Category: DVD

{mosimage} Directed by one of the most interesting Japanese anime directors, Tomomi Mochizuki, here comes a tender love story between two Japanese teenagers. 

Aaltojen Kuohu was part of the films featured during the past Rakkautta & Anarkiaa festival in Helsinki. If you missed it (or otherwise you specially liked it) in the big screen, now you have an excellent option to review it again in DVD. The film narrates a simple but wonderful story that mostly happens at high school, with two friends, Matsuno and Taku falling in love with a new student coming from Tokyo: Rikako. The female role is quite complex and identifies very well with the hard times of being teenager and new in an unknown city, with a family broken by a divorce. Rikako is not the typical sweet girl, but that makes her even more fascinating, a mix of innocent girl and little devil, the typical figure that just make men lose their head. 

There are not big special effects or high doses of adrenaline exhibited here, like it is usual in many other Japanese animation films. The simplicity of the story is the weakest and the greatest point achieved by Mochizuki at the same time. It brings closer to us the life of Japanese students, their expectations, their efforts to achieve good marks to go to a good University, the rituals of their everyday life, etc.

Maybe for some other viewers the plot can turn to be a bit too simple, but in any case the duration of the movie is just around 1 hour 10 minutes, so there is not much time to feel bored. Not one of my Japanese movies, but not a bad effort though. As a negative last note, I must accuse the Finnish distributors of the same repeated mistake: there are no English subtitles available, so be ready to practice your Finnish skills if you do not understand Japanese fluently… 

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}Aaron Eckhart is a loser not happy with his current life. Addicted to candies, cheated by his wife… he will find a new meaning to his life with the intervention of a young kid. 

After watching Bill, I still have not decided if I liked the movie or not. There are as many points in favor as against this movie. Aaron Eckhart´s role is certainly good, sometimes even brilliant. He is credible as a man with no personal achievements always running with the flow that the family of his wife imposes him. There are some enjoyable moments and lines in the film, and certainly you do not get bored watching it.  But after half of the movie passed, I thought that the final 20 minutes could have been better developed. The script has some flaws, and maybe the character is not everything you would expect from him.

From my point of view it was a mistake not to develop more the relation between the kid and Jessica Alba, that would have add a nice touch of transgression in the movie. I suppose the American moral does not allow to feature openly a relation between an underage guy and a young beautiful girl in her twenties, but certainly it is some more doses of transgression what is missed in the movie; the reaction of Eckhart when being cheated is not very plausible, neither the happenings after the mini “orgy” in the tent. And Alba’s appearance is pretty wasted here, not adding much to the flow of the action. 

It is a pity that the script was spoiled to give a more politically correct ending to the movie, because certainly this Bill could have turned out to be a little masterpiece. Unfortunately, it finishes as just a good comedy that could have been better. 

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}“You, the Living” is the new film by Swedish director Roy Andersson.

From Sweden comes this movie, highly praised for the critics, as far as I have seen before putting my hands into reviewing it. Roy Andersson displays here a collection of situations, 50 or more, that have as common features a depressing atmosphere. Beings that feel trapped by their lives, with dreams that do not come true, and with surrealistic situations, are displayed in front of our eyes. It reminds me a bit of the style you can see in the great British animation series Monkey Dust. But while in that series, I cannot avoid to laugh my ass off, certainly this Andersson s movie resulted boring in the end. I lost concentration after the first twenty minutes, and my girlfriend did not even want to continue watching it until the end.

Maybe you need to have been born in a Scandinavian country to fully appreciate Andersson s irony, but for me basically the film did not mean much in the end. Many cinema critics who love to masturbate their minds with indie cinema will find the film delightful, but for me the most important thing is that a film is able to transmit something. And this Sinä Elävä just got me as cold as the chilly Swedish weather portrayed all over the film. If you are able to discover something in the film that I could not, I congratulate you.

Rating 2/5.

{mosimage}Coen brothers strike back with another superb title. One of the DVDs of the year.

Ethan and Joel Coen have gone though a consistent career, able to create a personal trademark in their films. Most of the good features you can see in some of their previous masterpieces are here again in this superb No country for old men. The acting skills of the three main characters, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are simply fantastic; especially Bardem here is at his best. Not just because I am also Spaniard, but I think everybody must admit that here he really achieves a great performance as the assassin Anton Chigurh. Even the resurrected Woody Harrelson plays his part nicely in the plot!  

