Lavonardo

Of Michael Mann’s considerably good output Heat remains the top entry.

The 1995 heist movie excels in showing off the cat and mouse game between the robber and the cop. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, here in their first scenes together, spark when they touch – and both characters brim with charisma and determination. The intense coffeehouse scene settles the fact that only one of these guys will be alive when the credits roll in, but that discussion is conducted inconspicuously and in an exquisitely civil manner.

We want to hurt no one. We’re here for the bank’s money, not your money. Your money is insured by the federal government, you’re not gonna lose a dime. Think of your families, don’t risk your life. Don’t try and be a hero.

Thus there’s no avoiding a collision. And that indeed happens with city-shattering force.

But the minutes ticking towards the conclusion are as necessary to the movie as the violence inherent in the last moments. The plans towards robberies are shown in great detail. And both the policemen and criminals are shown to be human beings. Most of whom are carrying a lot of baggage. These sidetracks occasionally threaten to muddle the plot. But life’s rarely free of complications, and hence the extra issues do not feel like they have been glued on.

In addition to the leading duo, the cast is packed with talent. The likes of Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore fall in perfectly into McCauley’s crowd of high-end criminals while Ashley Judd, William Fichtner and Natalie Portman round out the extra helping of complications.

As with Mann’s other films (and Miami Vice, too), the cityscapes have a role to play here. Apart from Blade Runner L.A. has rarely looked finer – with glorious nightscenes alternating giving way to beach houses, and finally to a bloodbath in the financial district.

Heat is a long film. It clocks in at close to three hours. But slicing off any would make it a lesser experience.

Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro is a film I return to, over and over again.

The tale of a sundered family takes a left turn towards Sense of Wonder-City at the first opportunity and remains there for the rest of the movie. The plot is not an overly sweet story, but contains plenty of drama. And the drama is of the proper kind – there are no bad guys, no ADHD-styled chases and absolutely no explosions, just situations that demand painful choices of the protagonists.

Fortunately, the drama is adequately balanced with fantasy – weird creatures and uncommon domestic transformations are slotted into the somber story without visible seams.

Still haven’t seen the movie with anything than the original voices. The Disney-engineered dub is allegedly quite passable, and hopefully it erases one of the very few of my pet peeves about the film: there’s just too much shrill laughter in the beginning.

The Totoro merchandise is ubiquitous in Japan. The empire may not yet rival that of Hello Kitty, but the paunchy trolls are definitely closing in on Sanrio’s pale kitten. The cultural impact merits its own section in wikipedia, and is quite informative – the appearances range from an asteroid to a cameo role in Toy Story 3.

Like many of Miyazaki’s films, Totoro occurs in an idealized version of Japan. Here the milieu is rural, and dated somewhere around early sixties.

Totoro works effectively on all levels. It is an engaging movie for adults as well, without regressing to the injokes and pop-culture intertextuality so prevalent in the likes of Shrek and Pixar movies.

Watch Totoro. Or watch it again. It’ll rub meaningful amounts of cynicism off everyone who spends the ninety minutes enthralled.

I was given the dvd of Duncan Jones’ Moon with the simple recommendation: “Watch this, you’re bound to like it”. And I did, I certainly did.

Moon is by far the best science fiction movie in a long time. Where science is more than semi-believable, and the fiction involves very few explosions, bug-eyed aliens or plot-holes Nostromo would easily fit through.

Moon is a film about a lone and lonely man at the end of his three year stint in a Helium-3 mining colony in the moon. Routine turns into something completely different and very soon the life on the base evolves far beyond the terms of Sam’s original contract. About that much can be said without spoiling the plot. And in a movie like this, spoilers would indeed rob unaware viewers of something.

Sam Rockwell is the only actor on screen for the almost entire duration of Moon. And he manages to convince all of the circumstances that turn from boring into desperate. Kevin Spacey provides the voice of GERTY, the base computer. The role could have easily been a rehash of HAL or any other malicious artificial intelligence that seem to be dime a dozen. However, both the plot and Spacey’s low-key acting retain uniqueness until the end.

The environment is both claustrophobic and wide open. The base is rather roomy, and the moon itself boasts plains that stretch from horizon to horizon. The base is sterile and blindingly white, and probably an environment in which confinement of three years is just about the maximum.

Moon is a complete film, and the news of a sequel seem rather odd. Then again, Mute is billed as a related quasi-sequel only, not a direct continuation of the story.

