jormatuominen Reviews

Homefront (I) (2013)

Solid screenplay, tight direction and credible local color on the Homefront

[8/10 · 25 October 2018]

Homefront by Chuck Logan isn´t a well known crime novel but Sylvester Stallone obviously saw a lot of potential in it. He worked the story into a no nonsense thriller screenplay and did a real good job of it. As it is, Homefront the movie is all about making choices and taking sides as situations and allegiances shift in the fast moving scenario. This is underlined by the tight directing and some unusually competent acting for what is a pretty straightforward action thriller. Kate Bosworth and Winona Rider really shine as the seriously nasty bad bad Louisiana girls of the film. The only flaw I found in the plot is that Rachelle Lefevre is pretty much wasted as she pops up as a potential romantic interest for the main character only to disappear from the plot as it thickens. Thicken it does and as more enemies of Jason Statham´s character spiral into the Louisiana backwoods there will be surprise twists you did not see coming from long before. Unusually for a recent American film there are no plot holes. The film is shot entirely on location in small rural towns of Louisiana and early scenes in New Orleans. The filmmakers strive for realism rather than sensation and avoid the patronizing attitude and stereotypes one too often senses in Hollywood films made in this area. Having been there myself, I´d say the local color is just about right.

Henry's Crime (2010)

Clever double-plotted film about crime, love, theater and pulling it all off

[8/10 · 22 June 2018]

Henry´s Crime is a cleverly written, pleasantly old fashioned film that flirts with many genres and pulls it off with great acting. There are essentially two plots co-existing here, one about a bank heist and the other about making theatre and romance. If you really must classify this piece of work file it under black comedy, that´s pretty close. It is as if the screenwriters started to think about how to improve Chekhov´s classic play the Cherry Orchard by adding a heist subplot which eventually took the whole thing over. It is complicated but the viewer is fed with very good lines of dialogue all along the twisting and turning ride. The screenplay smells of paper with way too many unlikely encounters and incidences to be plausible, but this is a film about pulling it off, and the actors do just that. Keanu Reeves plays the wooden faced but kind hearted lead character of very few words, so he has to act with body language. Vera Farmiga has an even harder role as a cold-hearted and emotionally troubled actress harassed by the great Peter Stormare as the aggressive theatre director. James Caan is supreme as the old time confidence man pulling the strings. Bill Duke is a great sidekick as the security guard. And yes, to stress the point, they all pull it off. This is a non-violent, dialogue driven film and I can see why it would not reach the younger audience. As for people with more experience of life the film can and probably should be watched twice. I´m pretty sure I missed a lot of goodies the first time around and will watch it again as opportunity arises.

The International (I) (2009)

Revitalizing the classic political thriller genre

[9/10 · 28 May 2018]

I have watched this film at least five times and haven´t still quite gotten enough. It has everything going for it - a cast of stars, cinematic excellence and a script that walks the thin line between plausible and not quite plausible to build a lot of suspense. Shooting locations (no pun intended) include among others the Hagia Sophia and of course the now-legendary seven minute Uzi war in the Guggenheim Museum - surely this is no longer a spoiler! There are many scenes that could be from a Hitchcock film, for example the totally random appearance of a suspect and the resulting trailing to the Museum, suspense building inside the viewer´s head. Wide-eyed and unshaven, Clive Owen as the bewildered and pissed off main character seems straight out of North By Northwest. What´s more, the ghost of Orson Welles is even stronger than that of Hitch. After all Orson´s favorite theme of power corrupting mercilessly it´s users is the essence of Eric Warren Singer´s extremely well thought out script. There is a lot of dialogue and it´s all relevant and intelligent. Naomi Watts has a fairly limited female lead role, but she does it well. The film does not give any verbal hints about the relationship between the lead characters, yet it is obvious from the acting that there is or at least has been one. The lack of romantic nonsense earns an extra star for the International. Believe me, this is not that kind of film. Armin Mueller-Stahl is once again the old guy who actually knows what´s going on, a role he has done many times and he is again absolutely superb in it.

Flyboys (2006)

Important homage but mediocre film

[7/10 · 27 March 2018]

