CRAWLING UP YOUR HEART

Russian candidate for this year’s foreign ”Oscar” is a typical European hard to watch and almost empty European kind of dramas, directed by the best director of the largest country in the world at this moment, Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Naively praised in the West as a portrayalist of a stark and bleak life in Russia at the beginning of the 21st century, Andrey managed to film yet another universal movie story that everybody can relate to, painting the emptiness and absence of any kind of emotion for our youngest.

Fanatically persistent in his empty shots, Zvyagintsev used two brilliant movie rookies and told a frightening script about selfishness and vanity that consequently lead to tragedy.

If you are into real life stories and have no problem with slow pace movie scripts, you should definitely watch ”Loveless”.

LOVELESS – 7/10

FOTO: static.rogerebert.com

DISTASTEFULLY BIASED

Documentaries are always a dangerous weapon in the hands of a skillful director and this fact hadn’t missed the Canadian attempt to make a story behind the rise and fall of the last Soviet hockey team before the collapse of the Union.

Fetisov, Karpov, Kasatonov, Krutov. The mighty Four that terrorized the world on ice for almost a decade isn’t just a classic sport story and the makers of ”Red Army” wanted us to show the dark secret behind their success, the back side of communism and the controversy that followed with the departure of the Mighty Four in NHL. This was done in a poor, maniristic and propaganda kind of way, often highlighted by the persistently strict responses by Slava Fetisov himself.

Instead of educating ourselves, ”Red Army” tried to remind us how we were lucky not living in communism and it miserably failed to do so, making it a poor documentary.

RED ARMY – 3/10

FOTO: pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com

RUSSIAN ”APOCALYPSE NOW” ON STEROIDS

Classic Russian cinema is THE ARTSIEST one in the world. It is built on basic graphic elements and a powerful symbolic of the simple and direct script.

On the other side, the Russian war movies of the past were quite often drowned in pathetic and overemphasized patriotism, which lead to a significant diminishing of their art qualities.

All of this can not be said for the one of the most powerful and most painful to watch war stories ever, ”Come and see”.

Elem Klimov filmed a merciless and never ending torment for the average viewer, bombarding him from the very start with unbearably intense editing of every imaginable war horror from the deepest levels of hell. Although basically empty in the script line, ”Come and see” will first extinguish your soul and then blow you away with one of the most powerful endings in the history of war cinema.

”Come and see” is one those movies you will watch only once, but will never forget.

COME AND SEE – 8/10

FOTO: calvertjournal.com

FASCINATING, BUT OVER THE TOP

Space exploration in the USSR is one of the major topics in modern day Russian cinematography these days and one of those fascinating stories is the one about the first exit into the open space by Alexei Leonov, but also the chaos that followed their return to Earth and the battle to rescue them from ice storm in the desolated area of the country they landed.

However, all the unbelievable elements were not always collected and arranged together by the script in a satisfying manner, so there is a overall sense of a pathetic and over the top subplots all through the entire curse of the movie.

’’Spacewalk’’ has an interesting subject, but also an unstable script as well.

SPACEWALK – 5/10

FOTO: blogs.nvidia.com

ALL MONEY AND NO BRAINS

Russian cinema is rapidly changing in the past decade. Huge budgets are making their way into the mainstream movies and that cash flow is now being clearly visible.

Fedor Bondarchuk is one of the directors that received one of those productions and he managed to film a movie that looks like the modern western SFs. However, like in all the other of his flicks, there just isn’t a decent story to follow it.

In a Russian version of „Independence day” meets „Starman” there just isn’t a story at all, not even if you are a Moscow teenager. And that’s a pity, because the money isn’t the issue any more.

„Attraction” is a great looking empty vessel that not only won’t succeed in amusing you, but will manage to seriously annoy you in the end.

ATTRACTION - 4/10

Foto: www.scifi-movies.com

FINNISH BLOODY RECONCILIATION

FOTO: static.kinokopilka.tv

One of the first war conflicts on the European soil prior to Second World war is the short, but bloody dispute between pro-Nazi Finland and communist Russia that succeeded in hiding from the mainstream cinema of both countries up until „The winter war”.

Although modest in resources and orientated towards artsy flicks, Finnish cinema brought us a fairly successful war story about freshly drafted Finnish infantry that engage Russians in the icy forests and meadows devoured by artillery and tanks on both sides.

„The Winter war” is a solid war flick, with some unexpected dramatic and bloody scenes, but not much depth to the story to go along.

THE WINTER WAR - 5/10

SLOW, BUT TEPID

FOTO: cloudfront.net

Although it was considered a major runner for the foreign-language flick at this year’s ”Oscars”, ”Leviathan” isn’t a good movie. Its subject that depicts every possible stereotype about the Russian society is very politically favorable when it comes to American audience, but that’s not the worst aspect of this flick.

”Leviathan” is artistically astonishing, with all of its wide angles and stark landscape of northern Russia, but it is also one very, very slow and boring script with no beginning, no end and no point. Acting is pretty much mediocre, as well as the rare dialogues.

Russian modern cinema is in a big crisis and ”Leviathan” sure does not offer the light at the end of the tunnel.

LEVIATHAN - 2/10