Reviews

This movie is just nuts from beginning to end: the bizarre situations and characters really do defy description: it must be seen to be believed. If it's 'about' anything, it's about a seemingly endless series of petty humiliations suffered by the pseudo-genteel king of pompous assery, our friend and alky Mr. Souse. The family is unbelievable, and the final chase scene is really scary: the driving stunts are genuinely dangerous; hair raising.

I'm adding this review for a specific reason, though, and that's the insertion of the stereotyped African-American in the bank line. I think a few people missed the subversion of that scene. I saw it and couldn't believe it, and had to watch it again. Viewers fixate on the stereotypical 'Yassuh-Massuh' characterization of the character, and, I think, miss the real point: that among Souse's humiliations is being told to 'step aside' and wait for a Black customer at the bank! A Black customer who, while outrageously racially stereotyped, still proceeds to withdraw his money due to the bizarre hat of the White bank teller! This was 1940: GONE WITH THE WIND was made one year earlier, and the insertion of this scene, a buffoonish White Man being instructed to step aside for a Black Man, was a seriously radical gag. Seriously radical: like I said, I couldn't believe it. I can't help but wonder what a Black audience made of this scene at the time of release: my guess is delighted glee. The fact the Black Man is a degrading stereotype (which is how Blacks were portrayed in White movies at the time, always!) does not change in any way the true subversion of that one remarkable scene. It's not a Black Maid rolling her eyes at her Missus' frivolity or any such thing: the Black Man is a full-fledged bank customer, is given preferential treatment over a White Man, and the relative silliness of Fields' Mr. Souse does not matter one bit. For that one scene this a truly special little movie. It's also screamingly funny, with practically every line spoken a priceless quote, and every sight gag destined to remain in your mind forever. My un-PC, hysterical favorite? The 'mountain team' of the film-within-a- film's romantic couple, and Fields' dumbfounded, short-joke exclamation: "Is she standing in a hole?" So wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I can't believe nobody wrote a review of this movie. I viewed it on a whim on NetFlix, and it's amazing film-making. This is a unique, one-of-a-kind artifact, an interpretation of the refugee experience. Arielle Javitch is an unsung talent, not for her directorial ability, but for her old-fashioned ability to simply get out of the way and let her people do what they do. This film is beautifully shot, silently operatic, and morally confusing. I fully compare it to STALKER. It's that good/baffling/unique. I suspect the film festival circuit isn't the place for this incredible, confusing gem. It's a dreaming fairy tale/nightmare. It deserves cult status; I'll also, in an odd way, compare it right along with DARK OF THE SUN, as seen from the eyes of Yvette Mimieux. Shot in now-Serbia (I got hooked when I recognized a location, where I had been around in, while fighting 20 years ago), but with dialog in English, a Russian/NYC/ballet dancer director, and a Romanian lead. Don't get me wrong: this movie is not light stuff. It's arbitrary, brutal, scary, and cutting. It may seem depressing to Western audiences. It's not, to me. To me it seems hopeful, an experience of survival. What more can one ask? The film showcases the Serbian landscape (so unearthly beautiful, yet so often, so dangerous)and is a stunning showcase for the leading lady. Film peers? STALKER; BLADE RUNNER; ANDREI RUBLEV; END OF AUGUST AT THE HOTEL OZONE. This sparse movie is that rewarding. It really is. I highly recommend seeing it. It's slow, but I find that, in itself, worthwhile, and it's worth the time. This is good stuff. This is a rare, unique, and special film. I had a terrible, emotional reaction to a line in this movie: "I don't know where I am!" Just... powerful film-making.

This movie reminds me more of Abel Ferrara's MS 45 than anything else. Also, it achieves the impossible: I no longer have the slightest interest in seeing Olga Kurylenko naked.

I rated this flicker higher than I normally would, partly because it's a character study grafted onto a shoot 'em up, a sort of sub-genre I'm a sucker for, and mostly for Kurylenko's visceral performance. The action elements are rote and banal; the real interest here is the interplay between the two female characters.

