"Okay who didn't arm their spaceship?" [Finland's representative slowly raises his hand]

I wanted to see Iron Sky as soon as I heard about it. Of course by now I've seen it like three times, but I never wrote anything about it. I guess it's never too late.

Iron Sky is about ... Nazis. Nazis who went to the moon in 1945 and now, well in 2018, they are coming back. Everything starts when President of United States has an election campaign to send two men to the moon - a proper astronaut who gets killed, and a male model who is then caught by Nazis, who get a bit shocked to find out that the man is... well, black. And then, after finding out how powerful "telephone computers" are, they decide to go to earth before they'll tear it apart. The idea is stupid, of course, but that's why it's so brilliant. It's so bizarre that you can't make a bad movie out of it. ...Well, you can, but you can't make a movie that is worse than the idea itself out of it.

I love Vivian Wagner very much - she's the character who seems to be in charge of the president's campaigns. At least she is designing stuff and she introduces president to the people who she thinks will help the president to get re-elected. I'd love to be specific why I love her, but I think telling that would be spoiling the movie. And I'm not taking any risks here.

And of course one thing why I have a special relationship with Iron Sky is that it's a Finnish movie. Well yeah, maybe with little help from Germany and Australia, but it's still... Finnish idea, Finnish movie and everything. And do you have any idea how cool it is to see a start of the movie, where they are landing on moon and effects are really nice and we just think "This... this is Finnish." It makes me feel very patriotic, I guess. 

But I really love the special effects and the scenery. I love how colours are used - or how they are not used, since most of the scenery is very grey, especially on the streets and on the base of the Nazis and all that. Effects are nice, but they aren't overused, I guess. They have some sort of unreal effect, but also they don't look too fake like they could in some B-movie. Not that I'd be judging B-movies, sometimes they do something right, so.

But still, the plot and the characters aren't worth watching the movie the second - or the third - time. It's worth the first time, then it seems very awesome, but after few times it's like... It doesn't give you anything new anymore. Very few movies do, but if they are good movies, you never get sick of them, no matter how often you watch them. But Iron Sky... If you're going to watch it, watch it once, and then not again until, like, when ten years has passed. Then it might be nice again.

☆☆☆☆☆

5/10

"Thought you didn't smoke." "I took it up recently, for my health."

Secret Window is based on a short story "Secret window, secret garden" by none other than Stephen King. I've read the short story - since the only things I can read from King are short stories. I'm not fond of his novels.

Author Mort Rainey is visited by a guy named John Shooter, who claims that Rainey has stolen his story. First Rainey doesn't believe him and claims he's a nutter, but after reading his manuscript he sees that the stories are almost indentical - apart from the ending. And that's what John Shooter is asking - Rainey needs to fix the ending he ruined, since Shooter's ending was perfect.

I've watched this movie when I was about 12, and it was almost as good as I remembered. Maybe watching it many times has ruined it from me. It seemed a lot more boring than I remembered. The only thing I really enjoy, funnily enough, is the ending. And I remember watching this for the first time, realising everything and it really fucked me up. But I think the movie was better than the short story. I think I don't like Stephen King as much as everyone else. I enjoy the movies, not his writing. I don't know why that is.

Usually I think that Johnny Depp is terribly overrated, but I like him in this movie. I can't imagine anyone else playing Mort Rainey - even if there probably is many people who would do that part just fine. It's just that that part is Depp's, and that's that.

And as a writer I enjoy every thriller and good drama where the main character is a write / an author, or whatever. That is something I can identify with much easier than simply characters from the same age group, same sex, or stuff like that. And even though I don't like King, he creates excellent writer characters. Maybe a bit unstable characters, sometimes, but of course that is what he aims for, I think.

But the movie is definitely worth watching.

☆☆☆☆☆☆

"I once read an interesting bit. Most people who die in the woods die of shame."

I saw commercial for The Edge when it was a movie of the week on Fox Finland. It was one of those annoying commercials that I saw ten times a week when watching How I Met Your Mother.