Some acid humor and astonishingly shocking visual sequences make you get literally stitched to your seat during the whole movie. The Coen brothers also play successfully with the lack of music to empower the oppressive atmosphere of those dusty corners of the deep America.

If a friend asks you about advice before watching this film, it is a bit difficult to describe what this movie is really about. That is maybe the magic of the Coen brothers, to leave you with the feeling of having assisted to a masterpiece that cannot really be transcribed into simple words.

Rating 5/5

{mosimage}Follow the trip of Chris McCandless to a new solitude life in Alaska.

I have encountered feelings towards Emile Hirsch. During this movie, sometimes he seems to give a very nice portray of his character, Chris, but some others he simply annoys me; something similar to what happened when I saw him in Alpha Dog. In any case, Into the Wild is quite an interesting movie to see. Based on true events, and in the book by Jon Krakauer and directed by Sean Penn, we assist through the movie to the existential trip of the young Chris, leaving all his past life in search of a new existence where the materialistic things are not the important ones. Farther than the reasons of Chris to do that, the more interesting parts of the movie are his encounters with other characters, and the mark that they leave on each others.

The movie wisely mixes drama and comedy, and there are some astonishing sequences where the nature is very present. But it is difficult to understand the utter motivations of Chris during his trips, and without the understanding and the identification, it is complicated to fully enjoy his wanderings around USA without feeling a bit uncomfortable and critical.

Maybe it is an excellent movie to watch more than once, because the first time will leave you still wondering if you liked it or not. At least it is good that a movie can make you reflect.

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}Based on the books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, here comes a new fantasy story!

Well, it is difficult for whatever fantasy title based on a book in the past years to compete with the excellent trilogy of Lord of the Rings. Titles like the Golden Compass have not passed the test to improve Jackson’s masterpieces…neither this Spiderwick Chronicles. In any case, the film is not so pretentious and just turn to have an easy plot to follow and some good special effects, but without an overdose of them.

Probably the little ones of the house will enjoy it pretty much, but for the grown up audience, this can be a bit too boring and predictable. In any case, the work of the children is good, and it has a very nice and funny final scene when the evil boss is finally defeated by one of the friendly fantasy creatures (that we are not going to reveal to ruin the final).  

If you have children at home, it can be a good option to make them sit in front of the screen for a couple of hours. If you are looking for fantasy films to enjoy yourself, maybe this product will end up being a bit too simple for your taste.

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}The central square of the city of Salamanca becomes a battlefield with the arriving of the president of the United States…

Being the action shot in the Spanish city of Salamanca, I was especially motivated to watch this movie. But after the first minutes, my attention became dissolute. The initial attack and the sequences of the bomb exploding are visually shocking, but later the big possibilities that the plot offers to make a good film are wasted. The facts are told and re-told from different points of views of the people participating in trying to save or kill the President of USA during his visit to a conference in the city, and so much rewind becomes to be pretty annoying. The cast lists very good names like Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver or the Spanish Eduardo Noriega, but most of their appearances get pretty wasted and without rhythm with so many flashbacks all the time. For example, Sigourney Weaver appears at the beginning of the film, and then… nobody exactly knows what her role is there anymore… Forest Whitaker s acting skills are also basically wasted there, and his friendship relation with the little Spanish girl is forced and not plausible, nobody would believe that after a conversation of 5 seconds he must become  her personal guard angel.  

Eduardo Noriega is an excellent Spanish actor who could have given a much better performance than just the simple role of being chased during all the film for ending up shot. And so on, so on… There are not even nice twists in the end of the movie, something that for example another film full of flashbacks like Memento mastered; the bad guys soon are discovered to be really bad guys and the good guy is the typical American hero who will solve the situation just shooting around to the evil terrorists.

Resuming, a very disappointing movie. My advice is that you better try with another movie if you are tired of the typical action films that lead nowhere. And by the way, as a remark, the Spanish security forces do not usually speak so good English. They must have taken intensive language lessons while I was outside living in Finland.  

Rating 2/5.

{mosimage}One of the Finnish titles of the year, a heart breaking drama that take us to the island of the dark butterflies.

Opposite to the title, in the island where the youngsters try to overtake their problems you won’t see many butterflies flying around. But you will surely appreciate the darkness of tormented souls wandering around, looking for a reason to live on.  