Ultimately, despite the tiresome elements, it worked for me as a brutal indictment of the treatment of women in patriarchal societies, of which modern Israel is as guilty as many other supposedly less enlightened places. The crucial opening scene is, I hate to say, dead on and made me cringe; the only change I would have made was turning the Semitic-appearing men into pasty dimwits from New Jersey in Israel on 'religious study'.

Most people don't know Israel, particularly Tel Aviv, is a major trafficking point, with the usual merchandise, i. e. poverty-stricken Ukrainian and Moldovian women. Knowing Kurylenko's background (provincial Ukrainian), her performance makes more sense, and is a stunner; I think personally the inconsistencies in her acting are due more to a scatter-shot script than her own skills; although, I gotta question whether she was actually 'acting' as such. This movie and role had to, had to, hit home for Kurylenko. She pulls a scary performance out of her stylish leather coat.

Personally, for me, I've spent time around these people in real life; and the guys are just as bafflingly evil as depicted in this movie, the women just as bafflingly confused. The subject material is depressing in the extreme, I guess. The moment where this movie hit me is a scene on a bus, in which Kurylenko is either scrubbed of makeup or made up to look that way; and I realized with a shock she is a dead ringer for someone I once met in real life, right down to the clothes. That woman is now undoubtedly dead.

Watch it for the schizoid movie it is: half popcorn, half deadly serious.

This is about, oh, at least three movies in one. I kind of have to review them separately.

The opening sequences are pretty boilerplate Soviet, although just the Mongolian 'actors' and the settings are well worth the price of admission (or rental). The subsequent sequences are almost digressions. I have to say, though, that in the battle/skirmish scenes with 'British' soldiers, whoever directed them has been in a war. They contain so much authenticity I found it unnerving. Men crumple up when shot, like they really do. Other behaviors of people fighting are dead on. Absolutely believable.

A later sequence, a movie within a movie, of a British soldier taking a prisoner to be shot, manages to pull off the feat of making the emotional state of a reluctant killer accessible. This sequence is emotionally difficult and disturbing, and I'm surprised it made it into a Soviet film of any era.

Oh, this movie is jam packed with old gun porn. If you ever wondered what happened to the 700,000 Winchester 1895 muskets sold to Russia, a bunch of them are in this movie, along with a Colt 1895 machine gun, and even including Russian contract Colt .45 automatics in a unique style of holster. In one scene, a Mongolian irregular uses his (very likely personal) matchlock musket! Good stuff.

The scenes of Buddhist ceremonies are awesome and worth watching the entire movie for; the new soundtrack, which includes appropriate music, makes the scene in the monastery a very special piece of film-making.

The final scenes suddenly flip into what I am compelled to describe as martial arts! Now, this may seem a stretch, but according to published information, the biggest and most popular genre in Asian countries, as early as 1920, were basically chop-socky flickers. The final scenes, if this movie was designed to appeal to an Asian audience, may very well have been influenced by Chinese martial arts movies of the time. I wonder. Because I know a kung fu movie when I see one, and THAT, kids, is a kung fu movie.

Oh, and I really liked the impressive use of massive, declaratory inter titles. Very cool. This is impressive film making.

This flick isn't awful, but it's not really great either. I'm unclear as to why exactly it was (re)made. It's too violent to be believable, there are too many guns, there are waaay too many deaths to be even close to making me suspend my disbelief, but the violence is handled so realistically as to not make much sense.

If this movie went over the top into a demented fever dream, cool, but it doesn't. The presentation is so nuts and bolts and kitchen sink the constant ultra violence just doesn't seem at all plausible. It's one of those movies where you wonder where the police are, when a guy strung out on heroin shoots up his apartment in the middle of the day with at least eight handguns (in Japan!). Apparently nobody ever calls the (ever-present and ever-watching) police in Japan. It's just not believable. Sorry.