Flyboys seems to divide the audience. One party couldn´t care less about historical details and is happily entertained. The other party cares a lot about authenticity and is appalled by the filmmakers´ apparent ignorance. My point is that I´m glad the film was made at all and that it could have been far worse. As non-French and non-American I appreciate a lot that these early volunteer heroes - heroes they were - of air war are remembered at all, and my understanding is that they are largely forgotten in the U.S.A. In France, Escadrille Lafayette on the contrary still exists, operating it´s Mirage nuclear strike fighters even today from Istres AFB near Marseille. Each plane still carries on it´s tail the Sitting Bull emblem of the original American volunteer pilots. It is a heritage squadron very proud of it´s origins. The point of the film is not what they got wrong, but the many things the makers got right. OK so German planes are all wrong, but the Americans fly the correct Nieuport fighters, for a brief example. The film makes a maximum effort to convince you how unpleasant and extremely unprotected it feels to fly in a wood and canvas crate at little more than 100 mph while someone shoots at you with a very good German machine gun, to make a far more important point. For the excellent dogfights´ sake you will need to suffer a truly weak romantic subplot and a lot of conversations of little consequence. The script, the directing and the acting leave a lot to be desired, and of course the film is only inspired by and not based on true events. But until the day someone conjures up the financing to make a really great WWI aviation film, and that´ll be the day, this well-meaning but flawed effort is what we have.

Life (I) (2017)

When humans have the losing hand

[8/10 · 26 March 2018]

The morning after seeing Life I woke up thinking about the plausibility of the storyline. The more I thought the more plausible it seemed. Usually it´s the other way around with U.S. alien films, especially those of the Alien lineage. Admittedly plausibility limits creativity, but Life at least seeks a balance between the two. The film speculates how a life form discovered out there, in this case Mars, might be difficult to contain. It does this in a seriously scary way, as the scientists at the International Space Station slowly begin to understand that the organism can and will outsmart them. It felt like being in a poker game and having all your money on the table, just to realize that you can´t beat the other guy after all. Many complain that the film follows well worn paths familiar from the Alien series, which would really be hard to avoid since the whole genre was begun back in 1979 by the original Alien film. I didn´t see this as a problem, to me Life tried to put some new life into the genre, so to say. Few seem to know the 2013 sci-fi film Europa Report, about a mission to seek life in our own solar system, which takes place in a ship very similar to ISS used in Life. Science in that film was if not 100 per cent accurate at least taken seriously. It almost seems that makers of Life have seen Europa Report and thought, hey, we can make a better movie with these premises. And they did a good job.

Killing Season (2013)

Face-Off Of Two War Veterans

[7/10 · 12 February 2018]

Killing Season is not one of de Niro´s or Travoltas more memorable films, nor is it very original. The film kicks off with an American IFOR unit catching a Bosnian Serb death squad red-handed after an atrocity and summarily executing the serbs. A very late date is given in the film, October 1995, so the incident is completely imaginary as many have pointed out. I don´t see how this could possibly matter, though. This is not a film about the Bosnian war at all. This is a film about war in general, and the backdrop could be any war. The main body of the film takes place in the present and in the U.S.A. A former adversary comes to face off a troubled former American soldier after some cat and mouse play. As in the similar but much better film Shot Through The Heart (1998) both players are looking for a closure to their agonies rather than simple revenge. In that film the adversaries were snipers from the actual Bosnian war. Another related film would be the Estonian film Mandarines (2013) about the Russo-Georgian war of 2008. De Niro´s and Travolta´s characters fight it out in the woods in pretty much classic Rambo mode, but to make things more interesting they also exchange a lot of dialogue that explores their psychological traumas, similarities and differences. The pain they inflict on each other is an extension of the pain they can´t get rid of after the war. The point of the film is one to take seriously: you can´t expect to go to war and come back the same. Here it is made by world class actors in a beautiful natural forest setting. Worth watching before you go ethnic cleansing or decide to attack a foreign country.

Hours (2013)

Scary Slow Cinema One Man Show

[8/10 · 6 February 2018]

Sometimes in cinema less is more. Robert Redford showcased this in 2013´s All Is Lost and Paul Walker does in Hours filmed in the same year and of course being Walker´s final film. I would not call Hours a catastrophe film. Hurricane Katrina is over and it´s aftermath begins very early in the film. Essentially it is a very scary and eerie survival film taking place in an empty hospital where a young fathers fights for the survival of his newborn baby against, well, all and everything fate sees fit to throw at him. The beautiful city of New Orleans is just a backdrop - the film could take place in an empty space ship for all it matters. But is it as empty as Paul Walker´s character first fears and later hopes? This is slow cinema at it´s best as the task of keeping the baby alive gets harder and the anticipation of some kind of turn of events builds up over time. That´s why it´s called Hours. Yes sir, an action film it is not. At the time many reviewers seemed to think that this was some kind of a mistake or a way for the team to make a film cheaply. Well, since then writer-director Eric Heisserer wrote Arrival, so few would think that now. He knew what he was doing. So which one is the best in the one-man-against-pretty-much-the-rest-of-the-universe genre, the Martian (2016), 127 Hours (2010), Cast Away (2000), All Is Lost already mentioned or Hours? I love them all, but somehow Hours seems to stretch it´s obviously limited budget and gives more edge-of-the-seat adrenalin per buck.

