Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

These days there isn’t much choice of what to watch in the movies. So I ended up at “Be Kind Rewind“.  It’s a comedy with Jack Black and Mos Def, both of who are often funny.  Also, I wanted to see how Danny Glover is doing these days, since the last time I saw him was in “Lethal Weapon 4” or so.

“Be Kind Rewind” is a bit of an akward film.  It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s cheap, and it’s kind.  Some parts of it are so hilarious that I was laughing out loud.  Yet other parsts of it don’t make any sense at all.  Some scenes follow each other naturally, yet some other feel like they were glued together very roughly.

Overall, I’ll give it a 6 out of 10.  Not something that I would strongly recommend, but not your regular movie experience either.

I needed a little focus switch, so I went to the cinema to see “The Incredible Hulk“.  I didn’t particularly liked the first part - “Hulk“, but there was nothing better to choose from anyway.

Not a lot of improvements I must say.  Special effects are pretty average.  There are a few sparks, but overall - too cheap and unrealistic.  It would have been a lot better to use photography for scenery and background objects rather than to render them.  Operator’s work was pretty average.  Scenes of Brazil towns were especially disappointing, since those were so reach with details, which were lost by operators and their equipment (shaky helicopter shots and such).  The story is still boring and way over dramatic.  It pushes for Forest Gump or something.  Edward Norton and Tim Roth were acting good, and that improved the filim a lot.  Liv Tyler tried as usual, but I am not a big fan of her.

Overall: 6 out of 10.

Today I watched an excellent movie “Planet Terror“.   It’s packed with action, zombies, quotes, comedy, and romance.  It has lots of special effects, great photography, and music.  If you ever watched more than three zombie movies which were released in late 1980s or early 1990s, you’ll love this film.

It is Robert Rodriguez’ re-incarnation of “Army of Darkness” in the perspective of bio-chemical accident with military personell involvement and a taste of Desperado.  That’s the best description I can come up with.  But really, you should better see this one.

7 out of 10.

With all the movies coming out of the Hollywood these days, one needs some set of mental filters (aka stereotypes) to pick good films and avoid all the rest.  But, as with any other area of human life, stereotypes can heal and harm.  According to the set of movie stereotypes in my head, I was totally going to avoid the movie “Doomsday“.  I’ve heard that it was about some virus outbreak, sealed contaminated area, and a bunch of people going in to find the cure.  That’s all I knew, and that sounded a lot like something along the lines of “28 Days Later“, “Resident Evil“, and many other movies.  Those movies, they aren’t bad, but I’ve seen enough of them.

Luckily, my friend and colleague Igor likes this type of movies a lot.  So he managed to persuade me to go and see “Doomsday”.  And I’m glad he did.

The story of the film was very much like I expected it.  But, we weren’t there for the story, were we?  It’s how one tells the story.  And in this type of films, it’s all about how you show infected people, their mutations, human flash, body parts, horror, black humor, and the rest of the visual effects.  “Doomsday” was pretty good in this regard.  I’d say it was a little bit more bloodier than it needed, but no serious complains in this department.

All that is not very important however.  Because “Doomsday” has something that so many other movies don’t.  It has the spirit.  The atmosphere, if you will.  And it suits it very well.  It is a very rock-n-roll movie.  So much rock-n-roll, that it is much closer to punk rock in its spirit (and literary, most of the characters appear to be some serious fans of punk rock music).

There are a few places in the movie, which are either boring or a little bit too far fetched, but, gladly, they are very few and very short.  In most of it, the film provides excellent entertainment and positive energy boost.  It is mostly funny, and hilarious at places.  It has excellent special effects and strong characters in it.  There are a few memorable quotes, including some very peculiar ways of using an F* word (the film is very British in its nature).

So, if you like uncensored punk rock with lots of fun, if you are not easily destabilized by motion pictures, if you don’t truly belief that people in the movie suffer in pain or die in pieces, if you welcome the creativity of the creator even if it is a little bit out of your bounds sometimes, if you enjoyed “Mad Max” trilogy and darker (non-romantic) side of “Waterworld” than I strongly recommend to watch this movie.  You won’t regret it.

7 out of 10.

I just watched “V for Vendetta“. Back when it came out in 2006, I was a busy parent, and used any excuse I had to hate the movie.  Just so that I didn’t feel very bad about not going to the cinema to see it.  I saw a brief trailer of this film on TV and thought that it was yet another comics-based movie about another superhero or somebody like that.  Definitely, not something I wanted to see, especially back then.  So I passed.

I have to say that I am really glad that I rented it yesterday.  I picked it up just by chance.  I already had two other movies in my hand, and when I saw this “V” thing, I thought maybe I’ll grab three movies today, since the weekend is upon me.

Brilliant movie!  It has all the easy parts - the photography, acting, directing, special effects, etc.  Many films do these days.  But, this one goes beyond that.  It has a really good story.  An interesting one.  And the one that needs more attention. I’d go as far as call it a political movie.  It is about the role of government and mass media in our lives, how it used to be, and how things are changing, and how they aren’t changing for the better right now.  It’s a brave story too - not that many films are willing to risk the ensured profits of the entertainment industry by bringing in strong political discussion into a film.  But, as it has been proven many times, Wachovski brothers aren’t afraid of risks.

I really enjoyed how this political story was prepared and told.  It’s interesting, and it’s very human.  If I had to describe it in terms of other movies, I’d say that “V for Vendetta” is a very good mix of “Brazil” (think George Orwell’s “1984” ), “The mask of Zorro“, and “Invisible Man” (any version you like).  Yes, something like that.

This is also a film that can be watched over and over again.  The photography is beautiful, the soundtrack is great.  There are plenty of small details all around.  And there is this sense of style and class to it.

10 out of 10 (I know I’ve been giving away too many of high ratings recently, but it appears so that I missed a lot of really good movies)