The tiresome unpleasantness of the main character is also past belief. I suspect any effective crime organization would have taken him down or had him incarcerated at the first stray bullet. Dumb. I'm not saying crazy Yakuza thrillers aren't good, I'm saying this one isn't. Not worth it.

KUKOLKA is one of the most intense, disturbing films I've ever seen.

Even considering it as belonging roughly to the teen-movie genre of the late 1980s, it's a stunner. I watched it with amazement, then shock, then with mounting horror until the ending, which appalled me. Then I watched it again. I go back and check out sequences in it, watching the framing and narrative, which consists of rather tedious but psychologically intense conversations and exchanges, some almost completely wordless, broken by sudden bursts of activity and blunt violence.

The opening scenes of the excitement and glory, combined with (at the time) incredible privileges of foreign travel and expensive, cool stuff, are effective at creating a world. When it stops suddenly, the feeling of a lurching fall is palpable, and as the Little Doll turns out to be psychologically formed in ways guaranteed to make her life a living hell, the film rides out in the only way it can. The ending is ugly.

The thing that strikes me the most is Zasypkina's performance, which is very, very good. It's close to unique. I don't believe I've ever seen anything quite like it. Due to, I imagine, her career in gymnastics which taught her to have total control of her body, Zasypkina turns in a character of such singularity she totally dominates the screen. It's a compact, powerhouse performance by, well, a compact powerhouse.

The explosive physicality of the former gymnast completely sells the central theme of a lost person with nowhere to go with their competitive aggression. Scenes of the girl terrorizing fellow students are both frighteningly believable and unbearably sad. A scene of her brutally and with no warning dropping a guy twice her size with a single punch dropped my jaw, but I believed it.

I wonder that Zasypkina didn't do more acting work; her physicality makes her a formidable screen presence despite (or because of?) her diminutive size. I would completely buy her as a Bond antagonist. Since I ran across the movie from a link to a gymnastics blog, I learned Zasypkina won't even watch gymnastics on TV, and has busied herself with other things. I can't help but wonder what she's doing now; she'd be almost 40.

You should seek out and watch this film.

Yeah, this movie captures certain aspects of post-Soviet gangsters in the early 1990s. Mostly, it does an excellent job of portraying the sort of 'hive mentality' a lot of them had/have, the mindless brutality, and a general outlook on life lacking in such human characteristics as empathy and critical thinking.

I'm not sure why that bunch was so shockingly nasty at that particular time. I ran into a lot of them in the places I was in during the early 1990s, and to a man they gave the impression of not having individual souls or intelligence, and didn't seem to have an existence outside of their group. They could be fun in a biker-gang kind of way, but when anything got in their way or was perceived to be in their way the absolute lack of self-control or even self-regard was shocking. It was like an electric switch, all on or all off.

This flick manages to nail that persona, especially in a morbidly hilarious scene in which our 'heroes' kidnap and terrorize a hapless peasant who makes a gesture at their (probably stolen) car. I'd like to say the gun play and violence was over the top, but honestly, I don't think it is. It's worth watching once.

With some trepidation I took my 10-year-old, video game loving daughter to see her very first R-rated movie; the reason? "Dad, it has Ninjas AND Cowboys!" Her review? "It was AWESOME!" Later, in the car, she talked about it for an hour and declared it "EPIC." I was okay with the content; the bloodiness is more 'anime', less 'SAW XXII', and although there was a subtext of sexual assault, it wasn't terribly explicit. For myself, I liked it quite a bit. It did exactly what most movies are supposed to do: require a suspension of disbelief, remove you from your own reality, and transport you elsewhere for two hours or so. This movie fills that requirement in exemplary fashion. In that regard it is topnotch, and I gave it an above average review for that reason. Is it high art? No, not really, although some of the set design (I guess that's what you call today's computer-driven environments in movies) is amazing and striking, rivaling some of the best of, yes I'll say it, John Ford's Westerns. The fight scenes for once make honest use of the slow-fast motion technique pioneered in the MATRIX movies; they make total sense and don't seem contrived. One of the best examples of this, I think, is the insertion of an anachronistic machine gun, where it's used as a punctuating, percussive beat during a shootout/fight scene! Whacked out and bizarre, it's to this movie's credit that, in its universe, it seems totally rational. That's how 'out there' this flicker gets. It was an excellent way to spend an afternoon, and much, much better than a standard-issue time-waster. We'll rent it and watch it again, for sure.