In Time (2011)

Time is literally money in stylistically retro sci-fi flick

[8/10 · 15 December 2017]

Now hold on. This is supposed to be sci-fi, but instead of futuristic computer generated images what you get is cars, clothes and buildings made no later than the 1970´s or the early 1980´s at latest. The film takes place in 23rd century so what do we see here? In all likelihood this is what the writer-director Andrew Niccol had in mind. While taking place in the future, the entire film is made as if it was made way back in the past. Shot digitally it doesn´t look it. Slightly grainy look and reddish-brown, sometimes bluish coloration is just as if the whole thing had been shot in the early or mid seventies 16 or 35 mm film now aged and discolored. Same goes for editing, camera angles, the chase scenes, acting style and so on as well. The clothes, furniture and even the cups the characters drink from are from the sixties. Significantly there are no computers, no electronic devices hand-held or otherwise and no electronic displays of any kind in the film. The exceptions are the silly fluorescent remaining lifetime displays everyone has on their arms. The cars are supposedly souped-up with electrical engines but they sound more like the electrical toy cars of the sixties. Stylistically, if this was a film from the early seventies by say Kubrick of the Clockwork Orange period or Michael Crichton of the Andromeda Strain period, the only unusual aspect would be the novel basic idea of using remaining lifetime used as currency instead of money. In 2011 terms the plot may be simplistic at times but in 1971 the whole thing would have been really far out, man, cutting edge sci-fi. Obvious homage is being paid to Arthur Penn´s Bonnie and Clyde, the major film of the period about people on borrowed time. I thoroughly enjoyed my two-way time trip and the core matter of the plot, thought-provoking, utterly brutal economics of time running out, more deadly than money. A good reminder of one´s mortality, too, and that is more than most films have to offer. A satisfying film for a long-time movie freak but I do understand that it would be baffling for the uninitiated who see the dots but do not register the connections.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

Is everything planned? Really?

[9/10 · 6 December 2017]

You know how it is. When someone tragically dies, you are supposed to think that it was God's will and we do not understand his plans. Or if you like, we can't understand the big picture, but there is a meaning behind all the suffering. In the Adjustment Bureau, the protagonist has the courage to ask if it is morally acceptable to make people suffer against their will, if it is your power not to do so. Shouldn't the plan be better? This is a pretty daring question in a theological context and would easily have led the questioner to lose his life in the past. Some would call it blasphemy even today. The short stories Philip K. Dick wrote back in the 1950's are a bit dated by now but they still inspire the best in American film making just as his novels of the 1960's do. The superior being who adjusts things on the ground to comply to his plans is called the Old Man in the original story, in the film the title is more bureaucratic, so it 's not clear if we are dealing with God, an AI or some other entity. It's your call. Einstein said that God does not play dice. But in the story and the film he certainly does so as his adjustment agents keep on tweaking the odds to keep his plan going. The first time around I didn't really like the film as I was having a hard time deciding if it was a sci-fi or a religious film or simply a romantic comedy with an unusual amount of action. So I decided to give it a second chance and the film began to make much more sense. Besides asking the viewer a lot of very difficult questions the film also incorporates a mighty romance. Normally I do not go for the romantic comedy genre, but Matt Damon and Emily Blunt act the parts in a Casablanca kind of manner. It's hard to define but if you have seen the film you already know what I mean. I never knew Matt Damon could be so intense. The scene where the couple accidentally meet in a men's rest room is absolutely thrilling to watch. As far as adaptations of Philip K. Dicks groundbreaking work go, the Adjustment Bureau has to be one of the most imaginative.

Avant l'hiver (2013)

Unique plot and atmosphere for experienced viewers

[9/10 · 8 November 2017]

Director Philippe Claudel has also written the script which mixes film genres to great effect. He pulls it off with a most unlikely plot with the help of great acting work from Daniel Auteuil, Kristin Scott Thomas and the sad-eyed and lovely Leila Bekhti. This is a mystery without a crime and a romantic triangle of sorts completely without sex. That alone makes this film unwatchable for many and quite challenging for all. The main character as played by Auteuil is a surgeon of about 60 years whose life has been his work. A chance meeting, as it seems, with a lovely young woman rocks him off his tracks. Auteuil begins to doubt if his life has been meaningful at all and is drawn to the vitality of the young woman who appears to have similar traumas as he has had in his earlier life. At times the audience may be as lost as Auteuil's poor character, wondering what is going on and where on earth is Mr. Claudel taking us. The director was 51 when the film was made, and being about 60 myself I can't help thinking that this film is about aging of men and dealing with it more than anything else. Few have commented on the very difficult role of the tormented siren tempting the aging surgeon. I cannot imagine a better choice for this role than Leila Bekhti, who gives it much more credibility and much more a sense of mystery than it would have on paper. So the ninth point goes for her contribution. If you give Before the Winter Chill your full attention, it will stay on your mind and intrigue you for quite a while.

Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014)

It Gets Icier By The Minute In China's Siberia

[8/10 · 7 November 2017]

This film noir detective story with fantasy elements takes place in China's northernmost corner, Heilongjiang province, in a nondescript industrial city where the grip of winter gets colder and colder as the story progresses. You will need to pay attention, as the plot is not explained verbally and you have to notice a lot of visual cues. The characters do not talk much really, and when they do utter a sentence or two, it has nothing to do with the plot. You could almost think that the director would be Jim Jarmusch but he's not obviously. Diao Yinan has seen an Aki Kaurismäki film or two, one can tell, and it is no wonder that the film was well received by the Berlin festival crowd. It is not the kind of film Chinese audiences would love, though. This does not make BCTI any worse as a film. It has a dark and twisted, sometimes silly sense of humour. Once you get the hang of it, the plot is easy to follow yet intriguing. Who dun-it - most viewers will not have a clue but neither does the police! The People's Republic does not send it's finest this far out in the north. They also have very little to work with to be honest. Detective Zhang who is obsessed with the case has been sacked from the force for very obvious reasons including serious drinking. In addition he can't skate and he's in Heilongjiang, which you will notice is not a good thing. The film wrings a lot of atmosphere from the utterly unpleasant surroundings. Excellent actors add to it. If you enjoyed the Coen brothers' Fargo I can see no reason why you wouldn't enjoy Black Coal, Thin Ice. In the final scene, the original Chinese name of the film, Fireworks in Daylight, will be explained - sort of.

Last Love (2013)

A hard to define relationship if there ever was one

[9/10 · 19 October 2017]

There is no end in sight to curiosity about unlikely couples with decades of age difference. Well here the couple finding themselves in a very hard to define type of relationship consist of the actors Michael Caine, age 78 at the time of the filming, and the lovely and soulful Clémence Poésy, age 29 respectively. This film is quite educational for people who keep wondering what is possible and what definitely is not achievable in a relationship with almost 50 years age difference, and what a couple like this might actually talk about between them and what not. The acting is absolutely world class even in the smallest roles, let alone the lead couple who give their particular situation and the twists it will lead them to amazing credibility. The international production has resulted in many impressive shooting locations beautifully captured on film, yes real film. Both intrinsically sad and optimistic about the power of love in spite of everything, Last Love will leave you in tears but in a good way. Do yourself a favor and see it, you might learn a thing or two about life you didn't know before.

Gattaca (1997)

Sci-fi film for sure but Hitchcock would have enjoyed it, too

[8/10 · 8 October 2017]

Gattaca can be enjoyed on unusually many levels, including a very Hitchcock-like murder mystery subplot. The main focus is however sharply on the relationship of the individual and expectations of the larger society, a classic theme set in a sci-fi setting veering quite a bit in the direction of Philip K. Dick's work. Arguably you could watch the entire film just admiring the well-crafted cinematography and enjoying all the odd visual and verbal details and colors thrown in.

Now that we live in a weird era when social media helps the morons take over in many countries Gattaca seems a different film than when it was made. Surely meant to be a frightening dystopia at the time it now seems not the worst possible future at all. But utopia it is not. In Gattaca parents can and do have genetically engineered children with superior health and qualities. A blood test will reveal their future potential. This makes it easy for employers to pick out an elite work force. Some of the consequences are thoughtfully explored in the film. The main character capably portrayed by Ethan Hawke fools the system to become a space navigator - the word astronaut is not used in the film.

The one annoying element of the film are the repetitive blood tests the would-be space pilots have to pass every single day, over and over. Although part of the core plot, you find yourself thinking: please don't test him AGAIN. On with it! Gattaca is a dream for those people who go to movies to pick out holes in the plot. There are a lot of inconsistencies and contradictions but I do not really see what would be the point of rooting them all out. In this kind of film, intentional and unintentional oddities are part of the flavor, like a spice.

To me, one very memorable scene is where Hawke walks into his space ship, all dressed up in a dark suit and tie instead of a space suit and helmet. Really weird but quite intentional. Or the one where Jude Law slowly drags himself up a spiral staircase, an obvious but pleasant homage to the great Alfred Hitchcock and his Vertigo. As for acting, this future is a very cool one where emotions are not shown. The lead trio of Hawke, Thurman and Law play it very low-key and you will have to be alert to try and track what is going on in their minds. Which is where the action is in this rather slow film. As many have noted, this is a film rich in not-so-obvious detail. Watch it another time, see different things.

