Film Journal 2017

Eric Tsang's new career as a Korean police officer doesn't quit pan out but his spirits will not be broken even with a knife sticking out of his chest.

This is a quirky indie comedy that's also trying to be a hearty Christmas movie but the material isn't written well enough to carry the concept. You've also cast Michael Shannon, Ian McShane and Ron Perlman as warm and funny characters when the actors, while very funny, are all one step away from murdering you and every single person you know. Then you coat this all in a furry-filled story and it's just... eugh. It isn't even bad enough to be funny most of the time.

The Foreigner is written with such smarts and wit that it manages to pull off having essentially two heavy, concurrent storylines with Chan's revenge story and Brosnan's IRA-intrigue story. It's emotionally engaging and shot real smooth and clinical -like. It feels like a Michael Mann -film without the styliziation. Which is a surprisingly cool feeling.

I hate saying what I am going to say here, but it's necessary. This could be a very good movie. It is not. The key here is Emma Stone. I love her work. She's charming, physical, and can carry a film like a champ. She's the perfect pick for this part.

And yet she should be in this movie for about a third of what she is in now. Battle of the Sexes spends a lot of time showcasing the personal lives and struggles of it's two lead characters, and her sexual awakening as gay is cool stuff. It also doesn't really connect with the rest of the film. The same goes for Carell's chauvinist asshole's familial ties. As such, this is a movie with an hour of build-up to a sexual awakening that's then followed by an hour of tennis prep and subsequent match. It's really, really weird and doesn't work as a story.

There is a second, you can see it in the poster on the left too, where the movie actually kind of gets to something. It's when Carell is giving one of his many "women need to stay in the kitchen"-speeches. We see people laugh. Stone smiles in disdain. It's the sort of moment a better filmmaker might build a film upon. The people laughing at him are doing it in this "boys will be boys"-mentality, but later we see them in their homes, serious about Carell's message – a message he seems to deliver exclusively because he's sort of a doofus who has never thought about his way of presenting himself, what he's presenting or why he's doing it.

If you built a movie around this man and pivotally his failures as a functioning human being – this chauvinism, the role of the class oaf, his failed relationships, his son's disappointment in him – and most of all, his realisation about those things being the way they are because he sees his behavior mirrored back to him the way the public does in that press conference scene – it could be a great movie.

This is not that movie. It is often misguided and it's narrative shortcomings work to needlessly hide whatever ideological heart it might have once had.

I appreciate a film going straight from point A to point B but found very little else to be excited about here.

I am as done with this franchise as earpiece-linefeed -wearing Johnny Depp and "I can't´even put effort into pretending to laugh" Jeffrey Rush are. Points for decent Javier Bardem ASMR though.

All those points get deducted because of this shot. Sad.



PS. Click to see it in action as a gee-yf.

Some survival movies are built on the eventual pay-off of rescue from insurmountable odds. The Mountain Between Us is built on Kate Winslet earning a hall pass to bang Idris Elba.

That's a hell of a hall pass but whaaat

If you saw Locke and thought "I sure wish this wasn't as well written and instead of cement mixing dealt with the aftermath of a bank heist" here you go.

Rosa Salazar is a delightful and the slapstick works very well. I just hope it didn't stop at the 30-minute mark as the serious stuff is very worn-out.

It's a lot better than that quirky-smirky trailer makes you think. Good subtext about the role of race and men in rap music, charming performances and good music.

The script and actors are there. If everything happened like 10% faster the jokes would land way better most of the time.

Mark Millar continues to be an active garbage fire and I believe nothing of value will come of his work.

I would love it if Brigsby Bear did more. As it stands it's very solid and has a lot of heart but doesn't really aspire to too much. Give this thing a more thoughtful story and you'd have a classic.

It's still very good.

I had completely forgotten how great this movie is. By abandoning the traditional pacing of a three act story it becomes dynamite. The first act lasts like 80 minutes, the second act is a hot fifteen consisting of nothing but action setpieces, then the last is like 30, again consisting of little but setpieces. By spending over half of the runtime on not-actiony stuff it not only build characters but also allows for an absolutely riveting latter half when crazy visuals are on-screen non-stop.

I... I can't take this much of Vin Diesel masturbating to himself on camera. Never thought this point could come. It is incredible.

Those wacky criminals!

A white dude goes to the jungle to clamor in the fun of killing animals. In the end he realizes it's much more fun to feel a sense of kinship with the animals. Two stars.

The 4K restoration of this was dope on the big screen, but the bigger thing I got out of it was that I was able to hear the score crystal-clear for the first time. Even that ending worked and didn't feel like a jumble of previously heard sounds! Now I just wish they give this treatment to Inferno some day so I get to see that on the big screen too, seeing as how it's the better film of the two. Suspiria, while much more apt in creating an alien, hostile environment without using dialogue, far too often falls apart the second someone speaks audibly.

It has terrific music and a terrific Jeff Goldblum. It's also a very cohesive whole which can't be said of most Marvel-movies. Shave off 15 minutes from the whole and you've got it.

She sure does!

McG has made the most McG-movie of all time and it is brilliant. It's Charlie's Angels -level silly removed from any attempts at being early 00s extreme and with a pretty good comedy script. I never expected to say this of McG of all people but I am truly, deeply happy that he has found a flamboyant, loud and distinct audiovisual voice in his storytelling.