As you will notice while watching it, this movie is certainly not the best one to cheer you up in a bad day. Personally I felt quite depressed after watching it; something bad happens every 10 minutes, and there are not many happy moments to compensate the drama surrounding the characters. That does not mean anyway that the movie is bad. I enjoyed pretty much the excellent acting of Tommi Korpela as Harjula, the director of the institution in the island, and the young Niilo Syväoja as Juhani, both of them perfectly complemented by Eero Milonoff, who after Ganes, is becoming a safe value to count with in whatever Finnish movie he appears. The list of secondary roles also counts with the presence of well known Finnish names such as Kati Outinen or Matleena Kuusniemi.

A tough movie but endorsed with a positive message of hope in the end. Certainly Finnish cinema and its melancholic atmosphere is not the most appropriated one if you like light-hearted movies, but hey, that is why this is Finland, isn’t it?  

Rating 4/5.

{mosimage}Follow the funny life story of Dewey Cox, a fictitious musician who will overcome difficulties to become a super star.

Biographies of famous musicians have been quite trendy in the past years in Hollywood, like Ray (2004) or Walk the Line (2005). Now the rise and fall topic takes a more humoristic approach with this new comedy directed by Jake Kasdan, with John C. Reilly as the main character. Reilly has appeared in secondary roles in many comedies and successful movies during the past years, such as Gangs of New York or Talladega Nights, and it is nice to see him taking up the main role. Not an easy task to perform a character from the age of 14 to 71. During his personal trip through life, he has the chance to share stage with most of the music legends, and sarcastic and hilarious situations never stop.  

But apart from the compulsory doses of dumb situations that all good comedy must offer, it is admiring how Reilly masters his character in a way that we can really feel identified with him as if a real musician would perform in front of our eyes, and not just a funny imitation. In a way, Dewey Cox, with all his eccentricities, looks plausible for the audience, because that is what it is expected in a life of a rock star: excesses, mischievous behavior but overall a huge sensitive heart.

Maybe it will not make you laugh like a crazy madman, but it is a fresh comedy and pretty recommendable to music fans. It also made me pretty happy to notice the presence of legendary bluesman “Honeyboy” Edwards, whom I had the pleasure to meet last year in Estonia; together with him a long list of real musicians that wanted to join the party like Eddie Vedder or Jewel, and some other surprises with cameos of famous actors uncredited.

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}The Savages are a brother and a sister who have to face the difficult task of taking care of their aging father.

Director Tamara Jenkins puts on the table a topic that affects to most of us at same point of our busy lives: how to take care of our aging parents. In this case, the brother and sister affected are no others than Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Both splendid in their roles, I must confess that although I am a big fan of Seymour, in this movie is Linney who steals most of the attention from the camera.

There are some raw moments in the film like at the beginning with the father playing with his excrements, but there is also a place for some dark sense of humor. It is actually quite funny how the brother and sister are so absorbed trying to kick off their careers, so most of the time looks like the old sick father (Philip Bosco) is the one with more common sense of the Savages.

A good movie with good doses of human touch, something often missed in Hollywood. A plot that make us reflect that sometimes we are forgetting the most important things in life, as family is, for getting artificial successes in our lives.

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}After Brockeback Mountain, director Ang Lee comes back to his native China to narrate a drama during the II World War.

In a couple of moments along the film I could not less than find comparisons between this new Ang Lee´s film and some others from the master Wong Kar Wai. Maybe this has to do with the appearance also here of one of the fetish actors for Wai; Tony Leung. His presence all along the movie is astonishing; an actor who does not need much than just the gaze of his eyes and the smoke running away slowly from his languid cigarettes to transmit a lot of passion. He is superb in the film, mastering all kind of roles of his complex character: husband, cheater, powerful military man, lover, cruel secret policeman… An incredible palette!  Matching perfectly with him, the sensuality of Wei Tang, who makes her debut in the big screen.  She looks totally lovely, transmitting innocence but also determination.

There are a couple of weak moments in the script, since the behavior of the gang of revolutionary students sometimes turns to be pretty annoying, but in general this is a classic great black dram that has nothing to envy to older films of espionage and twisted love relations.

One bad feature is that the film is in Chinese with only Nordic languages subtitles, not including English. I hope someday in the future the distributors will understand how important is to include at least always the English option in every DVD released internationally. Apart from that detail, the film is enjoyable, but be also ready to assist also to some scenes of high sex voltage.

Rating 4/5.  

{mosimage}Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter gather together again in the dark streets of London.