I can only refrain the original recommendation – Moon is a fine film and well worth watching by anybody who doesn’t have an allergic reaction to smart science fiction. The slight demerits are awarded for sometimes odd pacing and an uncomfortable reminiscence to Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 remake of Solaris.

Tim Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland is now officially his greatest hit. The candyland rendition of Lewis Carroll’s book is currently the fifth-highest grossing film of all time.

Quite a feat, quite a feat – considering that this is by no means the director’s finest film, nor a particularly good version of the novel.

I have nothing against the framing device of the plot. Alice, now a dozen years older, returns to Wonderland by accident in order to escape an unwanted suitor. However, the plot degenerates to fantasy cliches towards the end of the film and that quite significantly lowers the lofty heights of psychedelic sense of wonder the first half rises.

Burton’s choice for the protagonist is an unknown australian actress. Mia Wasikowska survives the ordeal well – she’s appropriately perplexed in the beginning and suitably determined when donning the armor to face the jabberwocky.

Johnny Depp’s role as the as the manic Mad Hatter headlined the advertising campaign. Alice is Johnny Depp’s seventh time in Tim Burton’s movies. He by no means has overstayed his welcome, but at times the antics of the mercury-poisoned hatmaker have a definite familiarity them.

Helena Bonham-Carter is even more manic as the Red Queen that is attempting to take over Wonderland. It’s her sixth turn in her husband’s movie. But unlike Depp, the role doesn’t grate in the slightest. Apart from the physical malformity that is – for some reason the Queen is saddled with a gigantic head.

The third cornerstone of a Burton movie is a Danny Elfman soundtrack. And that is present as well. In a form that does not raise any eyebrows at all. The “inspired by” soundtrack is quite a bit more interesting, though absent from the actual movie.

Quite a few of the biggest guns, casting-wise, never put an appearance on screen. Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman are present as animated characters only. Fry’s condescending cat is quite all right, Rickman’s jaded caterpillar ends up being the finest bit in the movie.

Alice is a three-dimensional film. But unlike the likes of Avatar, it was filmed using conventional cameras and the additional dimension inserted in the post-production phase. Hence the use of z-axis is quite subdued, and oftentimes it is easy to forget about it.

Alice in Wonderland is financially Tim Burton’s finest hour thus far. Too bad the last third of the film is so thoroughly mired in fantasy cliches. A severe minus for them is countered by a plus for Wonderland itself. Visually and thematically odd, it shows that there was potential for quite a bit more.

I expected to like The Wrestler, but in the end found it an OK movie and not the testosterone-fuelled tragedy as it was claimed to be.

In my opinion Mickey Rourke returned to the limelight much earlier than last year. Even before his turn as Marv in Sin City, he’d put in a good performance as “the Cook” in Jonas Åkerlund’s underrated Spun.

He’s obviously magnificent as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a performer for whom the glory days of the eighties, hair metal, pro-wrestling and rampant steroid use have turned into struggling existence in the gloomy noughties. Apart from Marisa Tomei as Cassidy, Randy’s pretty much only friend, the rest of the cast is low-key. That does not matter – this is not a glitzy star vehicle, the characters are all fundamentally broken and the actors’ performances well-matched.

As stated, I wanted to like this film, but for some reason the emotional floodgates never really opened. Instead of identifying the wrestler hellbent in wrecking his life, I remained an aloof observer. That diminished the impact of the bleakness enough not to land this film anywhere on the podiums it got raised. Not the director’s fault, and Mickey Rourke is not to be blamed either.

The ending was pleasantly non-Hollywood.

Postings about travel are not the only thing that’s rather delayed. There are more than half a dozen movie reviews in the backlog.

Of which the chronologically first one shall be the one popped from the top of the stack.

Watched Jonathan Mostow’s Surrogates on the flight back from Tokyo. While the film had decent casting and a sizable budget, it turned out to be one of the most disappointing films seen in quite a while.

The near future tale of replicant bodies (the “surrogates” of the title) has an awkward and badly realized premise, and things are not much improved in the two plodding hours the plot takes to run its course.

Surrogates never really engages the viewer, that’s its main fault. It feels as if the scriptwriters and director do not dare to shift to a bigger gear. Even if there’s plenty of action on screen, it all feels hollow and distant. In a world populated by human shells this may be intentional, but seems an awkward choice for a mainstream movie.