In the movie, three people are stranded on the forest, and they have to survive. Yeah, I said three people, and you can see that there's only two in the cover. Well, let's just say that the third man is black, and it's not very surprising that he dies first. Well anyway, the men must survive the nature, to find their way back to the cottage where they left. And the diabolic bear following and tormenting them doesn't help.

There's one thing that bothered me though - they were on a (very small) plane, and they crashed into a lake, and swam ashore then. But, this one man has matches in their pocket, and they are completely usable. And so are some kind of flares, or whatever they were (they were lost so soon I can't remember right now), and everything was completely useful even if they were all in water. I don't know how that is possible - I mean yeah, the matches were in the pocket, but I don't think Bob's jacket was extremely waterproof.

I really liked the actors. I mean well, it was mostly watching Baldwin and Hopkins, but both of them were very good. I haven't really seen Baldwin anywhere, apart from Beetlejuice, but I don't remember much of that. But he was okay here. And Hopkins was just as marvellous as always - I read on IMDb that he suffered from slipped disk throughout filming, but went with it. I think that's incredible. And he somehow looked extremely gorgeous in this movie. I think I'm praising him too much.

The nature looked very amazing here. And it looked like the kind of forest we have here in Finland. It almost made me want to go camping in the forest or something. Maybe I should do that when we get rid of the snow - and the people who ski. 

The music in this movie reminded me of the music in Silence Of The Lambs. But the composer isn't the same. Maybe it was the eerie atmosphere in the music.. Maybe.

I saw a person on the message boards in IMDb claiming that this was "the stupidest survival movie ever", and I have to disagree with them, as do so many others. The person claimed that it wasn't realistic like "how did they do this and that", while in the very beginning of the film it was made clear that Hopkins' character knew quite a lot about  many things. I think that was a good thing - character reading a lot, knowing a lot, and when it's time when you need that knowledge, someone has it. I'm not saying everything in this movie is very realistic, I mean very few movies are completely realistic, but then what would be the point of making fiction if everything had to be realistic? But I think The Edge was somewhat realistic - apart from the match thing that  bothered me. But the movie gave me an itch to watch more survival movies. Maybe I should finish that one survival game I still haven't finished... 

Also, I never knew I'd hear Anthony Hopkins say "motherfucker."

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆½

"It's as important to be able to describe what I'm doing as it is to do what I'm doing."

I saw the trailer of Chloe when watching Red, and I thought I would most definitely watch it - partly because of Julianne Moore, who I adore so very much, and partly because it seemed very interesting. The main character of the film Catherine, played by Julianne Moore, thinks her husband (Liam Neeson) is cheating on her. So, she hires an escort (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him, to see what he would do, but... well, things get a bit out of hand.

I liked the movie very much. It was nicely erotic and also intense, and those two were nicely mixed. I don't know. Basically, if I categorise this simply as a drama - not paying attention to the genres "thriller" and "mystery", Chloe was everything I look for in a drama. But since it also was a thriller, I enjoyed it very much. (Thrillers are slowly becoming my favourite genre, I think). Maybe the plot was a bit confusing sometimes and some things weren't as clear as some people want them to be. But, well, I guess I like the movies where anyone can somehow have their own theories, like there was a lot of discussion about Chloe's character in IMDb Message boards, so I formed my own opinion about the character and her motives and such.

But I don't think I can figure out one thing I didn't like about this movie. Okay, maybe I didn't like Catherine and David's son, but then again - we never got to know anything about him. He went to therapy, okay, but what for? So, he seemed a bit annoying, but I guess that's mostly because we can't understand the character properly. But that's... okay, since the movie wasn't about him. But no matter how often I say that everything shouldn't be said, it would be nicer to explain characters like that. But that's the only thing that bothers me - but then again there wouldn't have been a scene where they would've explained everything. Like, why would the parents suddenly start talking about why he's in therapy and all that, since they already know? 

