Matti Pellonpää

  • Matti Ijäs – Räpsy & Dolly eli Pariisi odottaa AKA Dolly and Her Lover (1990)

    1981-1990ComedyFinlandMatti Ijäs

    Quote:
    Directed by Matti Ijäs and written with Arto Meller, Räpsy & Dolly aka Paris Waits (1990) is a tragicomic love story of a petty criminal and a former cabaret dancer. Detective Karisto (Kari Väänänen) releases Auno “Räpsy” Pirilä (Matti Pellonpää) from prison, who in turn has to calve his childhood friend Börje (Pertti Sveholm) from criminal activities. Alcoholic Dolly (Raija Paalanen) takes Räpsy to live in Kallio, Helsinki, and hopes to move to Paris with her in the spring.Read More »

  • Mika Kaurismäki – Arvottomat AKA The Worthless [+ Extra] (1982)

    Mika Kaurismäki1981-1990CrimeDramaFinland

    Arvottomat (1982)

    A criminal, his friend and his former girlfriend find their lives intertwining with each other.Read More »

  • Aki Kaurismäki – Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana AKA Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (1994)

    1991-2000Aki KaurismäkiArthouseComedyFinland

    Quote:
    The enigmatically titled Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana [Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana] is Kaurismäki’s take on the road movie. It represents something of a contradiction for non-Finnish viewers, being one of the director’s most accessible films but also one whose subtleties are unlikely to be fully understood by a foreign audience, and I’m including myself in that sweeping suggestion.Read More »

  • Aki Kaurismäki – La vie de bohème AKA The Bohemian Life (1992)

    1991-2000Aki KaurismäkiArthouseComedyFrance

    Quote:
    Based on the same 19th-century novel (Henri Murger’s Scenes de la Vie de Boheme) that inspired Puccini’s opera, the story is about three down-and-out losers doomed to penury and artistic obsession. There’s Albanian painter Rodolfo (Matti Pellonpää), playwright Marcel (Andre Wilms) and composer Schaunard (Kari Väänänen). Their problems are exactly the same: no rent or food money and the futile struggle to be recognized.Read More »

  • Aki Kaurismäki – Ariel (1988)

    1981-1990Aki KaurismäkiComedyCrimeFinland

    Quote:
    Aki Kaurismäki’s first feature, Crime And Punishment (1983), updated and transplanted Dostoyevsky’s novel to present day Finland. Since then, the deadpan auteur has written, directed and edited some 20 films, which is about a fifth of Finland’s cinematic output since the Eighties. His films, however, have always proven more popular abroad than at home. Apart from Britain, few nations like to see their own follies, iniquities and all-round miserabilism being paraded in affectionately mocking entertainments, and Kaurismäki’s focus is very much on the dark absurdities of his motherland’s down-and-outs, drunks and dispossessed.Read More »

  • Aki Kaurismäki – Varjoja paratiisissa aka Shadows In Paradise (1986)

    1981-1990Aki KaurismäkiComedyDramaFinland

    Quote:
    In Goran Dukic’s Wristcutters: A Love Story, limbo is imagined as a place where no one ever smiles, where furnishings and cars all seem second-hand, where the colours are all drab and faded. “Everything’s the same here,” as one character puts it, “but it’s just a little worse.”Read More »

  • Aki Kaurismäki – Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989)

    1981-1990Aki KaurismäkiComedyCultFinland

    Quote:
    Somewhere in the tundra lives the worst rock and roll band in the world…. Aki Kaurismäki`s hilarious road movie follows the fortunes and misadventures of a struggling Siberian rock band, the Leningrad Cowboys.

    A local promoter, stunned by the band`s lack of talent, advises them instead to try their luck in America. Accompanied by their autocratic manager, the Cowboys travel to New York, learning English on the plane. Sporting outsixe Quiffs, dark shades and outrageously long winkle-pickers, they are passed off as Americans. Jim Jarmusch, in a cameo role as a shifty car salesman, sells them an old Cadillac. The band strap their frozen bass player to the roof in a coffin full of beer, and head south….Read More »

  • Mika Kaurismäki – Cha Cha Cha (1989)

    1981-1990ComedyFinlandMika Kaurismäki

    Quote:
    A lawyer pays a visit to Matti Ojanperä (Matti Pellonpää), a bum living under a bridge in the Helsinki harbour, to inform him that he is about to inherit an American aunt of his. The sum 1,000,000 Fmk would be his, if only he meets the qualifications set by his aunt.

    He must show that he is capable of ‘living properly’ and possessing a ‘respectable occupation and a family he can support’. Otherwise the money would go to a foundation the chairman of which the lawyer himself happens to be!Read More »

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