Juoppohullun päiväkirja (2012): Hasling around without ending...

 

Critic 1

 

Usually Finnish movies are dark whining stories about hardness of life. It was very entertaining to see a movie where the hardships of everyday life were systematically bypassed and life lived with a full throttle.... With help of booze but who cares? Story itself was very mediocre and without proper ending with some very disturbing but plausible details from professional drunks life. Joonas Saartamo plays the main character extremely well, I'd say he will get some Finnish equivalent of Oscar because of the role. Take care that your date can handle bad language, vomiting and gay porn scenes.

Critic 2 

 

Movie is about a Finnish man, who is addicted to alcohol. The king named alcohol is everything to him, but then he meets a girl. An overall plot sounds like ordinary romantic movie. But this is a Finnish movie about a shabby man with an irony and without colors of roses. The movie was better than I expected, I thought it would be all mindless fiddling. There is a lot of that too, but also a plot. But there could have been a little bit more of a real plot, since the movie felt a bit too long, even the length of the movie was only about one and half hours. The ending pointed towards to sequel too clearly. But I have to admit that this movie wasn't so depressing as so many other Finnish movies.

The Judgement Star: A movie with some weak points.

Finland - The most dullest place on Earth.

Why so?

 

There are few very distinctive indications supporting my claim.

1. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak hints something like that.

“Those who came here in order to set up a national home have to know how to stand firm. For those who want complete quiet, there is Finland and there is Western Europe, and they can go there.” (The original post)

2. The US ambassador to Finland has nothing else to do...

...but to work his biceps.

3. In some other countries men are stockpiling guns....

... in Finland men are stockpiling (in Finnish) clothes and ham.

4. The most outrageous criminal in Finland during the Xmas holidays...

... was a great tit (In Finnish).    


I rest my case. 

-Critic#1

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) - Feels like a fairytale.

Critic 1

 

First of all I have to mention that we saw the HFR version of this movie and oh boy... It was really worth it... Picture was sharp as life it self and the annoying blurring of movement was totally gone. Some corners were cut though but not too badly. Otherwise the movie was as expected. Nothing extraordinary with the plot (if you have read the book), or with the characters. If you can survive the dish washing scene in the beginning (you'll know) this is a really good movie. Just make sure to wear a pointy hat in the theater and make sure that your date is OK with that.  

Critic 2

 

This is a movie about a novel by Tolkien. A hobbit will have a big adventure. I was surprised how well it merged in the similar world with the movies from the Lord's of the rings by the same director. The 3D effects were better than usual, a new technique seem to be promising. I liked the movie although some similar scenes with LOTR movies could have been filmed from different angles. I liked a bit slow phase of the movie and in the end after almost three hours I would have still wanted to stay in the theater and watch more.  

Judgement Star: The Hobbit is a very good movie.

Book: The Fractal Prince - Hannu Rajaniemi

How confused you can get..?

 

If you have not read the Quantum Thief  you can stop here. There is no point to read further.

The Fractal Prince starts where the Quantum Thief ended. The mystical thing made by one of the not-properly-introduced fractions is doing something to mess the bandwidth or something....

A very hard to read book, totally impossible if you have not read the previous book by Hannu Rajaniemi. If you can leave your day work and read this word by word then you may have some chance....

 -Critic#1

Despite (or because) of the complicated nature a very unique book.

Leave it in trash - Take it as a gift - Buy it from a discount - Buy a hardcover - For the prime spot on the shelf

Star Trek - Generations (1994): And Captain Kirk saves the day.

 

 

Critic 1

 

The first Star Trek movie with Captain Picard shows promise in the beginning but turns down to metaphysical mumbojumbo. Again the crew of the Enterprise fights mystical forces and evildoers with grater-than-life plans, a bunch of Klingons are mixed in the soup and dead Captain Kirk shows up. So it is a common day in the Star Trek universe. The visual effects are clearly better than in the previous Star Trek movies and there is even a minor space fight. As a date movie... Are you kidding? You are a Star Trek fan. You don't have a real date... 

Critic 2

 

The Star Trek saga continues with the next generation. The story stars a bit slowly, but improves later. The ideas in the storyline are diverse, but plot doesn't grab a full usage of them. Computer generated graphics are nice although not spectacular. The ending feels a bit prolonged but by thinking of a story it is justified. I got the feeling that this is a transition movie and next movie will fully focus on next generation and I will see a real space adventure. 

Judgement Star: Generations is an average movie.

 

Imaginaerum (2012): Bizarre in a good way.

 

Critic 1

 

Usually when a band has some issues with their old members they trash the issue in the popular media and downplay as much as they can. But the Nightwish made a movie... Movie itself is very unorthodox and surprising in both weird and captive ways and very touchy. There is no telling what comes next.. Unfortunately the acting is not up to standards and being "a musical" there is less music you would expect. Visually the movie was quite nice. Specially the final scenes.  If you want to see something different this is for you. 

 

Critic 2

 

The Nightwish band made a movie. Initially I thought that it would be a musical, but the movie included surprisingly few musical performances. Somehow I was hoping to see more of them. The best in the movie were music and dreamy visions, unfortunately the basic storyline was nothing new. But if the storyline would have been complicated maybe movie would have been difficult to understand. The dreams and "real" story folded together nicely. The computer effects also looked fine. Actors were actually good and I'm glad that they chose real actors in roles instead amateurs.

Judgement Star: A fair movie with some weaknesses.

Looper (2012): A ruined future indeed..

Critic 1

 

Our dear western culture teaches us that the life of a child is precious and must be protected at any cost. But is it so? In the wild weak, ill and young are the first to perish. In this movie our basic values around this topic are tested... Along with some physics laws. Besides different than usual motivation the plot of the movie is a standard seek-and-kill, bad versus even worse and so on.  In general a good movie without a special edge. A solid option as a date movie.

Critic 2

 

Looper is a science fiction movie with time traveling. But somehow time traveling theme is more intelligent than usually and also other themes in the movie as well. A cyclic nicely written plot leaves some mysteries to the watcher, but you shouldn't think them too much after the movie. During the movie you can just relax and enjoy the movie or you can start thinking all the thing related to time traveling. Luckily also the movie acknowledges this. Actors are better than usually.     

Judgement Star: Looper is a nice movie