tonywerner

The most successful Finnish movie producer Spede Pasanen contacted these young fellows and offered to produce their movie. This is the result. The film's budget was 1.000.000 Finnish marks - which was nice amount of money in Finnish film budget scale then (it is only 170.000 Euros).

Romanovin kivet (The Romanov's stones) is also the first film of director Aleksi Mäkelä - who is nowadays one of the most successful film directors of Finland. He is also the only director (beside Renny Harlin) who can make great action scenes. The script is the weakest link in this one. It's a bunch of clichés and looks like it has been made by group of schoolboys. Which it is - in some ways. Mäkelä invited a group of his old friends (Samuli Edelmann, Santeri Kinnunen, Juha Veijonen, Kari Hietalahti) to star in the movie and together they planned the story. So there's many holes in the plot, but most of them are forgotten when you see the action scenes we were never seen in Finland before - made by us Finnish. This is of course absolutely worst film of Aleksi Mäkelä - but you must start somewhere.

7/10

This is it: The final adventure of Uuno Turhapuro - the most successful Finnish movie character of all times. In the 80's Uuno Turhapuro break the Finnish box office records in the way no movie can ever gain more viewers. The director Ere Kokkonen has told that this is the last movie about Uuno Turhapuro and it was only made to the honor of late Spede Pasanen - who's creation Uuno originally is.

Vesa-Matti Loiri is multi-talented Finnish artist. He's an actor who can play almost anything - from serious drama to hilarious crazy comedy like Uuno Turhapuro movies. Now at age of 60 he portrayed old Uuno remembering the life he has lived. He takes part in the reality-TV-show "This is my life" and tell his life story to all the TV-viewers. In between there has been cut many clips from past Uuno movies from over 30 years of time. Behind the comedy there's sadness, which makes this Uuno movie one of the best. The genuine touching moment is the part where Uuno is remembering his deceived friend Härski Hartikainen (Spede Pasanen) who died little earlier in real life too.

Normally Uuno Turhapuro movies are a collection of scenes from his unusual life, but this one works as a movie with a real plot also. In between the remembering scenes in the TV-studio Uuno tries to solute himself in the home of rich elderly people in hope of good food and beautiful, young nurses. It also nice to see this legendary group of actors once more in their most memorable roles. One era of Finnish movie business has ended with Uuno Turhapuro Saga - but it is not forgotten.

Because of the long history of Uuno Turhapuro: 8/10

I have read all "Vares"-books by Reijo Mäki and I'm a huge fan. When I heard that there will be movie about Vares and Juha Veijonen will portray him, I was excited. The movie was not a disappointment. Story follows quite exactly the book, but one thing makes me wonder. The jokes from the book were dismissed and screenwriter Pekka Lehtosaari has written a whole bunch of new ones. Well, maybe that's not bad at all. Anyway, the characters are marvelous - never before in Finnish movie has been so many superious characters - and casting for them just fantastic. Especially Jari Halonen as ruthless Miesmann and Kari Hietalahti as half finnish/half Japanese hit-man Tetsuo Sinkkonen. And of course Juha Veijonen in the title-role. Laura Malmivaara is also fantastic - as are almost every actor in this movie. Aleksi Mäkelä is number one action-director of Finland and he won't let us down this time around. The soundtrack is also fine. I'll give VARES 9/10.