Well, this ain't no Conjuring, but for the first hour it gets fairly close and it also ain't no Annabelle or Lights Out so it's all good. The biggest detracting factor is that it's a prequel to one of the crappiest studio horrors of the decade, and it inherits some of it's problems, primarily having to bow down to the concept of this doll being possessed by a real 90s-ass horror comic -looking demon. I guess you have to show that thing, and David F. Sandberg, bless his soul, tries so hard to sell it as spooky, but it looks like the fucking Wishmaster dipped in black paint so I ain't buying. Lulu Wilson turns up the ham sandwich real good during the last half and redeems some of the aforementioned crap by doing it very well, in that way kid actors can be terrible in tense horror movies so long as their terribleness is child-like and here it sure is. That girl has eyes as big as platters when she's surprised and it's wonderfully vaudeville.

Fucking great as this hyper-American pastoral about reservation life and the state of the modern native american and it realizes it and treats itself as such as opposed to focusing on the crime mystery which is solved in a way that's almost a joke. Like the cop in the movie says, "this case is solving itself."

This teeters frustratingly close to being great so many times it's a shame they went this route with the last third. The asshole killer getting away has to aid a theme or have some purpose, and when it doesn't, and the movie has made him an actual asshole, not one you can enjoy watching the antics of (because this kid's desire to rape a lady is the start of this movie), you just feel like you wasted 90 minutes on this garbage afterwards no matter how good some moments were. There is the hint of comeuppance at the end but it doesn't cut the mustard because the assholery is of such a magnitude where you'd basically need to see him get his ding dong ripped off by a Castle Freak to make up for it.

It's better than the first. Finnish critique: www.laajakuva.com/blade-runner-2049-2017/

It's a shame I stopped using half stars because this is an exceptionally well written, smart, raunchy AF, perfectly acted comedy that has a lot to say about psychologically abusive relationships that is just brought down by the overall experience being super studio-like in terms of music and editing that I can't give it four no matter how hard I want to. It's so good it makes me angry that it's pulled off from the audiovisual side like a boring Lifetime-drama. Guess I should be glad the director of fucking Scary Movie 5 didn't fuck this up any worse.

Flanagan continues to make optimistic, upbeat and harsh horror movies with his most refined one yet.

The story in this movie is the most bag of dicks -level nonsense I've seen in ages and the way it's told is on like a two bags of dicks -level. It manages to involve you by the end but getting to that point is rough. The action feels super wobbly and the choppy editing is sometimes just used to hide cuts in "long shots" which is very obvious and breaks the flow, but both of those you kind of get used to since the movie uses them very consistently throughout. The actors in this movie are great which is real tough with some of the material!

There's hardly anything mind-blowing here but a charming cast carries it well. Wish it went a bit more Final Destination than it ends up going. The end credits song is so on the nose it makes me want to give this *.

OK

My biggest gripe with "It" is that Muschietti showcases his fantastical monsters with the same methods as he does a .5 second New Kids on the Block -gag. If the movie had scared me once - and I mean that literally - I would be willing to forgive so much more. It's made like a movie intended to go at 110% in regards to the scares but struggles to reach 40 with the way they're shot. I can see why everyone loves the projector scene - it's the one scare with a visual twist and not entirely shot center-frame.

The lack of scares or intensity just kills it. The framework built to support the horror is wonderful from casting to the perfect nostalgia. But when they don't pull off the spooks it reveals how light the narrative content of the film is. It does little honor to King's themes by opting to go with the scary scenes instead. If it had succeeded this would be the finest studio horror since Conjuring 2. It doesn't so it's... well, it's more like an Insidious 2. But it has oodles of charm with the cast, gags. It's nostalgic towards childhood the overall concept of being a child, rather than a cultural era of time despite being set in one. Can't deny the stellar craftsmanship behind all effects, it's just a shame Muschietti can't either and obsessively shoves them in our face.

A bunch of American indie comedy stars apparently wanted to make a horny adaptation of some Decameron-stories and turns out it's pretty good and earnest. The ending is heart-warming.

So, here's an example of the emotional, romanticizing old-timey countryside -paranormal thriller. Unfortunately it's very stupid and predictable. It seems fine until like the hour mark when they introduce some psycho-sexual nonsense into the mix and it just becomes porridge in movie form. The one good thing is Marton Csokas because he's basically lewdness in flesh regardless of the movie or TV-show he's in.

I'm being very loose giving this two stars but it has the perfect fake mall with a food court restaurant called HAMBURGERS so I have to.

Though this is totally fine and looks great which is rare for underwater movies, I can't help but wonder how much better this would be as a horror movie if it actually used the concept of being at the bottom of the ocean for something other than, you know, sharks and weird diver diseases.

Wrote some words in Finnish: www.laajakuva.com/rakkautta-anarkiaa-2017-ennakko-hedonistisia-kokonaisuuksia/

Wrote some words in Finnish: www.laajakuva.com/rakkautta-anarkiaa-2017-ennakko-hedonistisia-kokonaisuuksia/

Did not expect this random comedy that I'm only watching for Ilana Glazer to be the definition of a white people problems -movie but OK. Points to the one extra during the end credits who did an all-out "I can't believe this!" -face.

In this riveting new mummy action film, Tom Cruise runs away from:

- Terrorists
- Any sense of responsibility
- Sand
- Birds
- His own sense of shame
- Zombie cops
- Mr. Hyde (yes, that one)
- More sand
- Some glass that's mixed in with all that sand
- Zombie templar knights
- His humanity

In the end, he briefly runs towards a lady who was a mummy at some point.