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juhagman
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Tyttöjen ilta (2008)
Insightful
A very good short film that tells a story about a girls' night out. Saara, a thirty something woman living in a working class suburb of Helsinki goes for a night out with a friend. Meantime her teenager daughter has an ad hoc home party her own with her friends.
The film has quite a few insights into the some of the aspects of lives of both teenagers and their mothers in Finland of today. These are presented in quite a funny way but it makes the viewer sometimes feel ashamed for the characters.
The film draws quite interesting parallels of the lives and behavior of the mother and daughter. They seem to have same problems, and they both are equally insecure with their relationships. They both also seem to be unhappy with their age and try to live a life of a 20 year olds'. It is quite sad but seems all too common nowadays.
Running Scared (2006)
Total waste of time
Let's begin with the positive things, casting was successful and the actors did what they could, in addition to that editing had a nice flow to it added with a few nice tricks. Unfortunately this does not mean that the film was a grand succé.
This film serves as a perfect example of a story overflow. If you try to put Mafia (both Russian and Italian), ice hockey, child abuse, pimps, family violence, hookers, pedophiles, dirty cops, some sex and an irrational amount of violence in 90 minutes you fail miserably both time wise and quality wise. The main problem with the film was the storyline, or the story lines are plainly too filled with stuff that you don't have time to tell it in a good way. There is very little connection with the characters as the things just keep happening without any character development
The worst part is that the story is at times childishly obvious and plain stupid, without giving out too much detail but let's see the mafia bloodbath, about a dozen people get killed, what are the chances that the irritating hero or cute kid would die? Slim very slim. Also the second meeting with the pimp in totally blew me away, "oh, my god doesn't this ever end". And actually when it ended, it ended with so sugary happy ending that almost made me hope the film would have gone on, weird huh?
I mentioned a bit about the violence, but well, I don't really want to talk about it any more, it was disgusting, the amount of violence was over the top and the reasons characters used violence was irrational at best or maybe there was story behind, but the director just was too busy with other things so he chose not to tell the reasons.
This is one of the few films I wish I had not seen. Note to producers: next time you produce a low budget film, use less money on known actors and fancy editing tricks more on working with the script, this script was made for two movies or a mini series not for one movie. And even then the ending should have been more believable and less sugary.
As a side note, I had imagined that film Mindhunters was destroyed by Renny Harlin, but I am actually beginning to think Wayne Kramer had a lot to do with that too..
Race You to the Bottom (2005)
A strong directorial debut
I found this movie to be quite good. The story was well written and an interesting. The story gives a fresh view to the complex relationships of young people, at a time when the gender roles are not as strictly defined as they used to be. The acting and dialogue were very good, especially the main characters feel very real and alive. The music and the beautiful scenery of northern California also added to the feeling of the movie.
I did not like the rhythm of the story, it felt like a long introduction to the the high point that never came, I would have wanted to see how the main characters and their friends reacted to the big conflict in their lives and how they coped with the changes it brought. Also some of the flashbacks felt a bit out of place.
Despite the problems with rhythm it is a strong debut for the director.