Many fans of Tim Burton, me included, were very excited when they knew that Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter would be the main characters in one of his films. This new product has all the features that you can expect from a classic Burton´s movie: dark scenarios, a taste for a macabre sense of humor, a collection of freaks trying to find their own habitat, and of course blood and revenge. But added to all this film enters the musical genre, and we can see during good part of the action to Depp and Carter singing about their lives, loves, hates and revenges.

I was never a great fan of the musical genre, but certainly the film is most of the time pretty enjoyable, although sometimes too many songs can be a bit disturbing. Atmosphere is greatly created, and Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall are the villains are frankly superb. There is also the chance to see Sacha Baron Cohen in a new register as an Italian (with Spanish features) barber, but maybe his appearance is too histrionic; all the opposite to the sweetness of Jayne Wisener as Johanna.

Not a bad film though, and certainly a new brick in the consistent wall of Burton´s career, but with a couple less of songs and with a final a bit less predictable, the result could have been improved.

Rating 3/5. 

{mosimage}Greed, religious fanatics, money, oil…  an explosive mix for this adaption of the novel by Upton Sinclair.

There will be blood gives us the chance to see once more to Daniel Day Lewis in a main character role. Not easy to forget his past amazing characters in films like Gangs of New York, In the Name of the Father of The Last of The Mohicans. Being one of the best and most solid actors of the last decades, it seemed that the role of the greedy oil tycoon Daniel Plainview will suit him like a glove. And nobody can´t deny his skills as an actor. But this time the combination does not work.  Director Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to create that kind of character “bigger than life” and he ended up with a boring film full of too much histrionic performances.

The first twenty minutes are really promising, when we see the developments of Plainview from a simple silver searcher to an successful oilman, but putting all the efforts in trying to create a role big enough for Day Lewis to get the academic award, Anderson forgot how to put the rest of the details together in the film. Rhythm is too slow, the relation with the secondary characters could have been much more improved and the final more than shocking, looks ridiculous. 

I had to stop a couple of times the DVD to make a break and smoke a cigarette not to fall asleep. The film is receiving very positive reviews all over the world, so maybe it is just my personal distorted perception, but I can just say “There will be blood…and there will be boredom”.

Rating 2/5. 

{mosimage}High quality black and white animation (in most parts of the movie) for this raw vision of the life of a young Iranian girl.

Not, as more than one Finnish could have thought if freely translating the title, Persepolis has nothing to do with something similar to “city of ass”. On the other hand, it touches very sticky topics with honesty, humor and an intelligent approach. The film is based on the comics by Marjane Satrapi, and has counted with her together with director Vincent Paronnaud to transport the magic of the paper onto the big screen. Big international names like Chiara Mastroianni or Catherine Deneuve lent their voices to the characters.

Persepolis is obviously not an animation movie for children. The trip of young Marjane Satrapi from Iran to Vienna, and back to Iran until her new leave to France is raw and bitter, more often sad than happy, but also refreshing. A good lesson about how extremists are dangerous in whatever society, how wars create so much pain and fractures, and how lonely and alienated a person can feel abroad when a part of his/her roots are left behind. An excellent film to reflect and follow the instructions of wise Marjane´s grandmother.

Rating 4/5.

{mosimage}American director Wes Anderson gets us immersed in a spiritual trip around India following the misadventures of three brothers.

I must confess that Wes Anderson must be probably my favorite one from the new generation of young American directors. His previous works are among my favorite movies ever, so I had big expectations for this The Darjeeling Limited. In many senses, I did not get disappointed: Anderson´s portray of the three brothers is made step by step using the colorful palette of India all over their trip by train and later by foot. The Indian landscape is lovely and excitingly present all over the movie, and the acting of Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody is well measured and rounded.

This is a movie 100% Wes Anderson´s, and his favorite features and trademarks like slow motion captures of the action or his personal sense of humor, always on the edge of became depressing, are here. Nevertheless, this is a darker movie than his previous ones, and the lightness and the comedy touches of films like Rushmore are not so present here. The product is much deeper and touches sticky topics like death, twisted family relations, loneliness and miscommunication.  I missed a bit more of interaction during the short encounter with the mother (Angelica Huston), and the film turned to be a bit too short in the end.

All in all, if you like Anderson´s previous works, The Darjeeling Limited will not disappoint you; script is meticulously developed into a fascinating journey to enlighten the souls, and same than in real life, things usually do not turn as planned and expected to be. Special mention also to the cameos by Bill Murray and Natalie Portman, who sexily appears also in the short-film that serves as introduction to the movie: Hotel Chevalier.

Rating 4/5.