Anyway, I liked the movie, and I would recommend it to anyone, who enjoys drama, and... well, somewhat complicated drama. I guess.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

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Also, by the way, I'm going to start tagging all the movie reviews as the genres, since... Well, I don't want to tag everything simply as "movies", since that would mean that tag would eventually be quite full. So I'm going to do it this way. (Maybe one day my blog will consist almost only on movie reviews and all the other tags could get... smaller. I don't know.)

"You think I'm just going to roll over for you hegemonic, Mickey Mouse-loving Americans?" "Leave Mickey out of it!"

Well, I didn't thought I'd say this about a movie, but I loved the sequel more than the original - and for other reasons that Anthony Hopkins, whose performance I must talk to you later. But I liked the plot more, it was interesting, and I loved the bad guy more. Seriously, he was more interesting than the bad guy in the previous movie - who was some sort of vice-president who went crazy in the war and killed people, and then he even wasn't the bad guy and everything was really complicated! But it was much clearer here - well at one point - and the bad guy was jolly good, all my love to him.

Well, now it was easier to me to realise the names of the characters! Maybe they just said the names more often. And again, someone had hired someone to kill Bruce Willis' character - whose name is Frank, by the way. I don't know if I prefer Karl Urban's version of this characters or Byung-hun Lee. Not that they are the same character, just the type of character, and what's their in purpose in the plot. But Byung-hun Lee also did a marvellous  job.

Oh yes, the plot. Well, someone has published something on Wikileaks, about something called "Nightshade", which appears to be a weapon of mass-destruction, created by Doctor Bailey, who the main characters thought was dead. But, Bailey has been locked up for 32 years. And so, they free this man, and they go find the bomb, trying to get rid of it. This is probably not what would be said on the cover of the movie, but that's how I'd explain it. 

Now I could talk about Anthony Hopkins, since his character was a new add. Well, a new add that was interesting, and a bit useful to the plot, I mean that Russian agent, Katja, wasn't that important to the plot and she still was there, I don't know. But Anthony Hopkins played Dr. Bailey, which sort of was funny... Since, uh, he was locked up in "asylum for the criminally insane", and when they opened up his cell, he was listening to classical music. But... it took few seconds and your realise his character was far from Hannibal Lecter. But seriously, Hopkins is amazing actor, and I guess it's partly his fault that Red 2 was so much better than the first one.

Again, maybe the plot isn't anything special, it's an action film plot, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Definitely worth watching, and I will probably watch it again one day. 

"Frank, I never thought I'd say this again. I'm getting the pig!"

RED stands for Retired, Extremely Dangerous.

I wanted to watch RED ever since I had my Bruce Willis phase last year. I don't know how big my phase seemed here, I mean did I watch more than every Die Hard? Probably not. I can't remember. But now I thought that I could watch it - mostly because, you know, I've found another actor I like, and he is in the second part.  So yeah.

But basically anyone who is anyone is in RED - Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Karl Urban... So many actors, so many very bad-ass actors. But there's the little thing that I don't even remember any names of the characters. Basically I've just been referring to the actors in my mind. So basically the movie is about retired CIA agent who someone is trying to kill, and then he gets his old team back and they start... well, fighting back, trying to figure out what all this is about. Yup. And well, Mary-Louise Parker isn't a veteran actor, she's Willis' character's love interest, and she gets dragged into all of this because Willis' character decides to visit her, even though CIA is following him and all that. Yup, very good explanation on the plot. 

But I don't know if the plot is any better than in any action packed movie, but I didn't mind. Maybe action comedies aren't meant to be watched for the plot rather than... other stuff. And okay, the plot isn't bad, but it isn't so special either, it's a basic action plot. But I really liked the movie. It was fun, really fun. I didn't even think I ould like John Malkovich, but he did fantastic job. I wish Freeman had a bigger part, but then again I'm not that big of a fan, I mean I've seen him only in few movies so I don't know. I just don't see him as an action hero? He seems more like a drama guy.

But, anyway, I really liked RED, and I'm looking forward to see the sequel.