Don’t expect much, and you’ll get what youy bargained for.

Watched Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner off a recently picked up bluray disc.

And continued to be awed.

Doubly so on account of the amazing visuals. The new format wrings even more sense of wonder out of the iconic imagery. The pyramid-ridden L.A. landscape full of advertisements never looked prettier.

It’s been a decade since I last watched Blade Runner. And it is still as inspiring as it has been. The story, with its undercurrents of questionable humanity, loneliness, corporations going beyond what is good for anybody, is as poignant as ever before. And the characters, especially Rutger Hauer’s far beyond driven Roy Batty, convince both in dialogue as well as through their actions. Vangelis’ haunting music thrums in the background, never distracting from the visual fireworks.

Masterpiece, nothing less.

Bear with me, the backlog of overdue movie reviews is getting shorter one by one.

Grant Heslov’s Men Who Stare At Goats is an oddly satirical war movie that manages to surprise and amuse, yet never reaches the highlights of the genre such as M.A.S.H. or Catch-22.

The film is based on Jon Ronson’s book with the same name, and provides insight (genuine or imagined) into a psychic warfare unit within the united states military.

The tale is far from serious, yet it rarely attempts to be funny outright – preferring to smirk knowingly at the viewers rather than make them burst out in laughter.

George Clooney leads the ensemble cast, and is convincing as the deadpanning Jedi Warrior. Jeff Bridges has the most fun in the movie, as the ponytailed master of the psychic soldiers he reigns over the rest. Ewan MacGregor once again walks through his role without much effort – though as the everyman narrator, that’s a lesser sin than in most of his recent output.

Length-wise the film is just about right. It ends before boredom threatens, clocking in at unexpectedly soon at one and a half hours.

Bonus half a star for Kevin Spacey’s evil moustache.

In the long line of overdue movie reviews: James Cameron’s Avatar, a film which will have a tremendous effect on the future of the film industry, one way or the other.

In short: the two and half hours of three-dimensional adventure is a visual wonderland that consistently surpasses itself in providing eyecandy, but sadly the plot is basic and predictable to the extreme.

Indeed, the tale of cultures clashing and one man daring to attempt bridging the two is familiar from Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves and countless others. Obviously the native american epics did not finish with a fight against an exo-skeleton equipped menace, but ultimately Avatar offers nothing new plotwise.

But few people come to Avatar concentrating on the finesse of the plot. The visual aspects have been drummed up in the massive advertising campaign, and the crew has done an amazing job to create a convincing alien environment on Pandora. The lush jungles teem with detail, and the sense of wonder builds up through the throwaway details lavished on screen.

But the effect starts to wear thin during the long movie – and as the film descends to a combat-dominated last segment, there’s nothing new to show. Just multiple and repeated ways of warfare between the human invaders and the native life clinging onto the last chance to stave off the conquerors.

And while the alien wildlife is convicing enough – my suspenders of disbelief were seriously strained by the appearance of a quasi-dragon and finally snapped with the appearance of rogerdeanesque flying rocks that stand out like sore thumbs in an otherwise respectably fantasy-free environment.

Sam Worthington, headlining yet another major genre film, flawlessly executes the part of a marine thrust into the life in an alien world. Stephen Lang is the main human adversary, almost the same role as Michael Biehn’s in the Abyss, two decades ago. Giovanni Ribisi and Joel David Moore (Fisher from Bones, took a good while to recognize him without a permanent frown) are the few human faces to recognize – Sigourney Weaver’s time is effectively split between the real and avatared presence.

The crop of Avatar is inevitably a procession of expensive 3D productions that attempt to repeat the success of Cameron’s film. Hopefully the role of a scriptwriter will not be neglected in these followups. And thankfully, the mainstream going ever more expensive is going to leave a lot of room for the more independent filmmakers to operate in.

Watched Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! on the flight to Osaka.

Apart from Matt Damon’s glorious performance in the starring role the movie was not that good. Maybe it was the less than optimal surroundings and terrible sound quality, but the film felt way too long and not really entertaining.

The film twists between a comedy and a tale of corporate greed. For starters. Towards the end it takes a far darker turn. Uncomfortably enough, it’s the last twenty-odd minutes that actually rescue it from utter oblivion.

Better than the alternatives (Hachiko, Surrogates, Blind Side, and a plenty of movies seen already), but not that good altogether.

