hiskih Reviews

The Day the Earth Froze (1959)

Mistreated almost-classic

[6/10 · 13 January 2019]

This Soviet-Finnish co-production was condemned by Finnish critics and other nationalists even before it was made, on the grounds that only Finns could and should ever make a film about the Kalevala. When it was released, their reviews mainly listed things about it that were "un-Finnish". This was most unfair - visually "Sampo" is far more impressive than anything Finnish film-makers could have achieved at the time with their meagre resources. They haven't achieved anything comparable later either.

The digitally restored 2014 Finnish-language version is a pleasure to watch, but torment to hear because of the poorly dubbed verse dialogue and Igor Morozov's totally boring music. I would like to see the Russian-language version, which is probably better - hopefully the dialogue is not in verse. The butchered American version should be ignored.

The Look of Love (2013)

Why so dull?

[3/10 · 15 April 2018]

This film about a famous British pornographer has to be compared with the late Milos Forman's masterpiece "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and it loses in every way. Throughout watching it, I kept thinking: why do the filmmakers want us to be interested about Paul Raymond and the other drug-addicted lowlifes? The film provides no answer, Mr. Raymond is left a shallow character who seems to have no opinion about anything except his business empire.

The drug aspect is vastly over-emphasized. Every second scene has someone snorting cocaine, among other substances. It was a big dramatical mistake to reveal in the beginning that PR's daughter will die in a self-inflicted way, after which we have to wait a hour and a half for her totally predictable demise. I almost fell asleep after the first hour.

The only thing well done is period look. After gloriously black-and white 1950s, the 1960s and 1970s scenes look like actual Sixties and Seventies color films. My respect to the photographer, but none to the scriptwriters or the editor - the pace manages to be at the same time hurried and very boring.

Back in Time for Dinner (2015– )

Wonderful time capsule

[10/10 · 14 February 2017]

I was born in 1968, and watching the 1970s episode was like revisiting parts of my childhood. Everything was _exactly_ accurate: the ghastly decor, the dishes (both the artificial ones and the rise of health food), even the power cuts caused by strikes - not only a British phenomenon. I wonder if the fondue scene was inspired by the comic book "Asterix in Switzerland".

The 1950s and 60s episodes were most interesting too, but obviously not personal experiences for me. I'm looking forward for the 1980s episode next week. A glimpse of the Rubik triangle looked promising...

The family who volunteered for the time travel deserve a medal for their sacrifice to science.

Red State (2011)

Fail, but no epic

[6/10 · 16 September 2016]

This film has severe credibility problems. In fact, I would rather believe everything that happens in a previous Kevin Smith outing, "Dogma". Here, the naturalistic style sets demands for a credible plot, and these demands are not met. The antics of the three youngsters are barely believable, the church services even less so - and the actions of the authorities definitely not.

Apart from credibility, it gets quite depressing. Everyone you supported gets shot, and the characters most deserving to get killed survive. In a normal film, Jared and Cheyenne would survive and fall in love - that would have been predictable, but more entertaining than this gloomfest.

The ending is a complete failure. Apparently the money ran out and the filmmakers were forced to improvise a cheap interrogation scene to tie the loose ends.

On the positive side, Michael Parks is excellent as the patriarch of the cult - exactly as they are in real life. The other actors are all good too, it is a pity that the script lets them down.

Fill the Void (2012)

Anemic

[4/10 · 26 May 2016]

The first time I tried to watch this film I closed the TV about halfway through because it was too static. This time I decided to stick with it to the end, even though my mind kept wandering all the time - it is simply too low-key and visually drab to keep the interest. Just one example: in the early scene where the heroine's sister collapses in the bathroom, we don't see her at all - the camera is stuck somewhere across the room and we are briefly shown alarmed characters outside the bathroom, then cut to the next scene. I wanted to scream: not this way! They should have shown what happens in the bathroom, with camera moving and close-ups of the actors.

Those actors cannot be blamed, they all make you believe that they are the characters they play. Except maybe the leading actress, who is too beautiful for her role - they should have cast someone less glamorous, because she is too much in contrast with the dreariness of everything around her. The major merit of this film is the portrayal of a culture rarely shown in film, but as film-making it badly lacks energy.