The Drop (2014)

Masterfully directed crime mystery

[9/10 · 17 April 2017]

Time will tell, but the Drop certainly has the makings of a crime film classic. Firstly there's the beautifully well-crafted script by the writer Dennis Lehane, this time set in Brooklyn of recent past instead of his beloved Boston. The setting is so believable you can breath it. The characters are all people of the hood just trying variously to cope with the times and circumstances. None of them a rocket scientist really, just everyday people. One of the main characters we never see, because he has gone missing probably dead years ago. Yet people keep talking about him and the viewer realizes that this past mystery may be the key to what's going on. Normally there would be a flashback somewhere to show what happened to the guy, but this film uses no such devices. There is a strong financial incentive to break the laws of the street, as the title the Drop suggests, but the Chechen mafia in power seems to know or find out everything and will deliver punishment to those who are stupid enough to think they can fool the mob. The dialogue is sparse. Slips of tongue can be and are dangerous. The characters communicate with hints and facial expressions. It is the viewer who has to connect the puzzle pieces Lehane keeps slowly handing out throughout the film. After all, none of the characters are exactly law-abiding so it's not obvious all the time which crime is the real mystery. The Belgian director Michaël R. Roskam appears to me as a master of getting subdued yet nuanced performances from his actors. One of which, Matthias Schoenaerts whom Roskam brought with him from Belgium, does a very threatening bad guy indeed. There are some more Europeans. Noomi Rapace from Sweden is great as the fragile and secretive beauty of the film. Tom Hardy has the enigmatic lead role for which he has been appropriately praised. He's so Brooklyn here that I completely forgot he's from England. James Gandolfini is great in his final role of the greediest barkeeper ever. There are many reminders of film noir and the Hitchcock way of surprising the audience time and again. The cinematography is very old school, no car chases or martial arts. Were there any aerial shots? - I don't think so! In this film, the atmosphere is so tight that such things would have been mere distractions. I do think this will be seen as a classic!

I Origins (2014)

It is hard to create art out of nonsense

[4/10 · 14 April 2017]

If this film inspires someone to even check the Wikipedia articles on reincarnation and on the evolution of the eye, then it has that much merit. I loved Cahill's Another Earth for it's poetic absurdity. To appreciate it's story of love, loss and loneliness one just had to pretend to accept for the duration the silly notion of a copy of our planet existing just a little way off out there. I Origins has pretty much the same agenda of love and loss and the human desire to overcome death somehow. I expected him to elaborate these themes. This time Cahill unfortunately loses it on page one of his own script. A premise of the film is that the human eye is the crown of creation or the finest product of evolution and somehow the home of the eternal human soul. This is a lot of weight on a very mediocre, merely adequate sensory organ. Should some God have designed the perfect eye, the bad news is that He/She gave it to a marine crustacean, the mantis shrimp. We got the budget model that was not good enough for the peregrine falcon nor the dragonfly. If Cahill had ever watched Animal Planet, he would have already known this and rewritten his obsessive script. Ridley Scott is an example of a director who can get off unpunished for some bad, really bad science in his films, after all they are works of fiction. But Cahill does not let the story flow as he did in Another Earth, he just keeps repeating the same silly notions. When we get to the reincarnation-like or rebirth-hinting part of the story, it turns out that Cahill does not understand this concept very well either. The obtrusive music and the very slow pace of the film did not help. I did like the ending a lot. Perhaps one day a rewrite will be made and the ending will get a worthy film preceding it.

American Odyssey (2015)

More like an African Odyssey actually

[9/10 · 11 March 2017]

One time in North Africa I got so fed up with the hassle that I bought myself a Nubian headdress and a gray-brown robe worn by most men. Suddenly I was invisible, being able to walk undisturbed right past the masses of desperate peddlers, boatmen, touts and what have you. For most part they didn't give me a second glance. In the Odyssey series an American soldier Odelle Ballard is on the run trying to hide herself in plain sight in North Africa and I really felt for her. I know what it's like. Odelle is put in the complicated situation of a whistle blower who possesses proof that private defense contractors do not hesitate to do business with terrorist enemies of her country. She is declared dead and the powers be will not rest until she is. Many reviewers who gave low points to the series have perhaps missed the title word Odyssey. What Odyssey means is a long and perilous journey where you are trying to get home but circumstances throw you further off the course again and again. This is exactly what happens to Odelle. The network was seriously misguided when they re-titled the series American Odyssey. There is none. There are a couple of quite hopeless subplots taking place in the U.S., but they are in place just to underline that the fate of Odelle will not be decided by others in America while she is on her African (not American) Odyssey, beautifully shot on location in Morocco by the way. Anna Friel is perhaps a bit old for the role of a active front line foot soldier and she looks (at least to this reviewer) very, very British rather than American, which she is, too. But wow, does she look good with those gray eyes peeking from under a blue Tuareg headscarf interwoven skilfully around her head. Only men do this in real life, women wear simple modest scarves, but in this case who cares. Anna Friel was a great choice to star in the series, she is able to convey the complicated emotions of a survivor fugitive from everything she's ever known, in an environment alien to most viewers but luckily not quite so alien for her character. She is for practical purposes the only female character of any consequence in this series, quite rare in these days, and makes the most of it. She gets to wear a lot of different clothes and costumes in this series of camouflage, hide and seek! There is a very good international cast to support her, while the American subplot cast is quite wooden in comparison. Having spent quite a lot of time in the Sahel area, North and West Africa I appreciate that the environment is seen in a much more realistic light than one would expect from an American network series. Sure there's exoticism and even magic thrown in, but hey, that's what Africa will throw at you in living color if you give it half a chance. I give it 9 out 10. As a final note, several reviewers have wondered why Odelle didn't just email the incriminating secret files from the nearest laptop to the press. I would say that the problem is the other way around, it would take someone reliable on the other end to decrypt the encrypted files to plain text once received. I am a member of the press and we do not decrypt top secret government files.

