Pikku Siperia (Dome Karukoski, 2025)

After an opening sequence skipping through billions of years of cosmic history, reminiscent of the prologue to Adaptation, We land in a village in present-day Finnish Northern Karelia in the middle of winter, with eccentric locals going about their daily business. then a small meteorite crashes through a man's car roof and stirs up the populace. There is much speculation about its commercial value to the depressed community, as well as about its possibly divine provenance, preoccupying the village vicar most of all in the midst of his crisis of faith.

So far, so good, roughly in the manner of Fargo, but when it follows that superlative film by turning into a crime thriller, with crooks after the meteorite, Little Siberia quickly loses its footing on the omnipresent ice, and both tone and purpose go out of the window along with that. A pity, because the initial set-up promised a lot more.

5/10

The Electric State (Anthony & Joe Russo, 2025)

Direct enough massive MCU superhero blockbusters, and you will be give $320 million to chuck at the screen in the hope that some of it sticks. So this is the Russo brothers adapting an acclaimed graphic novel about an alternative mid-1990s where a war took place between mankind and their sentient robot servants a little earlier, leaving the robots imprisoned on a reservation in New Mexico and the human populace, almost without exception, slavishly hooked on virtual reality and the actual world experienced only through their personal drones. A feisty young heroine sets out across the country with a bot that carries fragments of the conciousness of her lost brother, whom she hopes to find with the bot's aid. They're pursued by a ruthless robot hunter and joined by a black marketeer who has his own bot partner.

The bulk of the budget then goes on FX, particularly on animating the colourful cast of robots they meet on the journey and which join forces with them to fight the tech billionaire mastermind behind the whole sorry state of the world. It does manage to amuse at times between the protracted action sequences, but being squarely for young audiences, it can't delve too deeply into satirical dissection of the relentless march of society towards its own demise, following the will-o'-the-wisp of the promise of a future utopia of endless consumerist leisure.

Critics largely hated it, but it would probably have escaped most of the scathing reviews if only it hadn't spent so much time and money on big setpieces and just a little more on ideas with substance.

4/10

Sisu (Jalmari Helander, 2022)

The text right at the start explaining that the Finnish word 'sisu' is untranslatable does not bode well for what's to come (this is an oft-stated Finnish fallacy, 'guts' or 'determination' are quite adequate translations). In any case, the protagonist if meant to be the embodiment of it, a one-man army prospecting for gold in the wilds of Lapland in 1944 with the retreating German army all around. He comes up against a German unit who try to rob him of his gold, so he summarily kills the lot of them. Then another unit comes after him, led by an off-the-shelf cartoonishly brutal Nazi officer, and more extreme violence ensues.

It is as efficiently scripted as its hero is single-minded and taciturn, but that doesn't excuse the tiresome ludicrosity of it action sequences, scant regard for historical accuracy and lack of any point at all.

4/10

He ovat paenneet (Jukka-Pekka Valkeapää, 2014)

A young man who went AWOL from his national military service is sent to a centre for problem youths to carry out his national service as civil service instead. There he's befriended by a troubled girl who's determined to get out and they set out across the country in a stolen car, on a quest for what she promises is buried treasure. As in every road movie, there are numerous twists and turns along the way, including encounters with many odd characters, but unlike in most, there are constant surrealistic interludes with the quality of mystical visions and large gaps in the narrative which leave the viewer with the task of trying to piece together what might have happened between scenes. This would be justifiable, but only if there were enough of a promise of a concrete reward for the effort demanded. This They Have Escaped ultimately fails to deliver, stringing you along with its sheer weirdness, a hotchpotch of thriller, arthouse drama, and horror.

4/10 

Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger (Chris Foggin, 2025)

The first part did nicely, being mostly fact-based about a very real topical issue and a feelgood comedy at the same time, with decent actors. So of course there was going to be a sequel, with Rory Kinnear's crusader now taking on the ogres of the loathsome payday loan companies driving people to destitution with their astronomical interest rates and other criminal practices. We know he'll win, so exactly as last time around, the pleasure isn't in the plot, just in the vicarious satisfaction of seeing the little guy stick it to the crooks, which is needed quite badly in the current global climate.

6/10

Comment je suis devenu super-héros (Douglas Attal, 2020)

How I Became a Superhero does have one newish take on the flagging genre, in that superpowers are not just existent in some individuals, but that stupid teens in particular are desperate to acquire ones of their own. This means that the villain is a gang boss who abducts people with powers to tap them for their blood and turn it into a street drug. After that, though, it's strictly run of the mill fare, two cops tracking the bad guys down with the help of retired superheroes. Its stabs at a comic tone fall pretty flat too.

4/10

Treasure (Julia von Heinz, 2024)

 

A New York jounalist takes her father, a Holocaust survivor, back to Poland to try to dissect what happened 50 years earlier. She insists on getting to the bottom of it and he  tries constantly stave it off.

It's a new approach to the subject of the mass genocide, especially by having a comic tone until the closing stages, but is hindered by the lead actress's pointlessly teenage behaviour and really having nothing of import to say. Worthy but beige, just like its TV movie presentation.

5/10