Kathryn Bigelow’s multi-oscar winner Hurt Locker was a good war movie and a far worthier of the best movie accolade’s than the blueskinned monstrosity by the director’s ex-husband.

The film’s subjects form a bomb squad in IED-plagued Iraq. The ever-present stress of the profession turns into a sustaining high for the protagonist. Jeremy Renner plays the high-strung yet skillful expert with an expert undercurrent of unpredictable menace. The highest profile members of the cast are gone in minutes, the stage is set for lesser known actors. All of whom do excel in their roles as bomb squad members.

Watched the movie off a dvd, and the forty inch television is no replacement for viewing massive explosions on the movie screen. The film never descends into the depths of pyrotechnological porn despite the subject. After all it was shot using 16-millimeter equipment for a less refined image.

Hurt Locker is a good film, but hardly the definitive film about the conflict in Iraq.

The first in the rather overdue triplet of Oscar-candidate movies is Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, a movie that manages to do two rare things – show a genuinely vulnerable side of usually sterling George Clooney and to provide a plot twist that actually surprises.

George Clooney’s airmile-hogging Ryan Bingham is a professional terminator, a consultant hired to sack employees. His world is turned upside down by the arrival of two women. Two women whose actresses both picked up best supporting actress-nominations in the Oscars. Both Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick inspire awe in their roles, and bodes well for their careers in the future. As employees to be terminated, J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifanakis both completely steal the lone scenes they are in.

Up in the Air is an effortlessly pleasant film that combines drama and comedy to a well-wrapped package. The subject of layoffs and rampant flying is about zeitgeisty as they get. The protagonist’s quest for meaning in a company evolving to a wrong direction can easily be related to.

But like Reitman’s debut, Juno, there’s a nagging hollowness in the film. The characters exhibit occasional thinness, and the freely flowing dialogue triggers artificialo-meter a couple of times. But the good times far outweigh the lapses, and Up in the Air is definitely recommended as an existential romantic comedy that manages to pack in a lot of the quintessential noughties elements.

The new Star Trek movie directed by J.J. Abrams didn’t suck at all, and forms the beginning of a rebooted franchise without devaluing the previous movies and television shows.

A lot of that accomplishment is due to some parallel universe-related trickery, which doesn’t feel like a too heavy-handed plot device once its details have been revealed. To say more would invite accusations of launching military-grade spoilers.

The new crew acquits itself well. Mostly. The new Kirk and Spock, played by Chris Pine and Zachary “Sylar” Quinto, respectively, fit their roles perfectly. The others either do not get screen-time (Simon Pegg’s atrociously über-scottish take on Scotty) or are plagued by inconsistent script (Sulu as a fighter does not convince, nor Karl Urban’s rather bipolar Bones McCoy). And the less said about the eager beaver Chekov, the better (at least he gives Pegg a good run for his money on the worst accent).

The plot contains holes a planet caravan could drive through. They are visible in the major arc as well as sub-optimal plot devices used throughout the story. And that ultimately fails the movie. While my suspenders of disbelief do not snap under universe-bending causality-defying plot devices, it’s the commonplace lack of attention that does (like abandoning an appropriately mutionous Kirk on a deadly ice world).

The visual effects obviously surpass any seen in previous Trek films, and some of the scenery is indeed awe-inspiring. Perhaps the greatest sense of wonder is invoked by a sight of the Enterprise being built. There are plenty of intertextual bits in the script – starting with Kirk’s mentor (Christopher Pike was the protagonist in the original Star Trek pilot, quickly ousted in favour of William Shatner’s Kirk).

Two sequels are already on their way, so the ailing franchise can be considered to have been successfully rebooted indeed. But the creative team needs to really work on the scripts of any future installments.

To cork my brand new bluray-player (ie. the PS3), I chose a film supposedly filled to the brim with eyecandy to show off the capabilities, and wasn’t disappointed. While the Wachowski brothers’ Speed Racer is not a deep film, it showcases the 1080p images perfectly.

Speed Racer is a kids’ film, based on a sixties anime series. The futuristic plot (where everything centers on high-speed car races) brings forth fast action, plenty of color and overly excited cinematography.

At one point in the film the protagonist’s brother and his pet chimpanzee go on a sugar-fuelled joyride. This is an adequate description of the entire film, the layers and layers of high-gloss CGI imagery upon each other is the key element of the film, it does not aim any higher or deeper than the optical nerve cells of the viewers.