Vámmentes házasság (1980)

Marriage for a piece of paper

[5/10 · 21 November 2015]

This Finnish-Hungarian co-production, originating after a wish by President Kekkonen, was reportedly a hit in Hungary but failed completely in Finland, for obvious reasons. The subject - marrying a Westerner to get permission to travel abroad - was close to many Eastern Europeans at the time, but irrelevant to Finns.

As a child, I thought the film was awful. I just re-saw in a cinema, appropriately with a mixed Finnish-Hungarian audience, and it is not as bad as I remembered but not good either. The pace is too slow for comedy, the characters too thin stereotypes for drama, and there are no surprises - some nice details though. The actors are competent, but the technical crew wasn't - there are two scenes with a microphone long visible at the top of the frame!

The wedding sequence seems to have been shot in some regional museum and gives a laughably old-fashioned idea of the Finnish countryside in 1980.

Marple: A Caribbean Mystery (2013) Season 6, Episode 1

Interesting but not remarkable

[6/10 · 21 December 2014]

Starting from a minor but irritating point: whoever thought it a good joke to include Ian Fleming and James Bond did not think about the chronology. The first Bond book was published in 1953, while this story is set in the post-colonial 1960s - the black police inspector tells Marple and Rafiel that the British are not in charge here any longer.

Otherwise, a fairly good job. I knew it was filmed in South Africa but if I hadn't known I would have bought it as a Caribbean island. I haven't been to either place, though. I also haven't read the novel. I have seen the 1983 version with Helen Hayes many years ago, but don't remember a single thing about it.

IMO Antony Sher gave the best performance as the wheelchair-bound millionaire. MyAnna Buring as Lucky is another cast member I will remember, something striking about her. The plot I already forgot, as with most Christie adaptations. The photography could have been more inspired, now it looked a bit muddy most of the time.

Whatever Lola Wants (2007)

Egypt, the land of happy dancing

[6/10 · 31 December 2013]

I watched this film because it is mostly set and partly shot in Egypt, an interesting country. Dancing of any kind does not interest me, I might have fast-forwarded the dancing sequences if it had been a video instead of a TV broadcast. The depiction of Egyptian social norms and customs kept my interest.

The film is mildly sympathetic if a bit slow, a bit predictable and much too cute - every problem the idiot heroine creates for herself is solved too easily. There is a disturbing contrast between the realistic backgrounds and absurd plot. The leading actress is just right as the gorgeous American airhead and all the actors are credible as their characters - the problem is that what the characters do is constantly unbelievable. The ending is extremely lame.

The most annoying thing in the film is the heroine's gay friend. He is such a cliché, we have seen him do the same things in countless films and TV series. Why couldn't this person be an Egyptian woman instead of a gay man? That would have been much more believable and logical.

Munich (2005)

Disappointing propaganda

[3/10 · 30 December 2013]

This overlong film is so visually ugly, monotonous and repetitive that I only watched it to the end because I wanted to see how it portrays the Lillehammer incident, in which the Mossad murdered an innocent man mistaken for one Ali Hassan Salameh. The characters repeatedly say that Ali Hassan Salameh is their main target and two failed attempts on his life are depicted, so everything seems to point toward the Lillehammer case as the dramatic highlight and turning point. To my surprise, it is not mentioned at all. All we get is the end credits telling us that Ali Hassan Salameh was killed by the Mossad in 1979 (not mentioning the other casualties of the hit).

Why? The only answer I can think of is that the filmmakers did not want to show Israeli agents killing an innocent man, even by mistake. They wanted to show the mighty Mossad as capable of everything except mistakes, yet its crafty agents so humane that they suffer heavy stress for killing terrorists (in reality the agents involved denied any such thoughts). This omission makes the whole film a piece of pro-Israel propaganda, not that such a thing ever was a surprise from Hollywood.

Nana (1983)

Miscast lead and other problems

[3/10 · 15 December 2013]

Usually I don't review anything I haven't watched in its entirety, but it was 2 at night, half an hour still to go, and I was certain that I would not miss anything of value by going to sleep. (Was anything produced by Golan and Globus ever of value?) There are two major problems in this film. First is the plot: too many scenes are individual sketches that don't connect to anything. Not that this is a surprise in softcore porn... The second, and worse, problem is Katya Berger. She is supposed to bewitch every man in the film but I totally fail to see how. All I saw was a little girl with zero acting abilities, not even that pretty. OK, the green eyes are cute in close-up, but several other women in the film are far better-looking.

