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Reviews
District 9 (2009)
The Lord of the Rings of scifi
I saw this movie yesterday evening and it's definitely one of the best scifi-action-adventure movies ever made!!! Before I went to the cinema, I'd heard that the film contains a lot of blood and guts and it might be unsuitable for some people. I agree with this, but at least for me it was far from a too violent movie, because the gore scenes are quite gritty and blurry. This is why I'm honesty recommending this to the majority of adults. It has so much to offer.
First: the plot. Despite you've seen the trailers and read the synopsis, the plot has many twists to surprise you. And unlike in the case of 24, the twists are pretty reasonable and humane. Besides, it's not hard to recognize the connection between the alien community problem and the global social issues of the real world (just think about this after watching the movie).
Second: the CGI's. This is probably the first film including so realistic CGI effects that they are actually hard to separate from the "real" objects. Also, the rugged documentary-like picture enhances this vision very well. Nonetheless, the explosions and the other such visual effects were cutting edge. Still, I was a bit surprised to see that the film wasn't completely shot in this documentary-like manner, though only some individual scenes were.
Third: the action sequences weren't presented too frequently and that's why they worked so effectively. Despite this I didn't find myself bored in any part of the movie, probably because the action scenes were highly intensive and simply super-exciting!
Fourth: Sharlto Copley. This guy was incredible. He played his character (Wikus van de Merwe) extremely well, which reminded me of Borat (by Sacha Baron Cohen): so innocent and well-meaning person, but still people see him as a goofy (which appears to be a false assumption, when it's about his survival). But maybe the most impressive thing about him was the South African accent, it's simply unforgettable when you hear him swearing (and that's what you'll going to hear a lot in this movie).
The only thing that bothered me a bit, was "the overwhelming necessary evil" character that they had to include to the movie for some mysterious reason. Maybe this will make it look more Hollywood style, but still I think it's a bad cliché.
Bottom line: don't miss this film, if you respect good scifi entertainment. It's like the Lord of the Rings of science fiction movies, one of the best movies of it's genre. Last, but not least: respect for the co-operation of Neill Blomkamp and Peter Jackson.
Munich (2005)
A shocking but entertaining event
Munich is one of those movies which are quite hard to incorporate to any single movie genre. It includes at least action, drama, romance, thriller, adventure and maybe even a bit of comedy. It's like a mix of all those film categories in good ratio. Although, maybe the most surprising thing about the movie is that it is not so ordinary Spielberg film: it doesn't include such a happy ending (like for example Jurassic Park did), but in other hand it's more romantic, emotional and humorist compared to Saving Private Ryan. Concluded: Munich is a mix of thriller, action and drama movie and it contains a lot of violence and blood, but not as much as war movies as you can imagine.
The plot of the film is pretty intelligent: there are many twists and huge surprises and it's entertaining from the beginning to the end titles, during the whole time (almost three hours).
The camera angles works very well. The audience sees just as much as it should see. Not too much, not too less. The emotions are revealed clearly (thanks also to all the actors), but the acting isn't overacted, thought.
The music is once again composed by John Williams. Thanks to him, the music (once again) fits to the movie like nose to face and makes the film even more enjoyable. It would have been a huge mistake to put some metal trash music into this kind of marvelous art, I suppose. But I know that Spielberg wouldn't do anything stupid like that.
One of the most interesting things about the movie is that Spielberg reveals no doubt his critical political attitude in this movie (concerning about the real events in Munich in 1972). I don't want to spoil this subject anymore... In fact Spielberg tells one point of view about the happenings of the Munich bloodbath.
One of the most bothering issues in the whole movie (especially during the first minutes) was that Germans doesn't speak Germany but English. I understand that this an American film, but in my opinion it had been much better if all the Germany people had spoken Germany, not English. But that's not a big deal.
I don't have anything else to complain about this movie. All I can say is that Munich is a realistic movie about the real events of Munich bloodbath in 1972 Olympics, and it's made with a style. Once you've seen it movie, you're not going to forget it right away, and that's why Munich is really worth of seeing. So, what are you waiting for? Go and see it yourself.