Which it does, perfectly, the imagery is nothing short of phenomenal, and impossible to reasonably describe with mere text. The races are blatantly over the top – but sadly rather boring on account of complete disregard of physics. When there’s little in the way of reality to affect the behaviour of a wildly spinning car, the excitement diminishes within seconds.

Even though the plot and scenery are über-saturated with color, morally the world is black & white, leading to a simplistic storyline. However, there are some twists and turns in the script (drawn from years of background material), so Speed Racer avoids being a totally brainless film.

The acting is almost inconsequential in the film, the humans are not a dominating element in the proceedings. Emile Hirsch is a blank slate in the Harry Potter-style, Christina Ricci cute as ever, and Roger Allam imitates Tim Curry in his mega-villain role.

However, despite the harsh-ish words, the film did retain my interest. On visuals alone. Well enough that I missed one fifth of its soundtrack – Skynyrd’s Free Bird slipped by unnoticed.

The ten euros spent on this were not wasted. Even though it’s unlikely to get a second spin in the player – I will definitely offer it to friends as a proof of the technology’s achievements over conventional dvd.

EDIT: Make it “Wachowski siblings” instead of “brothers”, above, since Larry has turned into Lana since the Matrix Revolutions…

I liked the Coen brothers’ latest film, A Serious Man, a lot less than I expected. The very very traditional “movie on the day before christmas eve” turned out to be not so inspiring an experience.

The pain was mainly on account of the protagonist, Larry Gopnik, the eponymous Serious Man, who is hit with a set of misfortunes that borders on biblical proportions. The character seems to be utterly unable to deal with any of his issues that range from a divorcing wife to attempted bribery at work, via a bizarre uncle who has serious clashes with common sense. The lack of action taken leads to massive vicarious embarrassment in the viewers. The ubiquitous black humor is only implied – it’s the absurdity of the situations that is funny, rather than the situations themselves.

The film revels in its setting, a jewish neighbourhood in late sixties. There are a lot of mazel tovs thrown around, though fewer oy veys than I’d have expected. The era is not forced upon the viewer, though a lot of characters do smoke, and Jefferson Airplane lyrics get quoted by ranking synagogue officials.

A Serious Man opens in media res for the main characters (after the odd prologue set a century or so ago), meanders through several tangled plotlines and ends with a cliffhanger worthy of an old testament verse or two.

Not a bad film by any means, A Serious Man proves that the Coen brothers have once again negotiated yet another genre.

(This is a long overdue review, been so much otherwise occupied that this fell by the wayside).

Saw the middle part of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium-trilogy, Flickan som lekte med elden, and wasn’t quite as impressed as with the first installment. Daniel Alfredson’s film is made for television, and the lower production values than what Män som hatar kvinnor had are apparent.

The plot seems rushed, but that is borne out of necessity. The book is long, the movie cannot afford to explore every nook and cranny of the rambling take of many converging plotlines. A lot has been omitted, but the film still manages to make sense most of the time (and probably leads watchers who have not read the novel to wonder about the gaping holes).

Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander continues to shine, even though the script turns her from a quiet hacker into a Remo Williams-type all around hero. But apart from her and Michael Nykvist as the male protagonist, the cast is mostly forgettable, probably the greatest damage of a much lower budget hit here.

Not bad, but compared to the potential this had, rather a disappointment.

As with the book, this is the first half of a bigger work, and the film cuts off at a very cliffhanger-y moment, laying the path for the third part Luftslottet som sprängdes, due out in Finland on the first of January.

Watched Pete Docter’s second Pixar film, Up today, in 3D and with the original vocals. The previous Pixar movies have all been good, and the latest piece was by no means any different.

As usual, the main event is preceded by an unrelated short. Partly Cloudy continues the streak of excellence and surrealism. To say anything of the plot would be spoilage, so I’l just recommend a prompt arrival on the seat and preparations for serious fun.

And the fun continues in Up as well. The plot alternates between drama, exploration and wild action. All mixed up in ninety minutes of well-packed animation. But not perfect. The mix between hyperactive and slow is only to be expected, but some scenes do drag on and border on boring.

Up features an unexpected protagonist – Carl Fredricksen is eighty years old and not even very grumpy. His life, and a happy marriage with Ellie, is summed up in a truly beautiful silent stretch. The plot starts from a Hitchhiker’s Guide-like premise – a house is about to be flattened, and the escape to a new world happens in an unexpected fashion.

