, I would assume that if you enjoy mid-budget action, this will be right up your alley (although, at 6 million euros, the budget was much lower than what would be considered midlevel in bigger markets).

Since most people outside of Finland probably don't know who Anna Eriksson (the director/writer/star) is, think someone on the lines of Mariah Carey just deciding that she would rather make dystopian, small budget art movies. Not only that, but she would also stick her neck out and take the main role, because she doesn't want to put anyone else into that position. I mean, she was known for her good looks and great voice, but here she is willing to degrade herself and her body.

She plays Europe, a sick woman tended to by a man, who feeds her addictions in a place she calls her catacomb where the two have ended up while running away from a war.

The catacomb is a part of a hospital of some sort run by nurses, who are, based on the descriptions at the beginning of the movie, there to run the place, because they don't want to face the reality that they no longer have any function in the world.

The nurses are interesting. They feel very alien. They perform tasks as if they don't really understand their context or function. Some of them also seem to be malfunctioning.

There isn't much in the sense of story. It's more about the mood. Everything is falling apart and no-one is willing or probably even able to do anything about it.

Now, if you are a fan of Eriksson music, this is probably not for you. This is hardcore weirdness. If you've already seen all the Lynch, Jodorowsky and the.darker Tarkovsky movies, this might be for you.

Back in mid-80s, my parents recorded this of off TV on VHS (yes, I'm old) and because we didn't have many children's movies recorded (and only three channels), me and my sisters ended up watching this quite a few times. I did remember this fondly, but when I was curious as to whether this would hold up when I tried to find it to show to my nieces. Couldn't find it when they were children, but when I finally did get my hands on it, I can now say that it does indeed hold up, although I can't really tell whether I ike it because of those childhood memories or because it's actually good. I would like to believe its the latter.

It is quite weird. The world is quite absurdly centered on the king, who has.a fragile ego and is quite quick-tempered. Everyone else is completely disposable (and he disposes of quite a few of them throughout the movie). It is absurd in other ways as well. It is a police state, but the police generally don't wield anything more dangerous than umbrellas. I do remember wondering how this world even functions or how the king ever managed to gain such power, but we can also see examples of the latter in the real world, so the older me sees that as almost a warning on what might be happening in the world right now.

Here, a.young chimney sweep in a painting falls in love with a shepherd in another painting. Things get complicated when a painting of the king also falls in love with the girl and claims his right as the king on the girl. The young pair escape with the help of the mockingbird.

The production was quite fragmented and at times you can see the seems in the animation, but its not that bad. I don't know if this is also the reason for the.uneven pacing of the story, but the kid in me doesn't really care about that either.

This feels like a quarantine movie in that it has very few characters and is only shot in very controlled location. On the other hand, this was released in very early 2021, so it's questionable whether this would have been shot during 2020 and would probably have been written and financed before the pandemic. Also, at least some of the themes are very personal to the director (at least gender non-conformity), so in that sense this does not have much to do with that event.

Anyhow, I feel like much of this movie would require an explanation, which none of you would read because of it's length, but on the other hand, I'm also probably reading many things into it from my own subjective perspective.

While I am much older than most people who are "terminally online", the combination of the pandemic and my work situation has forced me into largely living my personal life online, which probably colors my perception of the movie. This does feel like a horror movie for the generation that has been online for their whole lives and were further forced into it in the last couple of years.

While it's marketed as horror, I don't think that's the right audience for this. Sure, there are horror elements here, but it's too slow and, in some cases, too weird to appeal to that crowd. This is for that small intersection of horror and art movie fans. I would hope there's some out there, because I do think this deserves to be seen more than it has. I just don't think this is the movie for those, who are looking for shocks.

While the trailer definitely portrays a more gentle approach to the genre, the movie itself forgets this pretty much immediately. Not that the trailer hid the true colors of the movie, but it was not exactly what I was expecting, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Once upon a time someone (I forget who) explained B-movies as choosing being shocking above all else. That's this movie. There is a plot, but it is not important. What's important to the movie is that in each scene the filmmaker tried his best to find the most shocking thing he can do without being completely censored.

Because of this, the plot is flimsy, but it's up to you whether this matters at all. If you find the kind of breaking of rules, this movie does constantly, entertaining, then this is the movie for you. If not, avoid it.

... but I just can't call it good.

It has the feel of a series of skits with a common theme than a real story. Almost as if a bunch of the preceeding segments in Willems's videos had been gobbled together to form a movie.

There are good moments here and there, and I do like the main characters. Despite this, it feels like exactly what it is: a YouTuber trying to fulfill their dream of becoming a filmmaker. The history of that has not been good and while this is better than most (which isn't saying much), it isn't anything relevatory or game-changing. (Although, bonus points for Willems's parents, obviously.)

While I don't necessarily expect a comedy to be laugh out loud funny, the jokes in this one just mostly fall completely flat. Not being that funny isn't necessarily a problem, if the jokes (or just a mood) support a great story, but since that isn't the case here, the jokes mostly just work against any kind of immersion.

