Restaurant Day 2016

Here is another of my short movie. Hope you enjoy it.

This was shot during global Restaurant Day 2016. This starts series of short movies shot during different events. May and June have so much different interesting event I had to drop most of the schedule. In July there is much less stuff happening.

You hear first time my Analog Rytm in this video. I have had it for a while but it wasn't connected to my studio and when I made music I used sampled drums instead. Now it is connected and you will hear it more often. As you will hear Analog Four which is now at center of my studio. This made me use only analog synths and drum machines with this one. Third instrument being MiniBrute.

Paradox (2016)

Paradox is one of my favorite movies of this year. I can't put it, Deadpool and Civil War into order. You probably have not heard about it. It is okay since it is low budget straight to dvd/streaming/what ever movie.

Paradox is all about bootstrap paradox. Bootstrap paradox is when Terminator comes in first movie to 1980's and in sequels we learn terminator technology is based on the terminator which traveled back in time in first movie. So question is where the terminator technology came from? Paradox knows it is about this paradox and take all out of it.

Movie begins like bad low budget science fiction movie. I thought it will be really painful to watch. Everything change when one of the team goes one hour into future and sees everyone dead and facility set to self destruct. He comes back with video shot by one of them which shows what will happen to them. Before this movie was bad acting and annoying characters. After this it gets really clever.

I go little bit into spoilers from here on but I try not to spoil too much. When team member gets back everyone know there is someone killing them and they will be dead. Nobody knows who the killer is. It could be one of them. This would be interesting premise but Paradox doesn't settle with it. There is another person who nobody knows who he is. These is disc with future stock exchange data and someone has used the disc in future. That someone had similar time machine than team had. So one of the team can be the rich person from the future.

Team members are not sure if they are the rich person from the future. They know the disc they have could make them him. Killer may or may not be the rich person from the future. I don't want to spoil more than this. Things will get very interesting and movie takes everything out of bootstrap paradox. Everything makes sense from some point of view but you are left wondering why things actually went as they went and did they have change to do things otherwise.

Synchronicity (2015)

I want to like Synchronicity more than I do. It has vision and lot of good ideas. But something is missing and characters are not interesting enough. They don't act consistently. Sometimes what they do makes no sense. Movie starts with scifi nonsense jargon then nonsense goes to characters actions.

Synchronicity aims for 80's science fiction look and feel. Everything reminds me of many 80's science fiction movies. Everything is really dark. Only some cgi reminds this is not from 80's. 80's feel goes bit too far since this feels too much like less than average 80's science fiction movie.

I don't know it is acting or something else. I just don't care about characters. Nonsensical actions could be one reason. Movie tries to be larger than life love story with some 12 Monkeys and Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind tones. It doesn't work when I don't care enough of the main character.

Story is interesting and as it goes on it reveals many layers. This is time travelling movie where we see what happens from different perspectives. Story has some weirdness it didn't need and I still don't fully understand who love interest really was. She had too many contradicting characteristics. I like movies where you have to think what is really going on but you need some sort of conclusion what everything was. Movie doesn't have to tell what it actually was but story has to make sense from some point of view. Synchronicity doesn't do it. It seems to go that way but never gets there.

Synchronicity serves best as 80's nostalgia trip when you want to see something which looks and feels 80's low budget science fiction. I really hoped it worked better. There should be more science fiction movies without violence or action. This was one of them. Lack of violence and action wasn't the problem. Problems were elsewhere.

X-Men: Apocalypse video review

If you don't see the video you can find it here.

I wrote review of X-Men: Apocalypse earlier. In video I go bit deeper which means some spoilers. I had some problems with autofocus. My performance in front of camera and time constraints made me publish the video even with the problems. I think I have to change name at some point if I constantly keep making longer than 5 minutes videos.

Only God Forgives (2013)

Only God Forgives is weird movie. I would almost say it is a great movie. But it tries to be too edgy few times and that took me off the mood. Mother was involved in all the edgy things I didn't like. She didn't need to be that edgy for the story. Movie had lot of graphic violence but my problems were mainly with what the mother said other people.

Mother wasn't only character using explicit language but she was only with whom explicit language didn't make sense. Dialog is saved to moments where it matters. Most of story telling is done with images and score. So out of place language jumps out. I loved the score. I also liked Drive's score. I have not seen the movie but I have original score. Nicolas Winding Refn's movies seem to have good scores.

Mother is not the only problem. First half hour doesn't work, Worst shots and editing are at the beginning. Everything gets better as movie goes on. First half hour feel like director tries to show how he is doing high art movie. Every camera movement look like it tries to tell something. Colors and shadows are overly used. Some shots only have one or two colors and lot of shadows and black.

Everything starts to work better when extremes are toned down. Part of working better is because at that point we know better what is going on and know the characters. But all is not thanks to it. After first half hour movie don't feel as much director trying to tell something with every color and camera angle.

Movie looks and sounds amazing. It dares to go to extremes. It doesn't work every time but when it works it is amazing. It works most of the times. I can recommend this to anyone who can watch challenging movies. I haven't talked about the story. Movie works better if you don't know where it is going. I don't want to spoil it.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

I wasn't too eager to see this in theater. I can't say I am glad I saw it. It is not disaster like Batman V Superman was. Neither it is a good movie like Deadpool or Captain America: Civil War. It is just uninteresting mess. It makes joke how third movie is always the worst. They probably thought about Last Stand but this is third movie of rebooted X-Men trilogy.

I don't like Apocalypse from comics. He is one of those unstoppable villains who fight heroes because of reasons. You could say he is X-Men version of Thanos or Darkseid. He is not looking for death of all life like those characters. He just want to destroy the weak. First images started Ivan Ooze comparisons. Those weren't so far off.

Movie Apocalypse is too cartoonish. He always talks how he will destroy everything. He want to rule everyone but for some reason he wants to destroy everything before he rules everyone. His four horsemen are Angel, Psylocke, Storm and Magneto. Angel and Psylocke carry their clothes and fight. Storm does little more but not much. Almost all they do is stupid poses. It is hard to take the team seriously when all they do is cartoonish evil poses and leader is cartoonish villain.

Magneto doesn't fit at all to Apocalypse and his horsemen. Magneto has dark and emotional story arc which includes death of his new family. Magneto and Xavier have same philosophical debate they have had in all movies. This time they are have the debate when cartoonish villain stands next to them talking how he will destroy every building and rule the survivors.

First Class and Days of Future Past were good movies. Apocalypse is not. It is entertaining if you like bad movies. Ones where nothing makes sense. I enjoy those but this is X-Men who have good comics and movies. At least I didn't hate it. Hating requires caring. I just couldn't care. Movie has few good scenes. Most of it is stupid but almost ok. I wonder what they do next time. This time they almost destroyed the Earth and telepathically communicated with everyone. It is hard to top that.