The cast of the movie is limited – there are no female characters outside the flashback sequence, and altogether the number of characters is much smaller than the usual cartoon fare.

The extra dimension is used very subtly. The action scenes do not have any mobile distractions streaking towards the watchers, the added depth is used mainly in wide outdoor vistas.

The two next films from the studio are sequels. I have full faith in Toy Story 3 being nothing short of amazing, but the over-merchandized Cars has a hard time measuring up.

It’s been over a month since I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, a triumphant return after quite a few years absence.

Inglourious Basterds is curious beyond its misspelled name. According to the director himself, it is a “spaghetti western but with World War II iconography”, and the characterization is not off the mark. This film puts quite a different spin on the rather formalized war movie-genre, setting the scene of a military fairy tale by the introductory text “once upon a time in nazi-occupied France”.

The plot strip mines cliches, and adds to them an odd superheroic element. The eponymous Basterds are a troop of jewish soldiers, led from a maniacally hillbilly Brad Pitt on a rampage to frighten the nazis in the Vichy-governed France of 1941. But there are plenty of lighter moments in the script – such as a demented game of mistaken identities played in a cellar bar.

Pitt’s characterization of his lieutenant Aldo Rain is superseded by an enemy character. Christopher Waltz’s scheming Hans Landa is a complex character who takes the plot to a wildly spinning ride on the second half of the movie. Pitt’s dirty dozen is mostly nondescript – functional, but devoid of charisma. Mike Myers puts on a surprise role as a british officer. He’s on screen just long enough not to grow too annoying.

Basterds is entertainment, it does not offer closure or a deeper message. And looking for any is bound to disappoint. Looking for the lofty heights of dialogue in Tarantino’s first two films is also doomed to fail. While this is an improvement over the Kill Bill-sequence, the spoken word is functional rather than expansive.

Recommended.

And Tarantino’s next steps are interesting to see – there’s little indication where he’ll turn next.

Watched Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons in the plane. Operative word being watched. Since notwithstanding the rather good personal entertainment system in the seatback, the headphones were beyond awful. So I think I missed easily more than half of the dialogue in the movie.

The film, a follow-up to 2006 Da Vinci Code was not that entertaining. I clearly do not have a soft spot for running around in old churches in Rome. Tom Hanks again acts like he’s on horse tranquillizers, and whoever replaced Audrey Tatou ends up being just some local color on the side.

CERN’s presence is turned down significantly from the book – this time there are no experimental aircraft zipping across the skies of Europe.

Better access to dialogue would probably increase the grade a little. Maybe. I wasn’t that big a fan of the book either.

The third and last movie of the Merihätä festival was Pirate for the Sea, an autobiography of sorts on Paul Watson, a Canadian environmental activist.

Paul Watson’s story is told in pieces – there are a couple of lengthier segments, cut with soundbites from interviews, newscasts and the like. Watson’s short career in Greenpeace is given a few minutes, before the newly set up Sea Shepherd Conservation Society took up the mantle of an active player – not restricted to merely “bearing witness” instead of intervening.

This is not a movie for everybody. The imagery is very graphic in Pirate for the Sea. Whales are killed and carved to pieces, seals clubbed and skinned. Those easily upset by animal cruelty will be hurt.

The film overlaps quite a bit with Sharkwater, even using the very same footage. A few scenes are told differently – the “escape” from Costa Rican waters turns out to have been far less dramatic occasion than is shown in Rob Stewart’s film.

The second film of the Merihätä festival was Rob Stewart’s Sharkwater.

Compared to the first film, this is a far more personal take on a subset of the subject. Appropriately Sharkwater concentrates on the plight of sharks, and the constant abuse they take in the hands of fin collectors.

Sharkwater is a very pretty film. The underwater scenes alternate between crisp colors to haunting vistas where the lone sharks are silhouetted against a sunlight glowing through the surface.

But it’s not all pretty fish, all the time.

As a contrast, the fish-butchering scenes are downright brutal, and the indifference towards fellow creatures shown by the fishermen almost inexplicably cruel.

The first part takes the director’s fascination for sharks for granted and briefly explains their natural history.

The second half of the movie is taken up by Rob Stewart’s journey on Paul Watson’s ship to two shark-friendly waters off the coast of Costa Rica. The journey ends up being a lot more than anybody bargained for, and turns to tragedy on multiple levels.