While watching this unexceptional little flicker, I decided to view it as a French version of a BUFFY episode, and in that light it's really not half bad.

The characters totally mirror an American-style TV series, with a bit of oddball Gaelic perspective thrown into the mix. The production values are straight TV (the settings seem to consist of a municipal park, someone's grandmother's house, and a boarding school in the off-season), and the 'effects' are pretty lame. However, the cast is easy on the eyes; I can't say any of them are great actors or anything, but personally I found the Euro-styled appearance of all the characters amusing and diverting.

If anyone's looking for a Godard-type 'un de film' this absolutely ain't it; but as a not-bad riff on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, and especially watching it as though it were a one-off pilot for a French TV ripoff of BUFFY, it works reasonably well. Seriously. If it were a TV series, and nothing else was on, I'd watch more of these.

I worked in a 'troubled' school district for two years, and uh, a whole lot of this movie is a LOT more true than one might think; from experience, I mean, a teacher pouring booze in a coffee cup (yes), a PE teacher stashing porno in his locker-room office (yes), a pill-popping school inspector (yes). A lot of the small moments were, in fact, absolutely dead on. Things I've seen: an administrator strut into a parent's group in a $4,000 suit and tell them, "I'm not here for missionary work"; taking over a 2nd grade classroom while the recently-divorced teacher went to the break room and smashed furniture while screaming obscenities audible through the whole school, then coming back as if nothing had happened... However, the structure of this movie just didn't make it for me, and actually, while there are some awesome, laugh-out-loud (if black comedic and uncomfortable) moments in here, the whole just doesn't work. The overarching theme of corruption and etc. would have been, if the 'story' as such had been properly handled, unnecessary. Although I do question whether if, someone had actually done an accurate portrayal of just how demoralized and chaotic and just plain dirty schools can get, it's possible that 1) nobody would believe it and 2) nobody would find it funny except those who have lived it. So, 3 stars, mostly for the little pieces, and the brief moments with the kids ("No, I can't hug you; lawsuits, remember?" Yep, been there). At least SOMEONE made a movie about elementary school from the perspective of the staff. This isn't a good movie, but at least it's out there.

This movie is a stunner, to be sure, and easily decades ahead of its time; the atmosphere of degradation and decay, and just plain desolation, is far beyond anything accomplished in any other film, and I include the immortal MAD MAX 2.

However, I have to, HAVE TO, ask the question of whether this film works, as do most Central/Eastern European films, on more than one level, and whether there is inner commentary contained in the film.

Watching it, I was struck by the subtext of how the old world has ended, and a new world begun, with new and young people with no knowledge of what went before; this is a basic tenet of radical Communism. The old people, clutching to the remnants of their soft and settled existence, dreaming of a life gone and never to exist again... as the Old One dies, so does the last vestige of any form of culture, or art, of even civilized behavior, and all that is left is a gramophone record of ROLL OUT THE BARREL being carried on horseback by heavily armed and murderous beasts; who themselves lack the capacity to reproduce.

I watched this film as a veiled indictment of the Eastern Bloc Communist belief that required history to be eradicated, for a new world to emerge after that holocaust, only to find the act of destruction (with an intent to rebuild) resulted in nothing less than the death of civilization and the creation of savages with no higher conscience.

I admit to an influence, though, in that I was in the Balkans during the 'wars' of the 1990s; and one of the most striking and heartbreaking things was many people's belief that Socialism had created a New Man, with no history; and how unfathomably shocked they were to have these fine creations of humanity revealed as violent animals bent on nothing more than mindless destruction.