Nothing else is too convincing either. What seemed interesting at first was the presence of the legendary Georges Méliès as a character. There, too, is a dual problem: the two examples of his films do not look like genuine films of the era, and they have none of the inventiveness that was his trademark.

Marple: The Sittaford Mystery (2006) Season 2, Episode 4

What were they thinking?

[4/10 · 10 December 2013]

All through this I tried to detect whether they wanted to turn it into a comedy, almost farce, or did it just come out that way? It is so full of odd camera angles without any point to them, caricatured performances and totally ridiculous plot turns. I haven't read the book, thus cannot compare whether the plot was any more plausible there, but one thing is certain: they should have stuck with the original period. Both the story and the various old-fashioned visual gimmicks have such a strong 1930s flavour that moving the main events into the year 1952 had no chance of working. After the dreadful events of WW II most people did not take supernatural phenomena seriously any more, and the snow-isolated inn format belongs to the pre-war time too.

Speaking of supernatural, this is the only Agatha Christie adaptation I ever saw with ghosts in it. Even worse is the appearance of Winston Churchill - I would not have been surprised if Hitler too had turned up in a flashback.

All the weirdness in style and content made it interesting, but in a bad way: I wanted to know what more silly stuff they had coming. On the positive side, the production values are good and Timothy Dalton, Laurence Fox and Carey Mulligan manage to give good performances in their badly written roles.

Wild Man Blues (1997)

Personality cult in action

[4/10 · 26 October 2013]

The people responsible for this documentary have a problem: they worship Woody Allen and think that absolutely anything he says and does is interesting. Most of the things he says or does _here_ are really not of much interest, even for a fan like me. There are no real interviews of anyone else - they merely co-exist in the shadow of the Great Genius. The result is that the film becomes very monotonous and staying awake becomes a challenge.

Worst of all, the filmmakers seem to hate the music involved, or at least not to understand it: they always cut away at wrong places. I would have preferred much more music and less of Woody talking.

Come to think of it, WA himself occasionally has the same habit of over-emphasizing himself. Every time I come across "Everyone Says I Love You" I get more and more annoyed of his painfully unfunny romance with Julia Roberts, knowing that interesting musical numbers were cut from that film.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Wrong Holmes, bad script

[5/10 · 15 September 2013]

The book has been one of my favorites since childhood. The best thing about this version is the prologue, by far the most impressive visualization of the legend that I have seen. Also, there is much detail to watch throughout. But far too many liberties have been taken with the plot. The ones that annoyed me most were 1) making Sir Henry a heart patient and Miss Stapleton a murderess - so much for their love story; 2) the occult theme that goes nowhere. Who dragged Selden's body to the altar and sacrificed it, and why? I hoped it would turn out to be the Bishop... and 3) making Dr. Mortimer a suspect. Why would he have involved Holmes in the first place, if he had crimes to hide?

The casting is really awful. I may respect Peter Cushing in other films, but he is simply the WRONG actor to play Holmes: too short, too weak and old-looking. Christopher Lee should have played Holmes (he did in the 1962 film "Sherlock Holmes and the Necklace of Death") and Cushing should should have been Dr. Mortimer, if he really was needed here. Andre Morell is bland as Watson, and incompetent too: as soon as he is warned about the swamp he steps in it and has to be rescued by the villains! Some protector for Sir Henry.

The Promise (2011)

Ambitious try

[7/10 · 3 July 2013]

The British period in Palestine is a fascinating topic that I have never before seen treated in films or TV. Unfortunately, Mr. Kosminsky saw fit to include a modern parallel story, set in 2005. The modern story is unbelievable to the point of absurdity, and offers nothing we haven't seen before. Also, it takes too much time from the more interesting 1940s story, leaving the characters too thin for this length.