Meek's Cutoff (2010)

Do you do the Christian thing in the desert?

[9/10 · 18 February 2017]

This is a powerful little film about faith and the lack of it. It is somewhat thinly disguised as a historical western. Although quite poetic in it's expression it is firmly anchored in true historical events.

As far as westerns are concerned, director Reichardt certainly breaks all the rules. John Ford and Howard Hawks wouldn't like Meek 's Cutoff, but Ford would understand from the opening scene what it 's all about. It's about people of faith, the pilgrims traveling to the west with no clue about their surroundings, destination let alone destiny, pressing on against the odds pretty much on faith alone.

It is a film about leadership crisis. The hired guide of the small wagon train he leads, Stephen Meek, is unsure in a landscape which has dried up since his last visit. He tries to hide his self-doubts by bragging about his past exploits but only makes things worse. The pilgrims begin to see him as a liar and a cheat. Is it a good idea to follow him deeper into the desert or should they turn back to the regular Oregon trail? As water supplies diminish the question becomes one of life and death and inevitably starts to divide the settlers.

Here is a film where the characters pray a lot, read the Bible all the time and face temptations and doubts in the desert. Yet none of the reviews here I have read mention religion at all. Really no bells ringing? When the settlers capture a native American who has tracked them, they face the question of what to do with their fellow man. Will they succumb to prejudice or do the Christian thing? Yes it is a film about Christian values as well.

Some reviewers complain about lack of character development. Maybe they saw a different film. Michelle Williams convinces as Mrs. Tetherow, a young wife who begins to find her voice to openly challenge Mr. Meek and his set of values. When Meek loses it and intends to kill the Indian prisoner, the viewer will be surprised to see her counter move. "I'd be careful" is a line of hers from that powerful scene that stays in my mind at least. In a film of very sparse dialogue Michelle Williams manages to communicate her thoughts with looks and expressions, great directing and acting here and I would say a lot of character development.

The films changes after the capture of the Indian with even more Christian motifs and leadership challenges. Should the settlers follow the unreliable and unsympathetic Mr. Meek or the unknown Indian who doesn't speak their language but knows the land, and should they listen to a woman? Everyone, the native included, now has a lot more to fear in this alien wilderness. Oh yes, this is a film about fear, real fear of unpleasant death hanging very close.

I find it very difficult to understand why so many reviewers complain so much about the abrupt ending of the film. Well I was surprised, too. Having never heard of the Meek cutoff I too expected to see what finally happened to the lost wagon train. After all, for once I was watching a western that could end in disaster, death by starvation or native attack, settlers killing the guide, guide killing the settlers, a happy end... anything. Instead you got the end credits all of a sudden! The hints in the final scenes gave some clues. The settlers seemed to have found at least the beginning of the end of the trail.

But to make sure I simply looked it up after the film (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meek_Cutoff). After all, I can read. Hey, it is not a secret what happened to the wagon train, to Meek and even to the Indian after the events of the film. Yes, in real life! The film follows, limitations of a small budget withstanding, those historical events fairly faithfully after all. However, I would not look the events up before seeing the film, as history contains spoilers in this case.

Some people have seen all this and yet they feel nothing happened in the film. I am sorry but I have to disagree. I was on the edge of my seat a lot and enjoyed it a lot. Few films have a sense of time and place like this. So it's slow, but if a film tells the story of folks walking with their wagons through a highland desert and the timing is realistically right the film just has to be slow. Just adapt to it, after all you are sitting comfortably and have nothing to complain about compared to the people in the desert.

