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The more time goes by, the less interested I become in new movie releases. And that bothers me. From time to time, I catch myself wondering if I’m just being foolish, too nostalgic, or if I’m simply losing interest in new films altogether. Am I the problem?
But when I look at it more carefully, I notice a pattern: over the past five years, on average, only two or three films per year truly manage to catch my attention. The rest fades into the background. Too much marketing, not enough soul.
This year, for example, I only watched three new releases: Nobody 2, Sisu: Road to Revenge, and the Minecraft movie. The last one was more about curiosity — almost a social experiment — than genuine excitement.
The other two, though, were different.
I had already seen the first films — and really liked the originals — but even so, I went in with pretty low expectations. And then something extremely rare these days happened: the sequels turned out to be better than the originals.
Nobody 2 starts with a simple, almost trivial idea. A family trip to a water park. That’s it. But the film takes that innocent setup and spirals into a completely wild plot, with villains controlling the city, gratuitous violence, over-the-top action, and moments that are genuinely funny. It’s pure, unapologetic action. It doesn’t try to be deep, but it’s not stupid either. It knows exactly what it wants to deliver — and it delivers.
Sisu: Road to Revenge, on the other hand, takes a different route. The protagonist returns home to find everything empty — no family, no sense of belonging. From there, he sets off on a journey to cross the border and try to rebuild what he lost. The problem? The Russians don’t make that journey easy. The film is brutal, creative (sometimes almost too much — like a scene involving a tank and another with a missile), and has very little dialogue. I doubt there are more than fifty spoken lines in the entire movie. And you don’t miss a single one. The experience is so immersive that long, explanatory dialogue is simply unnecessary.
What’s most interesting is that neither film tries to please everyone. They have personality. And maybe that’s exactly what’s missing from most modern releases: the courage to be simple, direct, and faithful to their own vision.
So when someone asks me what the last new release I truly enjoyed this year was, the answer comes effortlessly. It’s not a long list. It’s not a top ten. It’s two films that did the basics extremely well — the way cinema always did when it was taken seriously.
And honestly? Sometimes that’s really all we’re asking for: to walk away from a movie feeling like our time wasn’t wasted.
But what about you?
Which films did you watch this year that brought back that warm feeling of something genuinely new?
But when I look at it more carefully, I notice a pattern: over the past five years, on average, only two or three films per year truly manage to catch my attention. The rest fades into the background. Too much marketing, not enough soul.
This year, for example, I only watched three new releases: Nobody 2, Sisu: Road to Revenge, and the Minecraft movie. The last one was more about curiosity — almost a social experiment — than genuine excitement.
The other two, though, were different.
I had already seen the first films — and really liked the originals — but even so, I went in with pretty low expectations. And then something extremely rare these days happened: the sequels turned out to be better than the originals.
Nobody 2 starts with a simple, almost trivial idea. A family trip to a water park. That’s it. But the film takes that innocent setup and spirals into a completely wild plot, with villains controlling the city, gratuitous violence, over-the-top action, and moments that are genuinely funny. It’s pure, unapologetic action. It doesn’t try to be deep, but it’s not stupid either. It knows exactly what it wants to deliver — and it delivers.
Sisu: Road to Revenge, on the other hand, takes a different route. The protagonist returns home to find everything empty — no family, no sense of belonging. From there, he sets off on a journey to cross the border and try to rebuild what he lost. The problem? The Russians don’t make that journey easy. The film is brutal, creative (sometimes almost too much — like a scene involving a tank and another with a missile), and has very little dialogue. I doubt there are more than fifty spoken lines in the entire movie. And you don’t miss a single one. The experience is so immersive that long, explanatory dialogue is simply unnecessary.
What’s most interesting is that neither film tries to please everyone. They have personality. And maybe that’s exactly what’s missing from most modern releases: the courage to be simple, direct, and faithful to their own vision.
So when someone asks me what the last new release I truly enjoyed this year was, the answer comes effortlessly. It’s not a long list. It’s not a top ten. It’s two films that did the basics extremely well — the way cinema always did when it was taken seriously.
And honestly? Sometimes that’s really all we’re asking for: to walk away from a movie feeling like our time wasn’t wasted.
But what about you?
Which films did you watch this year that brought back that warm feeling of something genuinely new?
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