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colby-14
Reviews
My iz Kronshtadta (1936)
story of a reluctant hero
spoiler alert!
set in 1919 during the Russian Civil War between Reds and Whites, a detachment of Baltic fleet sailors is organized to help the Red Army defend Petrograd against Gen. Yudenich's White Army. a Soviet version of the typical American war movie, with emphasis on personality types rather than names(2 of the main characters aren't even given names).first you have Jerkface, the initially unsympathetic hero. then you have Blondie, the mysterious female lead. next you have Nemesis, the Red Army man who clashes with the Jerkface over the woman. as lesser characters you have Guitarman as comic relief, always quick with a joke or a song, the Commisar for leadership inspiration, and the Kid as unit mascot.
as the detachment is organized everyone is vetted by the other men for inclusion. the Commissar is in for though only on his first day in the navy, he had a long Party record dating back to 1901. Guitarman is accepted because even though his dad was an officer, at least he turned dad in to the cops! the Kid gets in because he has more revo cred than some of the adults. Jerkface barely gets in because he is a non-Party man("for my own reasons") and a general pain in the butt.
next comes a little last minute R&R in town Jerkface spies a good looking woman, Blondie. he is smitten and it is starting to look like a gang-rape is going to happen. then Nemesis and some of his Red Army buddies show up and they fight the sailors off. Jerkface vows revenge.
night comes and the Army and Navy boys are billeted together in an orphanage based on a confiscated White estate. Jerkface is surprised to see that Blondie is running the place. he tries to turn on the charm but she isn't having it. everybody tries to get some shut-eye all over each other while Blondie serenades them and the orphans run amok. morning comes and Jerkface and Nemesis wake up face to face with each other! a battle breaks out before they can duke it out.
everyone goes out to block a chokepoint on the road to Petrograd. they capture a White soldier. everyone assumes he is one of the foreign imperialists they have been told about, but he is just a poor dumb local kid drafted by the Whites. during the ensuing battles he is torn between hanging with his captors or getting ready to rejoin his own side, thus is constantly taking his epaulettes on and off, depending on the tempo of the battle.
a huge White tank shows up causing the sailors to bug out temporarily. the army boys stop and capture the tank. the peasant soldiers admire the tank and agree that it would be a fine machine for ploughing! during White counter-attacks the Commissar mans a Maxim machine gun and repels them. "Mr. Maxim has the floor" he says. afterwards: "that was a fine speech!" new attacks come in and a wild melee erupts in the trench. guitarman gets some good lines. asked to surrender, he says "Just a sec!" and whips out a pistol and blows the guy away. then, carefully putting the guitar out of harms way, jumps into the scrimmage. face to face to a White soldier he says"Welcome home!" and then "who's surrendered to whom? we'll soon find out!"
soon after the Red sailors are captured, and all, even Jerkface, claim to be Party members, a sure death sentence. they all get rocks tied around their necks and are pushed off a cliff into the sea. Guitarman makes sure to kick his guitar off first to keep it out of White hands. Jerkface is the last one to go, jumping rather than be pushed. he has palmed a knife however and is able to cut the rope to be the only survivor. makes it back to the orphanage which has been reclaimed by the Whites. he runs into Blondie again in the place she and the orphans have relocated. she gives him her dress to disguise himself as a woman and try a break for Kronstadt. he is followed by a horny White soldier who gets a fatal surprise. he gets a boat and rows for Kronstadt while the Whites try and get Blondie to induce the remaining Red Army men to surrender. she makes a break for it and disappears into no mans land.
back at Kronstadt Jerkface tells the tale of the cliff, helps organize a relief force and gives a rousing speech before leading it in a low-rent amphibious assault in the White's rear. at the front, the rmy boys are down to a few able-bodied men, the walking wounded and the marching band-and Blondie. dire straits leads to bravado like in American movies(e.g. "Come on, i haven't got all day!"). they throw rocks at the Whites: "come get your piece of land!" "Where are you going? we're not stingy, we'll give you more!"
Jerkface and the sailors show up to save the day. he and Nemesis meet cute as J. is kissing and hugging him before he realizes who it is. buddies now, they go off arm in arm to push the Whites off the same cliff. they see Blondie arm in arm with the commander, and Nemeisis lets Jerkface know that she is the commander's wife! Jerkface has "D'oh!" moment. his last line as he looks at the drowned Whites below is "Anybody else want Petrograd?" people who like this should see "Red and White."
Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1980)
like a bad film school project
*spoiler alert*
OH.MY.GOD. where to start? first, confession time. i only saw this because it was sent to me by mistake instead of "Doom Generation". this indie production by Yvonne Rainer, a choreographer/filmmaker, alleges to be an apologia ofe Baader-Meinhoff gang in the German Federal Republic of the '60s and '70s. but it veers off in tangents and seemingly unrelated images so that it is all over the map. it starts off with a young woman narrator trying to explain her conversion from a bougie self-indulgent student with too much time on her hands to a dedicated revolutionary realizing the necessity of violence to overthrow the State. unfortunately all her arguments just seem to accent the former. she despairs of doing jury duty in rape cases because the defendants always seem to be black(presumably American GIs).she then goes on to empathize with the "working class" to such an exaggerated extent that she bursts into tears merely shopping for shoes! come on lady! at least that gal had a job!
next a series of written statements scroll by designed to show the increasing tide of repression in the Bundesrepublik which led to the rise of the Baader-Meinhoff gang. unfortunately this does not work either because of the omission of crucial information. step one: 1961 the rise of the Berlin Wall- without mentioning that it was the GDR that put it up, not the West! step 2: 1968 a street rally/riot is listed as a turning point. much is made of the fact that 2 people died from stones without mentioning who would have been throwing those stones. the police? i think not. they are way better armed. step 3: 1970 Ulrike Meinhoff helps spring Baader from jail. he had gotten a cushy library job off the prison site and he was sprung from that. mention is made that an elderly librarian was killed, conveniently forgetting to state who killed him. if it's a jailbreak and no cops are around that kind of narrows it down doesn't it?
then the film does a 180 and starts in with a pseudo-interview with an older woman who one thinks initially is the narrators mother but really is mouthing the views of Yvonne Rainer herself. she rambles on and on about the Revolution and Feminism. one moment she is talking about women revos in Czarist Russia, then denying the need for the institution of marriage, especially as justification for children. and then she gets personal and slams her husband for being a lousy lover and only lasting 32 minutes in the sack! i know a lot of folks who would be quite happy with that...also kept harping about suicide. then she name-drops about hooking up with playwright Samuel Beckett. overall she came off as a frustrated lesbian hag.
amidst all this she puts in all sorts of visuals that have nothing at all to do with the supposed story: repeated shots of Stonehenge, a strange pagoda-like building, and lots of cheesy art. all this led me to do a little research on Rainer, and sure enough, she says that one of the main purposes of her movies is "to confound". well you got that right sister! oh- she finally came out of the closet in 1991. only for the avant-garde crew.
The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
interesting view of wartime life in the Vatican
Gregory Peck stars as Monsignor O'Flaherty, who is head of a cabal of Vatican officials aiding runaway POWs with the tacit approval of Pope Pius XII (John Gielgud). i found it interesting that Pius gets the good guy treatment here when many more recent accounts generally bash him as pro-axis at the least or spawn of Satan at worst(see "Hitler's Pope" by John Cornwell). there was an apochryphal story about his death where his casket supposedly was dropped and a hideous stench came forth. bad embalming job or eminence of evil? you decide!
Chrisopher Plummer as the sleek Col. Kappler had a good time with his role, one moment a good family man, the next extortioner of the Jews.the battle of wills between the two was done well, though one thing that didn't ring true to me was Kappler's naivete in letting O'Flaherty con him out of an autograph which was so obviously going to be used to further O'Flaherty's plans. *spoiler alert*
the movie gave Gregory Peck a couple of good laughs too. at a party he regales the society matrons with a tale of his golf game: his ball "hit a tree, bounced off into the back of a truck headed for Genoa. it was the longest drive in history!" later Jeeves the English agent saves him from imminent arrest by pulling him down the coal chute and gives him his clothes, then tells him to hit him to make things look good. O'Flaherty, ever the good Irishman, gives out a hearty "God love ya!" and POW! right on the kisser! another good movie to see involving the Vatican and WWII is "Amen"
Major Dundee (1965)
wannabe epic- more like ep-ICK!
having recently seen this after also seeing the "Horse Soldiers" i coudn't help from making some comparisons. both had a dramatic and interesting story line, grand technicolor,and good casts. i also noticed they were trying for a grand theme song to use throughout the movie ala "Dr. Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia"(which i also recently saw). "Horse Soldiers'" "I Left My Love" was actually kind of a catchy tune that sort of sticks in your head for a while. the "Major Dundee March" on the other hand is insipid and forgettable instantly.
the choppiness of direction and the way it falls apart halfway through is now explained by all the problems on the set which i had not previously known. i can just imagine Peckinpah boozing it up in some Mexican brothel-just like Major Dundee! and the image of Charlton Heston going after him with a saber makes me want to fall on the floor laughing!
i too was disappointed how after everything else that happened, they wind up the main focus of the movie-getting Sierra Charriba- much too quickly. and what was with Sierra's less than stirring last words? as i recall he only spoke Apache. yet all of a sudden he gets up and mouths some garbled English which reminded me more of a badly dubbed WWII movie where the Japanese guy is saying something like Die Yankee dog!
Since You Went Away (1944)
throw-away lines were the best
what made me laugh out loud were various throw-away lines from people in th crowds, in the bar and train station *spoiler alert* like the gal who remarks "I got 6 dozen irons before the hoarders showed up". in the station people on the phones: between guys saying last goodbyes to Mom and Pop a matron sez "... and you can't tell the difference from real butter!" 2 girls staring enviously at a girl smoothing her stockings "Look! Nylons!" the player Marine in his dress blues solemnly telling his girlfriend he'll always remember her face and "Go now. turn and walk away and don't look back". a minute later in another part of the station he says the same line to another girlfriend! or panning the hospital ward you see 2 guys practicing their semaphore skills with flashlights. these little gems did a lot to bring the movie up from the tear-jerkiness of the whole.