Change Your Image
rodhagen
Reviews
La Fortuna (2021)
Todd show, a pity about some of the Yanks.
Been enjoying this series, now up to the last episode. Annoying watching the contrast between the formulaic US style and the rest at times, but the Spaniards make up for it generally. Great to see the relationship between the two primary Spanish characters evolve!
DNA (2019)
Brilliant treatment of complex issues.
This program keeps developing right to the very end. Highly recommended.
Seberg (2019)
See this as a movie about the way politics was played "back then", not as a biography
This is one of very , very, few movies in my going on 68 years that has brought me near tears of sadness, memory and anger. This is not, and was never meant to be, a "biography" of Jean Seberg. It was always intended as a picture about the way that politics was played "back then" and it succeeds admirably at this.
Those of us who found police not be as friendly as some might hope in those days; who witnessed Askins "boys in blue" kicking the bejesus out of anti-vietnam demonstrators; who ran into the ongoing abuse of Black Australians ; who got tired of having their snapshots taken by the hasrrasing lads of ASIO etc etc etc will find it perhaps the nearest thing to their experiences they are likely to find in a movie in Australia. No, it is not set here. It is , of course, p[rimarily set in the US, but the experiences were much the same.
This is one for the records, I reckon.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
What an exploitative dog of a film.
If you enjoy watching other people play slash 'em, bash 'em video games you might just enjoy this film.
If you enjoyed the first two, you'll be disappointed.
If you enjoy Tolkien, stay as far away as you can.
Utterly lacking in plot, wit, invention. This is the crud money spinner that should never have been made. Interminable repetitious battle scenes, next to no dialogue, next to no real relevance or development re the earlier films.
What a pity.
Instead of wasting money on the film, buy your kids Hyrule Warriors or a similar video game. You'll get far more fun watching 'em play it. It will keep them entertained far longer and the plot / dialogue value is about the same.
Utomlennye solntsem 2 (2010)
A tricky one
A difficult movie to assess. Many people seeing it probably expected more of the very clever, but somewhat romantic, view of Russia on the verge of succumbing to Stalinism contained in the original "Burnt by the Sun".
Inevitably they will be disappointed. This movie deals with a period when the romantics of earlier days had been crushed, when the Russian world was unremittingly harsh, capricious and chaotic for all, and its people confronted great menace from both inside and out.
Its structure is, as others have noted, somewhat chaotic, with frequent , but clearly delineated, changes in time, both backwards and forwards. We see contrasts drawn between the earlier era of the first film, together with the the time of the great retreats in 1941 and the recovery of Russian lands, and re-assertion of what passed for Stalinist "order", in the advances of 1943. At times this is disconcerting, but for me it captured the essence of the era.
The film never lurches into the excesses of "heroism" that one often sees in Hollywood movies dealing with war (and in Soviet era "war" movies , too, for that matter). If it owes its approach to anything it is to Remarque's "All quiet on the Western Front" and other similar works. Vignettes of personal strength, suffering and weakness. Recognition that contingency, accident and decisions made from afar, rather than personal attributes, largely determine who lives and who dies in war -an absence of heavy moralizing (though there are some Christian allusions that it may be interesting to see resolved in part 2 when it arrives), but the recognition of moral dimensions even amidst chaos.
It is truly brutal at times, but paradoxically the violence is almost understated when one thinks of the staggering 20 million people who died during the period portrayed.
People have very different reactions to this film. Three of our party were seriously disappointed while two of us thought it seriously good, and wanting to see how the next in the series resolves the many unanswered questions which this film leaves you with.