Despite the end being reasonably happy, the first lines of the credits return viewers down to earth. During the time it takes to watch the movie, thousands of sharks are killed.

It’s a frightening shark movie – for the sharks, that is. Their lot on earth is not a happy one. Unlike pandas and whales, not many folks take an active role in trying to save the last shreds of the family. According to calculations (no real reference provided in the film), the stocks are depleted up to 90%.

Sharkwater is a very personal vehicle for the director (who also works as the actor with most screen time, scriptwriter, narrator and cameraman). At times the action turns a bit narcissistic, but fortunately ends up on the comfortable side.

The first movie of today’s Merihätä film festival was Rupert Murray’s The End of the Line.

The film sets off to explain why the fish stocks of the world are depleted, and what are the appropriate measures to take to combat the progress. The three-step approach is outlined on the campaign’s website.

The End of the Line is a very talky film. Based on a book by Charles Clover, it marches a series of experts onto the screen to explain what is going on. The various interviewees are invariably well-spoken, and most of the segments are both brief and pointful enough to retain the interest of all but the most jaded of viewers. It’s not all talking heads, all the time, thankfully. There are plenty of pretty visuals, old advertisements and newsreports to spice up the message.

And the message is indeed bleak, the current methods of harvesting the sea are spectacularly unsustainable. And as such, the expected end of fish dawns around the year 2048.

The film is an “underwater version of inconvenient truth” and should be watched by as large audience as Al Gore’s piece got.

Following the show, a spokesperson from the WWF briefly took the stage and explained how the movie’s pathway to a more sustainable future can be achieved from a finnish perspective. And distributed conveniently small booklets on which kinds of seafood are to be either recommended or avoided.

Watched Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation off a dvd the other day.

The movie is filmed inbetween the two first Godfather movies, but far lesser known than the twin mafia films.

And compared to the Godfather-movies, the Conversation is a far smaller film in both scope and scale.

It concerns the world of audio surveillance, and the geeks who seek to improve on the currently available rather primitive technologies. And obviously the ends to which the technology can be put.

Apart from Gene Hackman in the starring role, the casting is packed with Coppola’s regulars: a youthful Harrison Ford, John Cazale (Fredo Corleone) and an uncredited appearance by Robert Duvall nicely round out the otherwise rather unremarkable selection of actors.

Gene Hackman is quite unlike any of his roles as Harry Caul. As the sharpest needle in the box he could be bound for great things, but the past burdens him with a lot of emotional baggage.

As a seventies conspiracy/mindtwister-movie few things are as they first seem in the Conversation, and the level of paranoia is only increased by the fragility of the protagonist’s mind.

Capped summer vacation with a comedy I thought would finish the holiday on a positive note. But that didn’t happen, Brüno was surprisingly weak and conspicuously so when compared against the 2006 Borat (which probably deserves a higher mark than the 3.5 stars originally allocated to it).

Where Borat pulled its laughs mainly from the outraged expressions on screen, Brüno relies in provoking disgust in the audience, not in the cast. It is almost desperate in trying to flaunt common norms to shock. Which it does, repeatedly, but the effects are far less memorable than Borat’s wild ride through the American subconscious. Another factor playing against Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie is the lack of verity – most of the segments feel acted, as opposed to being genuine. The scenes with child actors parents (chillingly inhuman), Ron Paul (mostly a wasted opportunity) and Paula Abdul are pretty much the only ones where the old Ali G. mindtwisting occurs. According to the relevant section in the wikipedia article a lot more is indeed filmed in front of an unsuspecting audience (including the final scene), but due to the nature of the content they indeed seem acted.

Borat ended up being an altogether pleasant movie about a comically deluded buffoon that ultimately reflected the folks the Kazakhstani reporter encountered. Brüno, on the other hand, is a misanthropic film that never really delivers the high impact satire it could. Instead it resorts to cheap and repetitive laughs.

It’s worrisome when the best performance in a movie is Snoop Dogg’s, but that’s pretty much the final score with Brüno. Sacha Baron Cohen comes off overreaching almost the whole time. His jokes vary between lame to hilarious, but again the flow is nowhere near as natural as it was in Borat. A big problem is the fact that Brüno is so unpleasant a character that very few people encountered on screen seem to be willing to have any interaction with him. That leads to a choppy cut – most of the scenes are rather short, and there’s no crescendo of cluelessness like the driving instruction was in Borat.