Saippuaprinssi (2006)
Funny movie with good actors
I won the tickets from a competition and when I went to the cinema, I was quite suspicious. I mean, the plot sounded just too cliché and ordinary comedy story and the main actors (Mikko Leppilampi and Pamela Tola) are still pretty unexperienced as actors. Still, there was some hope left that this could really be something fine entertainment, and it really was.
The film is full of talented side actors, for example Outi Mäenpää (as Raakel), Sari Havas (as a disturbed writer), Risto Kaskilahti (as an angry mixer) and Juha Veijonen (as an actor who fell in love with Ilona). I think all the actors succeeded very well, especially Mäenpää, but maybe the most surprising role in the whole film was Jukka Puotila's act as a taxi driver: I haven't seen Puotila in any role for a while and he made perhaps the funniest scene in the whole movie. It was also a great idea to bring real television drama actors like Pete Lattu and Venla Saartamo, which both were acting in Salatut elämät TV series, to play a role to this kind of movie. I was very surprised when I noticed that some real musician like Zarkus Poussa had got a role to play a funny sound effect man with imaginary ways to create any sound.
The idea of making a soap opera in a movie worked well. The overacted emotions and the nonsense lines made me laugh time after time during the film so that I had sometimes troubles to follow the plot itself. The movie isn't clever, but so what! It doesn't even try to be anything like that. And that's why the whole idea works very well. I have to thank also Aleksi Bardy for making the movie better than it would have been without him: Bardy has written besides this movie some drama series for instance Käenpesä, and this is another reason why the idea of this movie works so well.
In spite of all this, Saippuaprinssi isn't a perfect film. As the director said before the beginning of the movie in the cinema, the comedy is a hard sort of art. It's much harder to make a good comedy film than a good "wannabe clever mystery" film, I suppose. Anyway, this is a Finnish comedy movie I've been waiting for long time, and I really enjoyed it.
La marche de l'empereur (2005)
Such a touching film
Here in Finland there are two versions of this movie played in cinemas. The original, French spoken version with Finnish subtitles, and the second version which is dubbed in Finnish. I went to see the first one mentioned. When I went to the cinema I was expecting something like a beautiful nature film with magnificent landscapes and talking penguins. I was wrong. It's much more than that! The fact that the global environmental conservation organization WWF was in the project, it was crystal clear that there is also a lot of extra dramatization. This is seen very clearly in the film. The film is trying to make the whole audience to feel pity for the penguins with some sad and some funny scenes. The music is also very touching and effective in many scenes, but I didn't realized why it had to be English sung music (why not French) with that synthetic background beat. OK, the singing was beautiful and touching, but I think the music had been better without that background beat in some scenes! Even so, because of all the beauty and the emotion, the film was about to make me cry (probably the first time in my whole life in cinema).
One thing that separated this from an ordinary nature film was the style of commentary: the voice of the narrator wasn't actually meant to be just a voice of a man and a woman behind the scenes, but the voice of penguin's thought. In my opinion this was a great idea: it works well and makes the idea more entertaining.
Everyone knows that the life of an animal isn't easy at all. This is shown in the movie, but thanks to fine editing, the scenes "not-for-small-children" (including raw and mating scenes) are cut off and edited wisely. These scenes have been made to be much more sensitive than for example in nature films and that is why they fit much better also for small children, I think.
After all I think this is one of the most touching movie I've ever seen. It is very well made, and if you like nature films you got to see this. It's a great entertainment for the whole family. Just have to hope there will be made more films like this one in future.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
A beautiful movie
I was reading The Cronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe about 8 years ago (I'm now 18 years old), and I didn't read it to the end ever, because I didn't like the book. It was too confusing for me (and I was a bad reader) and that's why I considered pretty long whether I should even see this movie. Now I can only say that this movie was worth of paying.
