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Reviews
Malenkaya Vera (1988)
The Real Deal
Forget every spy movie you've ever seen - this is what life was like in the USSR, and still is in many places in Russia and the ex-Soviet countries. Vera dreams of life of leisure, as she imagines the West to be; her reality is very different, with a bitter mother, a violent father, and the ever-present alcohol. And her prospects for the future are not much better. She finds a man and they try to patch up a life together, but he is afflicted by the same environment, both socially and physically - the scenery in this movie is brilliant, sitting comfortably in the company of post-apocalyptic movies but obviously done with no special effects; they have just walked in and shot whatever happened to be in front of the camera.
Forget your stereotyped, cold Russians of spy movies. This is the Real Deal: people are passionate, vibrant, and present in a way you'll never see in a drama from the West.
Solaris (2002)
The best since 2001
Movie buffs should note one thing before watching Solaris: this is not a remake of Tarkovsky's masterpiece. This is a movie based on Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris, and as such, much closer to the novel than Tarkovsky's movie. Tarkovsky could, at best, be said to be "inspired by" the novel. But comparing the two would be like comparing "Star Trek: Insurrection" to "Apocalypse now", simply because they were both inspired by the same novel ("Heart of Darkness").
Those looking for a grand space opera, complete with laser beams going Whizz and space ships exploding with ear-deafening booms, are also in for disappointment. This is a drama, which happens to be set in a fairly distant future. As with the best of literary science fiction, it is about people, and about here and now, although the story works by introducing elements that we don't have in the world around us today.
The pace is slow, the acting is brilliant, the story is powerful. And the title of my review compares it to "2001", since it tells us just how utterly, utterly alien an alien world will be. The trailer actually says most of what you need to know: "There are places where mankind is not ready to go".