Politically, the series is anything but neutral. Arabs are presented as noble, innocent victims of Jewish land theft and terror (in both stories) and British bullying. The British are shown as benevolent rulers, if occasionally brutish. The Jews of the 1940s, sympathetic-looking at first, all turn out to be evil Irgun fanatics whose cruelty and heartlessness has no limits. I know the atrocities depicted are historical (although it is impossible for our hero Len to witness all of them, especially Deir Yassin) but why aren't we shown any Arab wrongdoing at all? The modern story does have a couple of nice Jews - those with leftist views and Palestinian friends.

The actors are good, but Len is too soulful for a hardened WWII veteran - he spends the whole of episode 4 almost bursting in tears. In real life, he would have been court-martialed or at least transferred much earlier, after telling his captain that he revealed the information that got two of his mates murdered.

Both the 1940s and 2005 British protagonists end up participating actively in the conflict, on the Arab side of course. This is a spoiler but definitely not a surprise to the viewer.

Pulakapina (1977)

Too crude and one-sided

[4/10 · 6 April 2012]

Mikko Niskanen's ambitious study of the notorious 1931-32 events in Nivala, Ostrobothnia, is quickly derailed by its too heavy side-taking. As expected, Niskanen is on the side of the poor common farmers who are oppressed by the banks, the police and other authorities just because they like to be nasty. The characters of the oppressors are far too caricatured, and those of the oppressed too saintly. Of course, Niskanen himself plays the most saintly of them all.

Niskanen, a native of Central Finland, did not know Ostrobothnia very well and it shows. The dialect is mostly absent, and occasional attempts to remind us of Ostrobothnian pride come off as theater. The visual look of the place and period is carefully crafted, and location shooting saves a lot, but looking right does not help if the film sounds wrong - notably the musical score, which apart from the Christian hymns is far too modern.

The political aspects of the story are curiously muted. There are several references to the Speaker of the Parliament who does nothing to help the farmers, but his name is never mentioned, neither is the crucial fact that he himself was a farmer from Nivala - Kyösti Kallio, who later became President of Finland. When the former rebels set up a new political party, it is not mentioned that they got 30 to 50 % support in the region and two MPs. Also, it barely hinted at that their votes primarily came from former supporters of Kallio's Agrarian League. I get the feeling that to ensure the local support for the project Niskanen had to submit his script to the supervision of local Center Party (continuation of the Agrarian League) politicians.

Like several films by Niskanen, this one deserves credit for tackling a daring theme completely ignored by other Finnish film-makers, but the execution is much too flawed.

Syksyllä kaikki on toisin (1978)

Scenes close to my childhood

[4/10 · 31 October 2010]

I have a lot to relate to in this film. I grew up in a small Central Finnish town, near to where this was shot, and municipal politics was part of our daily life. The sense of time and place are very strong (unlike most Finnish films set in the countryside). Even though many of the actors are familiar from numerous roles, they all make convincing characters.

The main problem is that the municipal satire (occasionally descending into lowbrow farce) seems a completely different film from bank director Haapanen's personal tragedy. The former is lively and fascinating, the latter boring, uninteresting, one-note and laughable. There are many undeveloped themes (the right-wingers who influence things from prison, the gravestone swindlers) and unbelievable scenes, most notably the first crook who bothers to build an illegal radio system to insult the municipal leaders before escaping with everyone's money. Diversions like this clash with the general realism too badly.

Critics were annoyed by director Niskanen's star performance - he had played too many tormented, well-meaning men who are crushed by their circumstances. The critical slurs hurt him so much that he didn't play the leading role in any of his later films. I think that his performance is very good, it is the script that he should have thought about more carefully.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

Disappointed

[3/10 · 14 January 2008]

I finally saw this "classic" and was hugely disappointed. The photography is excellent and some of the actors (Greenwood, Guinness, Price - in that order) are good, but there are two major problems. First, this is supposed to be a comedy but I smiled only once: when Louis, after several murders, reluctantly has to go hunting and tells the viewer that he disapproves of bloodsports because of his principles. Second, the story is just not interesting. This is mainly because there is not a single character whose fate I could care about. The victims are only caricatures, and Louis is such a bore that I soon kept hoping that they would hang him and get the film over with.

This is not the first time a supposed Ealing classic has left me stone cold. I also found "Whisky Galore", "The Lavender Hill Mob" and "The Ladykillers" almost totally unfunny. I know that this could cause me to be refused to ever enter Britain again, but such is life.