... and it's actually an excellent wet puppet at that.

But the film is about more than that. It does have a very topical theme as we have been learning more and more about how manipulative social media can be and how depressing seeing the seemingly perfect lives of others can be. Well, the calculated image the family is forced to maintain by the domineering matriarch might not reflect reality, or from another point of view, living a public life brings it's own burdens.

In the first act we see the mother maintaining the branding she has cultivated for the family on her blog. While shooting more material, a blackbird smashes into the room and causes plenty of chaos before Tinja, our main character, manages to catch it. While Tinja would like to set the bird free, mother just kills it instead and instructs Tinja to get rid of it. Next night, Tinja hears the cawing of the bird, which hadn't died after all and managed to get out of the compost bin. Tinja tries to help it, but can't, so she ends up mercy killing it. To her dismay, she finds an egg in a nest, which she decides to care for. As it happens, it's not just a normal egg. It begins to grow at an amazing speed before hatching into something that breaks Tinja's routine and is the cause for much mayhem.

Nothing here is subtle. You can see the ending coming miles away, but at the same time, this is a topic that needs to be talked about in the media and horror is often the right medium for discussing complicated subjects like this.

The movie feels more like an opening argument than a discussion, but it also manages to not be as simplistic as it might seem early on. The parents are more complex than expected based on the first act. Not much, mind you, but there is more going on than first meets the eye.

I'm not sure the movie quite hits the tone it wishes. There are some fairly comedic scenes, but I'm not sure the levity works in favor of the overall goals of the movie. Also, Tinja doesn't get much of a chance to be funny, so in this sense she feels somewhat out of place in her family.

Overall, I did like it, but I also felt that there is some amount of wasted potential. But the puppet is very cool.

There is a pretty simple formula here. Each episode is written based on a template. I can pretty much see it with my mind's eye: Opening (Seattle.is being cringe-y, meet the new partner, the ex-wife informs them of murder), the murder scene (including some banter with the coroner), suspect 1, suspect 2, suspect 3 (one of these includes going undercover), and the theatrical finale where the new partner (or trainee) makes their conclusion and the lieutenant comes in to tell everyone whether they were right or not.

So yeah, just fill in the blanks.

Despite this, it's fun, but what actually makes it fun is that everyone involved seems to have fun. Will Arnett is constantly hiding his face, because he can't keep his cool.

The guests are all pretty good, but Marshawn Lynch, who I did not know about before this, because American Football is not really a thing in Finland, just commits so much to the part that the whole thing should open new doors to him. (I don't know if that's what he is into.) He is just so good in this.

The mysteries aren't that great, but they are fine for the format. You have to give the guests a decent chance at getting it right. Not that it matters, becasue it's the improvisation and how the guests react to the absurd situations they are put into, that's important.

Since it took four years to reach Finnish theaters, I'm guessing this is one of those situations where the pandemic just gave new life to a movie which would have otherwise.not received much in the way of distribution.

The setup is that mankind has been immortal for a long time, but at the expense of our capability to reprocreate. When a pandemic starts to kill people en masse, there is a sudden need to replenish the population, so our hero is sent underground, among the marigan to find the one creature they could identify as having genitalia.

The marigan have been living apart from humans for a very long time and have built their society, although many of them are "wild". They don't follow the usual patterns of species, but will instead evolve in wildlly different ways.

This is the world into which our hero is plunged. He loses his body immediately and his head is placed into a robotic body, which brings its own set of difficulties.

The plot is just bad. Things just happen until the movie just ends. It almost feels like the director just didn't have the time or motivation to make the third act for the film.

Despite this, I did enjoy it. The weirdness of the world does carry the film pretty far. The monster design does remind me of something, but I'm not sure of what. Maybe some demonic beings from Hellblazer or something.

The world is claustrophobic and unfamiliar. Dangers seem to lurk everywhere, but at the same time some people have been living there for hundreds of years, so you can apparently get accustomed to it. While the world certainly is artificial, it also seems to grow like some sort of a living being. No-one seems to have any idea about how big it actually is or how things actually work. Certain people just have found themselves working on jobs, even though they might not really know why those jobs are even there.

So, all in all, if you are one of those people who want a cohesive story, this is not for you, but if you visuals and the art of stop-motion animation are your thing, this is worth checking out.

Us cityfolk have a tendency to romanticize life in the country. This movie sheds those notions immediately. Nana's grandfather shoots a pig very nonchalantly in front of children, including Nana, and burns the hair off of the body. We are told from the start that this is a harsh life.

It's a very simply executed movie. The camera is mostly just there to document Nana's life. It would be hard to feed such a young child any lines anyhow. It's actually quite unsettling. When Nana doesn't find her mother one day, she simply continues her life. I'm not a parent, but I still got this feeling of needing to protect her, but she is actually fine. On the other hand, the lack of emotional response to her mother's disappearance feels weird. Of course, she just isn't developed enough emotionally to fully understand the situation, but still I projected my desperate feeling on her.