The Company You Keep (2012)

Suspense that actually makes sense

[9/10 · 2 December 2016]

Normally one does not expect a suspense thriller to offer much insight or depth of thought. What Robert Redford accomplished here is quite a piece of work as he brings a lot of real life issues seamlessly into that framework. The major one is the generation gap - the difficulty of a younger generation to really grasp what the old timers (played by legacy greats such as Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie and so on) are so painfully trying to gab about. Think of Eastwood's Grand Torino and you get the general idea. Another issue is the role of media and nature of journalism, handled very intelligently and in depth (trust me, I'm a journalist so I should know). I found the interplay between Redford as the old lawyer and Shia LaBeouf as the young journalist to be absolutely exemplary. The chase plot was really not the reason for the film to be made but it worked fine for me. I also enjoyed the fact that some key turns of the plot are not explained verbally but are quickly and clearly shown to the viewer. A sure sign of a master director.

Pandorum (2009)

Space horror for the thinking person

[9/10 · 24 June 2016]

I have watched the film twice and I'm glad. The first time I did what the besserwissers do and spent my time counting the sci-fi and horror clichés the film uses. Admittedly there is a lot, and I was especially annoyed by the aggressive creatures. They looked like underfed Mad Max extras to me, OK in a zombie movie but really unimaginative as space monsters go. The second time I was able to focus on what the film in itself is all about. The plot is extremely well thought out from the beginning, where a man wakes up with no memories on a rather empty spaceship, to the surprising and completely original ending. Being a European film, there is no sloppy writing. Layer by layer the strange world of the believable giant space vessel starts to make more sense. Suspense is built slowly but not too slowly. You will be scared out of your wits also suddenly and when you do not see it coming. The character do response emotionally. The actors depict it well, perhaps slipping into over-acting a couple of times, but hey, what's over-acting on a doomed spaceship? After all the core of the film is how to retain your sanity in extreme circumstances, and here they are pretty extreme. All in all, Pandorium adds a lot of new and thought- provoking twists to the space sci-fi horror genre, if you just give it a chance. I'd give it a ten but for the Mad Max extras. I still hate them.

Ex Machina (2014)

Philip K. Dick would have loved it

[10/10 · 19 June 2016]

Philip K. Dick would have really liked Ex Machina, yet he would have felt slightly schizophrenic about not having written it. And rightly so, since in a way he did write some of it or at least pave a way to the film's central ideas with his Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. You could pretty much sum up Ex Machina in one sentence by saying that it's a prequel to Ridley Scott's classic film. However, that would do no justice to either film. Ex Machina is a clever film with a remarkably hole-free plot. In a claustrophobic setting underlined by an eerie soundscape, you have once again the mad scientist and his creation. And what a lovely creation it is, brilliantly played by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander. The viewer is drawn in the games the characters play with each other, not sure what the goals are and unsure even of who is human and who android. If you are a thinking person, this film will feed you a lot of valid questions about consciousness and conscience, too. I had to watch it twice.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Surrealist Bayou Eco Sci-fi

[7/10 · 5 April 2016]

Many reviewers have pointed out how truly unique this film is. And it is. Yet there will be quite a few bells ringing if you are an experienced enough movie goer. The director Luis Bunuel would love this film, with it's surreal dialogs and depiction of dirt, muck and various crustaceans milling about and being eaten. The bourgeois were disgusted by all this before WWII and from many reviews of this film it's obvious they still are. I stress the surrealist connection here because it seems to have evaded other reviewers completely. Do yourself a favor and see the films of Bunuel. Back to BotSW, in the mind of the 6-year old Hushpuppy his father's fatal illness, a Katrina-like storm and flood and a planetary climate catastrophe all bind and fold together. Her daddy like other adults in the film live off the grid, evading the law and authorities of any kind in the swamp. There is the feel of a post-apocalypse back- to-low-tech fantasy, except that here all is seen by the eyes of a child AND it's arguably pre-apocalypse or a slow ongoing apocalypse. A kid's Mad Max experience if you like. Cinematography drives this film so it is surprising that it is based on screenwriter Lucy Alibar's own theatrical play. What a versatile author. Admittedly too much hand-held camera-work there, perhaps to point out that there is no longer firm ground after the flood. There is a lot, and I mean a lot of local South Louisiana color. Some of it is pleasant, some repulsive. Joy and horror. Big Chief Al Doucette of Treme fame makes a cameo appearance. There is a most unusual take on the ancient Viking burial rite in the end, just when I thought nothing could surprise me anymore in this film. Yes it has flaws, all well documented here, so 7 out of 10, but the film is an obvious labor of love. The filming process must have been really laborious, everybody literally getting their feet wet, and I for one really respect that.

