Reviews

Timo Humalojas first feature film The White Dwarf is absolutely one of the best so called "art films" that has ever been made in Finland. The Tarkovskian influence is clear, but it doesn't decrease the personal touch that Humaloja has with his film.

The White Dwarf is about the world of tomorrow. A nuclear catastrophe takes place somewhere in the North. Martin Borg is a mining-engineer who gets caught deep in the depths of a mine. The plot of the film is divided in two parts. The first part of the film is about Borg struggle up to the daylight from the deepness of the mine. The second part of the film is about his struggle against the leukemia that the catasptrophe has caused to him.

Pertti Mutanen's camera-work is brilliant, especially in the first part of the film. And Kari Heiskanen in the leading role does fine job as well.

I think this is absolutely one of the best thriller that has been made in Finland. The plot is good and so are the actors. Paavo Pentikäinen in the leading role makes his greates film-appearance ever. Martti Tschokkinen as detective makes good work as well

Too bad that this was the last feature film that Taavi Kassila has directed. I think he should make more thrillers, because he is so good at it. Petos (1988) is a proof of it and so was his first film Jousiampuja (1982).

Taavi Kassila, please go on film-making! You could be a great follower of your father.

This film is not as bad as you might think by reading the other user comments. Of course The Inside Man is not original or artistic thriller, but I think it is far more better than an average thriller. The production values are not high, so the filmmakers haven't even try to make spectacular action-scenes. And that's good. Otherwise the film could have been unintended humorous.

And I don't agreed what people say about the accents. Gösta Ekman's 'Swenglish' doesn't disturb me. Ekman is a charismatic actor and I like the way he talks. And i't's great to see him with such great stars as Hopper and Krüger. But I agreed with those who think that the role of Thomas Kallin should have played by someone else than Kåre Mölder. Rolf Lassgård would have been suitable for that part.

It was a few years ago, when I saw this film, but I remember that I liked it very much. It was a very good agent parody full of strange characters. I think that this film is almost as good as Seppo Huunonens most popular film Lampaansyöjät. Karvat is based on the same Lionel White's novel as Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou, but still I think that the Finnish adaptation is the best--maybe that's because I've always disliked Godard's artificial style to make film.

I would like to recommend this film to everyone, but Karvat is very hard to find, even in Finland...But if you have enough luck to find it, so watch it!!!

Matti Kassila is surely one of the most talented and versatile directors in the Finnish cinema. He was able to make films that are entertaining as well as films that have huge artistic quality and he was familiar with almost every genre, such as crime, comedy and drama. Tulipunainen kyyhkynen (The Scarlet Dove) is one of his great thrillers. It is based on his dream that he once saw when he was thinking about a idea of a new film. A middle-aged doctor finds out that his wife is having an affair with another man. He fallows his wife to the city and sees how she meets her lover and how they make love on an empty stadium. That's too unbearable for the doctor to watch and he starts to wander in the nocturnal city, but for some reason comes back to the stadium and finds his wife murdered. He calls the cops, but suddenly becomes the prime suspect himself.

Tulipunainen kyyhkynen is one of the few Finnish thriller that has perfectly captured all the essential film noir elements: big city by night (Helsinki), deceitful woman, crime of passion, detectives in their long overcoats, fatalism, existentialistic cinematography (black and white of course)...Tulipunainen kyyhkynen has certain impulses of Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window (especially the plot), but also the Hitchcockian references are present in the film (a wrong man accused for the crime that he didn't commit). But the film avoids to be a straight plagiarized version of any of the great Hollywood film noir thrillers. It is too original to be anything like that.

Again Kassila has found the right actors for the right roles, Tauno Palo playing the middle-aged doctor in his last film appearance, Helen Elde playing a mysterious woman, Matti Oravisto playing the lover and Risto Mäkelä playing the sarcastic police lieutenant. And we cannot forget the great and clever script written by Juha Nevalainen, one of the best screenwriter of the old Finnish Cinema.

A chance to see an Estonian film in Finland is almost non-existing, because theyare not so widely distributed in the international market. But I waslucky to see Minu Leninid, when it was shown on Finnish television in the 90s. I taped the film so I also have that great privilege to see itover and over again.

Minu Leninid is a great historical parody of a man (Alexander Kesüla) who starts to train doppelgangers for Lenin. But his truly intentions are to force aside the true Lenin, because the true Lenin is unwilling to declare the independence of Estonia. But if one of his doppelgangers would take the place of the true Lenin, so then Kesküla would have the whole Soviet Union in his hands.

The film is spoken mainly in Russian and German...and English, but some lines of Estonian can also be heard in the beginning of the film and the in the end of the film. That's good, because I've always loved multilingual films.

If you've seen this film you should also see Tulivesi from the same director (Hardi Volmer), although it might be find.

It was a few years ago, when a little movie theater in my hometown (Tampere, Finland) showed a few Estonian films on one weekend. They were all directed by Sulev Nõmmik and were subtitled in English. One of these films was Mehed ei nuta/Men don't cry, which I remember was a very funny little comedy and I really enjoyed watching it. On the same weekend they also showed two other Nõmmik's films, Noor Pensionär/Young Pensionar (1972), Siin me oleme/There we are (1979). In the latter film we can also enjoy Nõmmik's talents as an actor.

But these three films are a good reminder of how great comedy filmmaker Nõmmik was. It is so sad that his films never got wider international distribution.

This is a very excellent film from Risto Jarva, maybe even the best he has ever made, a cynical melodrama, but also containing some black humor and irony.

The film begins as some kind of a social drama of a girl, whose life is almost ruined by a scandalous magazine article written by a self-satisfied reporter, but then it turns into a strange and a masochistic love story between these two people. Realistic and unrealistic film at the same time.

This kind of passion we haven't seen in the Finnish cinema since the days of Teuvo Tulio.

Män kan inte våldtas is a great film from the Finnish director Jörn Donner. A slowly, but powerfully proceeding thriller of a woman who wants to revenge to her rapist by raping him. There are lots of scenes in this film, which don't contain dialog at all. Those are a great example of Donner's skills to tell the story with pure images. The film is very well written and the actors in leading roles (Anna Godenius, Gösta Bredefelt) are simply just magnificent.

Although the actors are mostly from Sweden and the film is totally spoken in Swedish it is still filmed in Helsinki, Finland.

I highly recommend this film to people who like intellectual thrillers.

A glass artist is having a burn out. He goes to see a psychiatrist, who tells him that he should take a leave. The glass artist jumps into his car and start cruising around the country side. He runs into different kind of phenomena of the Finnish culture, meets an odd tramp, who becomes to his friend and falls in love with a girl. In the end of the film the tramp has become rich, the glass artist and the girl are married, but the glass artist is having another burn out...

Lasisydän (Heart of Glass) is absolutely one of the greatest films that has ever been made in the Finnish cinema. It is an absurd comedy, a love story and a buddy movie at the same time. But it is a tremendous shame that this masterpiece by Matti Kassila is so little known even in Finland. But if you get a change to watch this film, so do it! You can also admire how Toivo Mäkelä is giving one of his greatest performances playing both the psychiatrist and the tramp.