Mato Valtonen Movies

A married couple struggles with the repercussions of unexpected unemployment in this wry comedy drama from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki. Ilona, the wife, works as restaurant hostess and her husband Lauri drives a tram. Though the couple has recently lost a child, they both seem at peace and happy. One night Ilona comes home and finds that Lauri has purchased a beautiful television on credit. Shortly thereafter disaster strikes when Ilona's workplace closes and Lauri gets caught in a maelstrom of downsizing. Neither is able to find suitable work right away and as time crawls by, they become humiliated and testy with each other. Eventually Ilona gets a job cooking and bartending in a nameless sleazy dive while her husband, after having to sell their television and car, turns to booze. Things look bad for the marriage when suddenly Ilona decides to open a restaurant. With the backing of her former boss and using her coworkers, she and Lauri open the successful Worker's Rest café and find renewed hope. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This comedy is a sequel to Aki Kaurismaki's successful Leningrad Cowboys Go America. The Lenigrad Cowboys are billed as the "worst rock'n'roll band in the world." In the last film they went to the U.S. In this film they travel from Mexico back to Lennigrad. The story begins in Mexico. The band, after having a top ten hit, decided to settle there. Their success seemed assured until they discovered the joys of tequila which killed off many of the band members. Those that didn't die went native. They were impoverished and living on cactus when they decide to travel to Coney Island to play a gig. They reunite with their old manager Vladimir who now calls himself Moses. He vows to return the band home to "the Promised Land," Siberia. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In a Monty Python skit, Graham Chapman once donned the attire of a Swiss maiden and went about selling honey in Britain door-to-door. When asked by John Cleese whether his job wasn't a miserable, unprofitable one, Chapman answered "It is, but I'd do anything to stay out of Iceland." The country of Finland is similarly wintery and bleak, and the young man in this movie, aptly named Zombie, would like to do anything to get free of his life. Unfortunately, he hasn't sufficient zest for life even to pull off committing suicide properly. This movie was billed as a tragicomedy in Finland, but non-Finnish reviewers found it to be singularly unfunny (perhaps they never thought of the Python skit). Zombie is part of a rock n' roll group which is touring through the European continent, and he finds some surcease from the grayness of the Finnish winter with his road manager in what might seem (to the rest of us) to be a depressingly gray region of Turkey. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this arthouse satirical interpretation of the famous Shakespeare play, a thug named Macbeth starts a gang war at the instigation of his ultimately suicidal girlfriend. As the mobsters become increasingly paranoid, their use of lines quoted from Shakespeare's plays becomes especially silly, as it is (apparently) intended to. In addition to being a wry hommage to plays by the Bard of Avalon, this film does double duty as a spoof of film noir. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi