Reviews

Some things are a bit artificial and take away from the experience in a bid to make it more "fine art" sort of film - overly long shots of sunflower fields, close-ups on actors' eyes, etc.

The story and characters are a bit typical like the weak commander, mistakes and poor judgement in battle or death of a character in a specially tragic or sensitive moment. There is essentially no story or character development. The little there is, was already done in "Beaufort" two years prior.

One should abstract oneself from any political context when viewing this film and judge it for what it is. However, the sensitivity of the topic has obviously contributed to the film's acclaim.

Great work by virtually all of the actors should be noted though. This could have been a much better film if the actors were given more space (in terms of plot and characters) to really shine.

A fantastic historical drama about King George VI and his Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue.

The movie captures your attention right from the start and keeps it there. It is beautifully shot and played; While the events it covers are by no means funny, the film shows the lighter side at times without taking away from the seriousness of the plot.

The film does a great job exploring the complex relations that form between all parties, within the King's family and outside.

You walk away moved and with a lot to think about, and after all this is what you should be after with this kind of movie.

I had high expectations given the Palme d'Or, but was disappointed on multiple levels.

First of all, the film watches like a political statement, and not a wisest or deepest one at that. Best illustrated by the court scene, which was supposed to have viewer sympathy on the poor woman's side but in practice was just a bit primitive altogether.

Everything is absolute in the film: all British are bad (except for single "good" ones), all rich are just ripping off the poor, all anti-Treaty forces are principled people, while pro-Treaty are motivated by opportunism. I'm neither Irish nor British and English is my second language, so I couldn't care less about either side, but I just know (from experience in other conflict zones) that life is usually more complex than that.

On top of that, the dialogue is at times very unrealistic; whenever there is a bit of tension everybody just yells their heads off, especially the British. Sometimes the lines are downright primitive, trying to over-emphasize the political points in case someone missed them.

The plot itself can be summed up in four lines, and would take much less then 2-hour movie to convey.

Overall, seems like an attempt to capitalize on (exploit?) a topic that I guess is controversial for some audiences. To an outside observer this looked like a lot of anxiety and emotion (on the part of film's creators) with very little substance.

The film is about last days of its protagonist, Uncle Boonmee. And according to Wikipedia, the director said in an interview that "the cinema is also facing death...it's my own little lamination".

He meant the death of film - now everybody shoots digital. But to me, the real death of cinema (digital or not) is the fact that this totally uninteresting flick has received Palme d'Or in Cannes. It made me very sad, and in this convoluted way, the film has achieved its goal.

Yes, it has long scenes in which people stare at each other or at the scenery, and nothing happens. Yes, it tries to allude to things and some people are trying to guess what alludes to what. Yes, it has several "styles" employed and switches between them. Yes, it is intentionally shot on film.

But none of this makes it a piece of fine art just yet. Because you know, there has to be something else - and there was nothing. Just two hours of boredom.

After seeing Vertical Limit I didn't have a lot of expectations regarding the climbing part. But the movie surprised me - as all the scenes are amazingly realistic. Of course, people in the movies never get tired or require acclimatization - otherwise the movies would be boring! But other than that minor thing, all the equipment is used correctly, terminology is more or less correct, and technical dialogue is most of the time relevant. Case in point: when a climber falls in Vertical Limit, he slides helplessly until reminded to "use his ice axe". In K2, they perform a perfect team arrest.

The storyline is OK for an action movie; some twists are somewhat "forced" - I am yet too see climbers or other outdoors people who are so arrogant when warned about danger - even if they disagree with an assessment. But again, without these twists there would be no action, so why not.

I did not like the ending, as it leaves a lot to viewer's imagination. Without revealing what it was, I will just say that what you make of it depends on how much you know about mountaineering - YMMV.

The special effects are great, and all characters are acting naturally and believably. The storyline is simplistic enough so not to distract from the special effects and action scenes. This is what's important for a disaster movie.

This movie gets criticized for its "bad science" - who cares? The "bad science" in this film is not like a "factual error" in others - the heroes are placed in unusual circumstances which are impossible in real life. But, given these circumstances, they do everything (believably) right and survive. Great!

Compare this with films like "Vertical Limit" where people get into very realistic unusual circumstances (being trapped in an ice cave), do *everything* wrong, and then survive. This is what makes you feel stupid.

So, as long as you expect to watch a disaster movie and not a global warming primer, you're OK.

The director Fiodor Bondarchuk seems himself to be under the influence of the dangerous "A-rays", declaring unconditional faithfulness to the letter on the original Book, and not paying any attention to how it plays out as a film.

The book has all the elements needed for a Star Wars-like scenario: it creates a complete detailed world full with its history ("Noon Universe"); it has a number of mysteries that are gradually revealed to the reader - "I'm your father, Luke!" type moments and more. It has a number of philosophical connotations about historical necessities and taking responsibility for people's destiny. It is an epic masterpiece.

But! The authors of the 1968 book didn't think about turning it into a sci-fi movie. The majority of the book is written from the view point of its heroes, describing their feelings and thoughts. Dialogue and action takes secondary role.

So this book was taken and stripped off of any and all non-action language, and turned into a scenario. The result is extremely fast-paced, bullet-point-like re-telling of the main events of the book.

The act is horrible across the board. Of special notice is Koldun (Enchanter), which is all about the voice. This is the voice that reads out what can be thought as A. & B. Strugatsky's (ABS) actual position on the main dilemma. This voice is delivering one of the main messages of the film. The movie creators recognized that, and turned the Koldun scene into a separate scene, as opposed to being part of the "Meeting". But the voice is absolutely unremarkable, and just quickly reads through the text.

As a side note - the Bomber is just pathetic. The bomber itself is not significant altogether, and could be just left out. But it was left in, and instead of a complex technical scene involving a large airplane, the creators opted for a cheaper CG solution. This is strange to say the least, given the $40M budget of the film.

The original book is a classic in Russia, and contains enough material (and in high enough quality) to create a Start Wars-like series of films. What was done instead was extremely fast-paced bullet-point-like re-telling of the classic story. No suspense, no tension that was present at all stages in the book.

The screenplay sticks to the original dialogue almost verbatim. A serious mistake in my view: the director seems to be afraid of the book fans, and doesn't dare to touch anything in the original. But the original dialogue was backed by a lot of description of internal thinking of the heroes - which cannot be shown on the screen. The result - the storyline is flat and uninteresting, instead of the intriguing and fascinating story in the book.

The actors' play is a total fiasco - except, maybe Strannik ("Strider") - but his role is relatively simple. Everybody else looks like they're reading from a phone book - which probably has to do with the fact that the dialogues were left as-is, see above.

I do appreciate the effort to create an "exoplanet" look of everyday things (cars, glasses, forks, plates, food, clothes etc). The things created would be unusable, but had the desired unusual look.

Overall, disappointing, and leaves a taste of a missed opportunity.

"...you allow yourself in the presence of two university-educated men to offer advice, with quite intolerable familiarity, on a cosmic scale and of quite cosmic stupidity, on the redistribution of wealth... and at the same time you eat toothpaste..." - M. Bulgakov, "Heart of a Dog", also in 1988 movie.

The film uses two very effective tactics to convince an unsophisticated viewer of a conspiracy theory. One is showing a pattern (sometimes created via distortion and half-truths) and then explaining it the way they want, and the other is plain old fear mongering.

But people want conspiracy theories, so why not give them what they want?

The ideology presented in the movie is essentially Soviet, and the main points proposed are:

• Religion is evil - Capitalism is evil - USA's policies are imperialistic, striving to create world government - Banks control our lives

Still, this movie made me look up a few things on Wikipedia, so here you go, an extra star.

There is a lot of natural charm in any Inuit film, like Atanarjuat ("Fast Runner") or this one. Seeing people dealing mainly with simple survival tasks gives a strong "no-bull@#$%" sense, and gets you to believe what's happening on the screen much more than you would with any other film. It all looks authentic and true.

Add to this some great Arctic scenery, and you can easily have a winner. But still...

The storyline is a bit choppy, with things just taking too long or too short to happen. Many scenes are enormously long relative to what's happening. Camera work seems to favor close-ups too much (or maybe that's me - I was sitting way too close). The ending left me completely confused as to what the authors were trying to say here.

On the positive side, I'm happy the creators didn't get carried away with too much action (hunting etc), with some more complex things left out of the frame. It didn't harm the movie at all, contrary to what people may think after seeing too much Hollywood movies.

Even though I gave this one four stars, I will go see another film from the same creators if and when it comes out.