It's actually kind of masterful and it's a pity that this movie is so pbscure. It's one of those movies that just stay with you.

This is purely an assumption on my part, but I bet the director grew up with exploitation movies. I do enjoy it when they use what they've learned from them to make something unique.

Now, as the subject line suggest, this might go a bit far for some... most people. If a movie ever needed a parental guidance page, this is it. There's extreme sex, drugs, a lot of alcohol and we are in no way protected from seeing the results of the quite horrific violence. So, beware. Oh yeah, the there's smoking. That being said, if you don't mind all of this, I think you'll enjoy this movie.

It looks great for it's budget. You sort of know where it's going at all times, but not quite. It always manages to go just a little bit further. This is exploitation, so it's all about eliciting strong reactions, but the movie manages to use those shocks to construct something very memorable and interesting.

This definitely isn't a date movie. You really need someone as dead inside as myself to enjoy this, but for those few of us, this is definitely worh seeking out.

I've been on a Netflix horror movie bender of sorts lately, so eventually I stumbled onto this. I like to watch movies from countries I haven't seen movies from before and Peru fit that nicely, so despite a horrible rating, I decided to take a look, just in the interest of seeing how Peruvians deal with the subject matter.

And they really don't do anything interesting here. It's just an exorcism movie that follows the usual tropes of the genre. It feels like a generic horror movie made to make a quick buck. I dislike this very much in general. You shouldn't Americanize your movies. Trying to compete with American's on this isn't a good idea.

The mood is definitely good and that is the most I can say for this movie. The story isn't very compelling and there is nothing really original about this. Things move quite quickly, but that doesn't seem to hamper the movie too much. Not that it serves the movie either.

I guess this is a very low recommendation for those really interested in the genre, but nothing more.

I recently purchased the Red Letter Media Archive Volume 1. It was generally... interesting, but not very good. Besides the excellent 48 hour film project Western Ore Musical, this movie is one of the hidden gems in the collection.

I can't really call it good, but I did enjoy it. It was weirdly funny. Not like LOL-funny, but funny none-the-less. The performances are actually kind of great. I especially enjoyed the guy giving the main character hell and his little character arc. The concept of the movie is pretty stupid but good fodder for a short film, where you are supposed to be more experimental with what you are doing.

All in all, don't go out of your way to see this movie, but I don't think most people would be sorry to see it. Based on the number of votes, not that many have (although, it's also possible people just don't realize there are many short films on IMDb).

Oh yeah... and I was googling for pictures of the glamor model they used as the female lead after seeing the movie.

Here's my problem with this movie: Since this is horror-comedy and done very cheaply, I keep wondering which parts were supposed to be funny and which parts were unintentionally funny. I sort of feel this is perhaps more a parody on how cheap knock-off movies come to be than those cheap knock-off movies themselves. Obviously this isn't something I should concern myself, but I do.

But hey, even though its like jazz and the "artists" are clearly enjoying themselves much more than anyone in the audience, there are good parts. Some of the jokes do actually work. Not many, but some. We know from all those Plinkett reviews and Half in the Bag that the movie makers have some unique insights on films, so perhaps if I had being more familiar with all the movies they were thinking about when making Feeding Frenzy, I would have enjoyed it more.

The real actors in the movie are pretty good, especially considering how cheaply this was probably made and the material they had to work with.

All in all, the best I can give is a very mild recommendation, but tread carefully, this is probably the kind of movie some people will enjoy immensely, perhaps in some sort of twisted "ironic" way, others will see it as a complete waste of time.

In short, this documentary gives a glimpse into the lives of snipers in the marine core. Their history is covered from the early days when the marines actually worked on sea as protection to the latest developments in the mid-90's. Several well-known snipers are covered as well as stories surrounding them.

The stories are interesting, although they've probably picked up a few extra details over the years. Still, as a sort of modern myths, the stories work very well.

My major complaint is that the document focuses all too much on American marines. There were many other famous, and actually a lot better, snipers around the world. Being a Finn, I'm somewhat familiar with our own two legends, Häyhä and Kolkka. There were also several famous snipers from the eastern Europe during WWII.

The document did offer some insight into the life of a sniper, but all in all, it didn't offer much, just tried to strenghten the myth, rather than actually tell what it is all about. It was recommended to me as research, but it really isn't usable even for that purpose, except maybe finding a few names from which to continue.

Chaplin is a cultural icon. No question about that. So what do you do? Get some old footage, both from his movies and from other sources, combine that with footage of historians and modern celebrities talking about their impressions on the man. The concept is far from original. Basically it's the same as any number of documentaries.

The movie manages to include all the important work of Chaplin in it. However, there's no information that most people with any interest on the subject wouldn't know and how many people who are not interested on the subject would watch a movie like this?

Maybe I've just seen too many of these. Of course, I appreciate and respect the work of the man, but I just don't see the point of these little documentaries anymore. Using at least just a little bit of creativity would have been nice. If I was to do a movie about an icon I love, I would at least try to do him or her justice and set the movie apart from others. It's not all bad, just kind of mediocre.