Probably the best thing in the movie was the magnificent visualization and the great sound: the landscapes of Narnia are incredibly beautiful and the voice of Aslan is still shouting through my ears and it isn't caused by the speakers of the cinema. No, the great battle in the end is something I haven't seen since Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the mighty background music was about to blow me away.
One other thing that really surprised me was the animating, which is the most beautiful I've ever seen in any film. All the animals looks almost real and the dubbing couldn't have been done any better. Even the eye of Aslan have been done very well. Unbelievable!!!
Then why I gave only 8 to this movie? I think the only bad thing in this movie was the story: it isn't just my type. I prefer to more mature fantasy stories like The Lord of the Rings. Of course I know this is a movie for children and that is why it doesn't contain any blood or raw scenes, but I think fantasy movies aren't perfect without them. Even so, I can say that the movie was very exciting and that is one reason why I liked it.
The actors in the movie were kind of OK. Most of the main actors were in their perfect roles, but one actor didn't fit very well to her role: Tilda Swinton is in my opinion a good actor, but her appearance didn't fit very well to White Witch, whereas Lian Neeson's voice was just perfect to Aslan.
Anyway, after seeing this movie I've decided to read the whole Chronicles of Narnia series when I have enough time. I hope there will become more Narnia movies in future. This one is definitely worth of seeing for everybody.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Probably the best Harry Potter movie so far
I've read the first five Harry Potter books and I liked probably the most this 4th one. First I thought that this movie can't be good, because the book is so long and a guy like Mike Newell was supposed to direct it. I personally hadn't any objections against him, but I was prepared to the worst after having read these forums.
Now, when I have seen the movie, I can say that this one is definitely the best Harry Potter movie. Steven Kloves did a great job again in screenplay, Mike Newell succeeded to make probably the best direction of Harry Potter movies so far (I hope you get the point) and the main actors (Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Rupert Grint as Ron, Emma Watson as Hermione, Bonnie Wright as Ginny and Matthew Lewis as Neville) have become pretty talented actors. Of course the interest of the plot affects to my opinion about this film also.
Newell had collected the movie very wisely. All the most important scenes had been included to the movie and they had been made in more entertaining and interesting way than in the early Potter movies. The side actors had been chosen very well also. Katie Leung as Cho is as beautiful as I had imagined, and Stanislav Ianevski and Robert Pattinson are almost made to act Victor Krum and Cedric Diggory. Now I'm just waiting for the DVD release with a massive collection of deleted scenes and some other documentaries.
So even though you didn't like the early Potter movies very much but you liked the books you should see this movie. I think it's pity that Mike Newell won't direct the following Harry Potter movies, but I hope that David Yates would make The Order of the Phoenix as good as this became or even better.
Doom (2005)
Better than I was expecting
I saw the movie before it came to cinema, because I won the tickets to the fore-performance (shown few days before the first night performance). Anyway, the movie was much better made than I was expecting when I entered to the cinema. But why the movie was so good? There are several reasons for that. First of all, the movie is pretty loyal to the Doom games, especially to the latest one. The movie contains many monsters and some weapons from Doom games and the conclusion is simply great. The weapons looks and sounds fine. The other thing I liked about the movie was the cast. The Rock and Karl Urban are true professional actors with guns and they don't show their feelings too much. The movie included quite a lot blood and gore scenes but not too much. Too much or too little blood had spoiled the whole movie, I suppose. The shock effects were also pretty cool.
Doom wasn't perfect movie because it included also some bad stuff. One of them was the clichés, but in other hand, I think that action movie isn't good action movie without clichés so they didn't bother me so much. I think The worst mistake was to add the first person camera scene to the movie. The FPS scene felt like some kind of pour simulator and it was confused and that brake the whole excitement for a while. In my opinion it could have worked far better if they had mixed several FPS scenes with the other action scenes. The soundtrack was terrible. The atmosphere of the movie suffered very much when background music was something like heavy metal all the time. I think the music had fit far better to the movie if it had contained something like Resident Evil contained (I don't mean that Slipknot track or any other metal tracks).
Overall this movie was probably the best movie based on a video game. It was brutal, well acted and exciting experience.