Joulubileet (The Christmas Party) might well be the closest to the ultimate cult movie that the Finnish film industry has ever gotten. The third directorial effort of Jari Halonen, a clearly distinctive voice in the local filmmaking landscape, is a timeless, absurd and at times completely insane piece of masculine comedy rough not only on the edges, but to the core. A story of Mike, just out of prison, and his buddies throwing a Christmas party under the most obscure circumstances is filled with juicy dialogue and plot twists that will definitely make your jaw drop – and have you chuckle for days after.
The 21st-century tale centers on taciturn detective Lipton Cockton as he looks into a series of murders involving exploding victims. The main clue in the case is the white halter dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in the subway vent scene in The Seven Year Itch. This clue directs Cockton to the highest levels of the super company LTD Prods. But though Cockton tries and tries, he cannot get there and ends up himself blown to smithereens.
Manillaköysi is a cult status holding TV-movie adaptation of the satirical war novel by Veijo Meri. Manillaköysi has an endless list of classic one-liners, but it is still not based on cheap laughs or anything like that. The whole humouristic aspect of it comes from describing the absurdity of war, and the whole military system, by looking it with the eyes of a simple man, who's thrown into it, and who simply does not give a rats ass of it all. The tone of it is not overly preachy or moralizing. If I would have to describe it with one word, it would be: unglamourizing. The main point of Manillaköysi is pretty much compressed in one of the most famous quotes of it: There is nothing supernatural about war, it is just work like anything else.
Young photography model Susanna and her alienated teenage brother Veli spend the summer of 1969 travelling around Finland, mostly with another girl and her boyfriend. Sporting the latest fashions and trendy hairdos, they naïvely observe and criticise the modern consumer society, advertising, fancy boats and summer cottages, country dances, barbecues, and any other phenomena that were supposed to bother angry young intellectuals in those days. The plot and the political agenda are delivered with a cheerful, tongue-in-cheek mixture of documentary observations, fake TV commercials, fake interviews, philosophical voiceovers and titles, and a jazzy soundtrack by the progressive rock group Wigwam.
An ex-finnish army officer Kari Kivi returns to Finland after 12 years of absence. He is quickly hired by a businessman named Östermalm to be his stand-in to escape the ring of spies threatening his life. Many beautiful women cross Kivi's path before the spy ring is eventually crushed.
