Reviews

Other reviewers have already left excellent reviews. One thing I'd like to point out though is that this story is NOT based on Beauty and the Beast. Just like the story of Cinderella has various versions in folk cultures spanning from China to Iceland, the fable of Beauty and the Beast is also an ancient mythological storyline to which every nation eventually added its own twist.

In this case, the Russian folklorist Sergei Aksakov recorded The Scarlet Flower in mid-1850s "as told by my housekeeper Pelagea". Aksakov claimed he remembered her tale since his early childhood. This explains all the plot deviations from the version known to the Western reader as their own traditional fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast.

The animation does full justice to his story and still remains one of the most popular Soviet animation films today.

A truly Dickensian satirical comedy featuring vignettes from the mid-19th century life in the Russian Empire.

Misha Balzaminov is a hapless, poorly paid young clerk who spends all his spare time daydreaming about finding himself a rich bride. Assisted in this task by his simple-minded mother and her friend the matchmaker, he embarks on his search which puts him in a number of side-splittingly embarrassing situations. The young man's greedy and selfish character is tempered by his naivete and by the natural charm of the leading actor (Georgy Vitsin).

The film is based on the theater play trilogy by the leading 19th-century Russian playwright Alexander N. Ostrovsky, much loved for his hilarious and tragic depictions of Russia's emerging middle class. The filmmakers expertly blend all three stories of Balzaminov's clumsy courtships together, embellishing them with star performances from some of Russia's finest actors. This, together with the film's kind and humorous atmosphere, has made it an everlasting classic with the Russian audience.

I didn't expect I'd like this movie so much. It has loads of what they call a 'human factor'. Renée Zellweger is perfect for the part of an ambitious and uptight executive. Her character is still young but you can easily see what she's going to become in ten years' time: a corporate monster incarnate, a new Miranda Priestly. Her character has long lost grip on reality, speaking in meaningless corporate buzzwords: basically, this unexpected business trip to Minnesota saves the poor girl's life. I absolutely love Ms. Zellweger's portrayal of her character: everything in her from her facial expressions to little corporate accents is so recognizable!

This film left me with a very good feeling, as if it had restored something important within me. A subtle comedy and an even subtler romance - basically, this is just a life story with its humor, love and heart-warming developments. Perfect for a quiet Christmas evening - yes, because the filmmakers managed to add a touch of Christmas which, IMHO, wasn't really necessary and ruined part of the story appeal for me (as in, "oh no, not another Christmas movie!" halfway through it).

Overall, a wonderful experience, can't recommend it enough.

Set in nineteenth-century Finland, this is situational comedy at its absolute best. A grumpy village wife sends her husband to borrow some matches from their next-lake neighbor. On his way, the poor fellow meets an old drinking buddy and gets completely sidetracked, forgetting all about the task at hand in order to help his friend marry the girl of his dreams (which he ultimately does in the end - never mind it's a totally different girl). A bitter-sweet confusion follows, resulting in a drunken brawl, a prison sentence, a ship sinking on its way to America, several weddings being arranged then called off, finally culminating in the hero's own "funeral". Side-splitting but done with great taste and style.

The film - and the novel of the same name it's based on - offer a rare sympathetic glimpse into the life of rural 19th-century Finland. The movie succeeds in conveying the novel's biggest strength: its characters, uneducated but amazing men and women whose simple hearts are bursting with love and hope. A rare gem worthy of being on the "Best ever" list.

Great series. I'm watching the English-language version of it now with French subtitles and it's great. I can't remember when I watched something that passionately last, waiting for each Sunday installment on British TV. The beauty of it is, it's very realistic and human, spooky in a very believable way. How would you feel if your child or lover came back from the dead and you had to deal with all the problems of hiding them from all the friends and neighbors who were present at their funeral AND have to avoid the truth as the poor souls apparently don't realize they've been dead for years or decades!

I did knock off one point for the dialogue. I'm just not a big lover of "suspenseful" evasiveness when people just don't tell each other things because if they do, the mystery will end after just one episode! Sometimes I was on the verge of hurling something at the TV, so annoyed I was with the characters' constant ambiguities. I don't think I've heard one line of plain honest information in the whole film, it's all understatements, or alternatively something happens just when someone was about to say something important. To me, it's not suspense, it's sloppy manipulative dialogue. So one point off for that.

Otherwise, the actors are very good, the story is well-developed and the atmosphere is beautifully spooky. If realistic horror is your thing, this is definitely a film to watch.

The film must be good, but, being Russian and having lived in Belorussia for many years, I really couldn't concentrate because of the poor Russian and equally poor acting of most so-called "Russian" cast members which were driving me up the wall. I had the impression that, with a couple of exceptions, the producers just cast a bunch of second-generation Brighton-Beach immigrants with no acting experience whatsoever because whatever poor accented Russian they could manage was as unnatural and forced as a middle-grade drama society production.

To say nothing of the fact that the film is set in Belorussia, and Belorussians have a very specific accent when they speak Russian, but the only Russian accent I heard in this film was Brighton Beach American! Ditto for whoever wrote the Russian dialogs for the film: for the most part those were the most ungrammatical and stilted lines, impossible in colloquial Russian speech. Some of them were literal translations from English that made no sense in Russian: apparently, producers had insisted on literal translation of original English dialogs (which, as every translator knows, is a recipe for disaster).

I mean, is it really so difficult to hire a native Russian script writer and a few professional Belorussian movie actors to play actual Belorussians? Why hire second-generation immigrants who can't even speak their parents' native language any more, let alone act, and present it to the world as Russian acting and Russian speech? I repeat, the film is probably very good but I hated every minute of it because the "Russian" side of it was the ugliest mess I've ever seen on screen.

This is an adorable little movie and it leaves a very good feeling. The filmmakers succeed in creating a very positive atmosphere -- it really transports you back into your teen days! For the duration of the film I turned 13 again and God did it feel good. The film left me feeling younger and happier for a long time, so for this alone it deserves a very high vote.

The story contained a few good and unpredictable twists -- no spoilers here, but it's well-plotted and delivers a good message. The main idea of a mermaid capable of turning into a girl at daytime is a lovely new take on traditional mermaid tales and the ending was perfectly unpredictable and uplifting. Could use more of the same!

Rated as the scariest Russian horror movie ever, Prikosnovenie (which is best translated into English as The Encounter, not Contact) is one of those films viewers don't watch twice -- at least that's what many of them admit online. A low-budget supernatural murder mystery filmed with a bare minimum of homemade special effects succeeds brilliantly in creating a truly inhuman, otherworldly atmosphere you won't want to experience again in a hurry.

A detective investigating a series of suspicious suicides realizes too late he might not be dealing with an organized crime group of hypnotists as he first believed...

The strength of the movie is in the fact that it's not filmed for entertainment, the way most horror flicks are. You're not expected to watch it, stretch and say "it was only a movie". It's filmed in dead (pardon the pun) seriousness, a fictionalized documentary rather than a scary bedtime story. Interestingly, director Albert Mkrtchyan -- who enjoyed the challenge of working on a supernatural story contrary to his superstitious friends' warning -- very nearly shared the main character's fate and never made another film until his death 15 years later.

The film is unique in that it actually makes us experience the other side beyond life, the notorious next world -- not as a filmmaker's concept but as raw unedited truth. How did the director do it? -- Well, that's talent for you. But just getting a glimpse of what might await you out there is enough reason to carry on living.