The Monuments Men (2014)

Art worth dying for

[7/10 · 28 February 2016]

I am convinced that George Clooney felt compelled to make a statement about the importance of protecting what's essential to Western Civilization. The film says that art is that essential ingredient. Glimpsing the bad and aggravated reviews it's obvious that the message did not get across all that well. My reaction to the film was entirely different from it's louder critics. I have never seen the Ghent Altarpiece nor the Madonna of Bruges. But I made a vow to go see them for myself asap. And I am grateful to Mr. Clooney that he nudged my priorities in the right direction. It is true enough that Clooney should have made a much better film of it all. It is odd to see men supposedly looking for hidden art in dusty cellars and blown-up mine shafts, themselves looking like aging movie stars on a costume picnic in their spotless just off the rack uniforms. On the other hand, repeated departures from any sense of realism seem to be a choice of style rather than just mistakes. I intend to give the film a second chance and just try not to be annoyed by its obvious flaws. After all, as far as war films about art go, there is just this one, so it's the best of it's genre as well as the worst.

Hitchcock (2012)

How two limeys made the film the Americans said they can't make

[9/10 · 11 January 2016]

First of all, this is not a biography of Alfred Hitchcock, as some viewers have thought it to be. It's all about the foreigners who came to Hollywood and made game-changing cinema art in spite of desperate and idiotic resistance from the All-American studios and censors. That's what the film is about. The point in case could have been Chaplin, Lang, Forman, Scott, there have been so many. It happens to be Hitchcock and his battle to make Psycho, directed by a another Brit with probably similar experiences. I would compare Hitchcock with another 2012 movie, Spielberg's Lincoln, also often misunderstood as a biographical effort. The problem with chronological biography films is that the viewer usually knows the plot beforehand and has strong feelings about how it should be presented and what actors should look like. Both Hitchcock and Lincoln take a refreshing approach, concentrating on just a few decisive months of their respective careers instead of decades of events. Psycho proceeded from Hitch reading the novel to the release of the film in less than a year. The relationship of Hitch and his wife Alma Reville is revisited in the light of their shared determination to complete the film, so it's more about a working relationship than about a love affair in any remotely normal sense. Anthony Hopkins pulls off his Hitch characterization, which could have been silly in some other context. Helen Mirren really let's loose as Reville, and Scarlett Johansson does her Hitchcock blonde thing so perfectly one cannot but empathize with the old geezer's obsession. I was going to give the film 8 points but I just have to add one more for Ms. Johansson. By the way, I was a small child when Psycho came out, but I remember the scary newspaper ads and all the viewers absolutely flat out refusing to tell the curious what all the fuzz was about and what happens in the film. It was a game changer that changed the film industry for ever back in 1960. Secrets could be kept then.

Non-Stop (2014)

Claustrophobic action Hitchcock would have appreciated

[7/10 · 28 December 2015]

I am very surprised that Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 thriller North by Northwest doesn't get mentioned in reviews of Non-Stop. Here Liam Neeson plays a character whose situation is as maddening as that of Cary Grant in the Hitchcock classic. He is unexpectedly framed and treated by the world at large as a suspect for serious crimes. For most of the film, the protagonist of both films tries to sweat it out but has no clue whatsoever as to who is framing him and for what possible reason. Main difference between the films is that Neeson sweats in the confined but familiar environment of a transatlantic jet. No escape through the corn field this time! North by Northwest wasn't marketed as an action film, but by 1959 standards it was pretty much non-stop action. It is the mystery and the accompanying suspense that makes the film in both cases. True motives of the villains in the Hitchcock film have always seemed somewhat nonsensical to me, but who ever cared? In Non-Stop the point is who is pulling the strings, not really the why. I see the film as a refreshing twist in the already familiar hijack formula, well written and acted, and the fact that the plot is not that plausible is a relief for all of us frequent fliers!

The Notebook (2004)

Romeo and Juliet get a second chance

[8/10 · 1 December 2015]

First of all, this film is not a guide to romantic love, just as Saving Private Ryan was not a guide as to how to conduct a World War. Both films are originally based on a true story, but the charm of these stories is their exceptional nature. I guess we need miracles. Eternal first love is not just bliss in this film. Director Nick Cassavetes and his Romeo and Juliet, Canadian actors Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams do depict the pain, heartbreak and misery that the stubborn lover cause each other and to others around them. The film really gets going when the former teen lovers of 1940 return from World War II, now adults. America has changed morally, their relationship is no longer quite as unimaginable and unrealistic as it used to be. For the viewer, the tension really builds up - something is bound to happen, and You will find yourself on the edge of your seat, biting your nails. The films is really well dramatized from the novel, the casting is perfect and Nick Cassavetes shows himself to be a masterful director. As a curiosity, she does direct her own mother Gena Rowlands here as well. The Notebook works on many levels. Even an old guy like me had to shed some tears here. However, the teen affair part of the film was a bit long and there were too many I love yous to merit more than 8 out of 10. Gosling and McAdams are great physical actors and pledge their love in electrifying fashion, there just was too much of a good thing here. This is an experience that will haunt you for some time.