Reviews

The Hudsucker Proxy

There was nothing entertaining on TV, so I decided to watch a movie. “The Hudsucker Proxy” had the top rating from the heap, so I went for it.

It turned out to be excellent. I think IMDB is a bit off the line with “Comedy/Romance/Fantasy” thing. It is more like “Drama/Satire”. It is original and very stylish. It has this nice touch to it with everything you see. There is a lot of great acting from a number of famous people – Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Mahoney, and more.

The movie is filled with excellent classical music which is perfectly timed. It creates and changes atmoshere and film mood in just split seconds. Great work.

This is one of those rare films that deserve to be in the home collection. 9/10.

Nochnoy Dozor

I promised not to watch any more of the Russian movies and managed to escape them for some time now. Until today. “Nochnoy Dozor” has been widely advertised in Russia and there was a lot of hype about it. Some people were even weighting it as an answer to Hollywood. My own mother wanted me to watch it. The copy of the film was available on the net, so I decided to see it.

This film sucks. Yes, it is better than many other films. It might be one of the best films from Russia for the last few years. But it still sucks. The biggest problem I have with this movie is the same as with all the other Russian films of the last 10 years or so – greyness, sadness, and depression. It has so much of negative energy that I had troubles focusing on the actual content of the film. Most movies (at least the ones similar to this) use contrast to strongly separate good and bad characters – good characters are usually surrounded by joy and happiness and bad characters are surrounded by spider nets, bats, and other creepy stuff. This film, on the other hand, is totally dark and grey. Good characters look like they have been drinking for a couple of weeks before the shooting. City scenes are dirty. People in the crowd and subway are angry. Blah blah blah. Yuck.

So, now once again I have to say – this was the last Russian-made movie that I watched. Enough is enough.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I just came back from the cinema, where they ran “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind“. It’s a 10 out of 10 movie and it has a range of reasons to go as high as #46 on the IMDB’s Top 250. It is one of the best movies I have seen ever. Ever.

This movie is perfect in each and every sense. There is a good story behind it. It’s original. There is good acting. Lots of it, actually. There is even more of good acting. It brings up few excellent points and makes one realize a number of things. It made me thinks of stuff that I never thought before. In short, this movie touched me.

There were few strong points cast-wise. First of all, this movie is a good proof that Jim Carrey can play drama, and not only “Ace Venture” and “The Mask”. I was suspecting this since “The Truman Show”. Secondly, it was good remind that Kate Winslet is alive and can act and that she shouldn’t be thrown out off the board of “Titanic“. And thirdly, it was good to show that Elijah Wood is not going to be Frodo all his life.

Overall, a perfect movie and a must see. It would be nice to have it in home collection also.

Paycheck

Evening in the movie with Olga. This time we went to see “Paycheck“.

It was a rather disappointment. There are few interesting ideas, but there is also a load of crap that this movie doesn’t need. Ben Affleck fighting with the stick while being a genuis computer engineer is really stupid. And overall Ben Affleck has nothing to do with this movie. They needed someone more geeky-looking. :)

Intolerable Cruelty

Went to see “Intolerable Cruelty“, which was an excellent movie to see during Christmas season. Not that it was in any way related to Christmas, though.