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Reviews
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Surprise for retro fans!
"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" could have been maden in the year 1930 if they had have our technical abilities. The touchingly stupid plot comes from those times. For example it includes:
- skyscraper-size robots attacking NYC
- a mysterious hero Sky Captain, whom the world leaders ask for help
- his girlfriend - a retro-style blond - independent woman reporter
- and - sure! - a mad scientist, producing monsters and dreaming to destroy the world.
This tribute to the dated second-rate science fiction combines post-modernistic irony and true love to the XX century trash culture and naive and frightening futurology. It is not a shame to love trash anymore. As a result the movie is recommended for those who are deeply into retro stuff and have enough sense of humor to get the joke. Others might have an incontrollable desire to watch it on the high-speed remote. Naive iron monsters, gloomy urban scenes, mountain trip to the Shambola (these scenes somehow remind Leni Riefenstal's "Blue light") - all seen through a purple dim - make a strangely beautiful and surrealistic picture. Every single still from the movie shouts "I wanna be a poster on your wall!" - and actually deserves it.
P.S. Do not miss Angelina Jolie - the one-eyed, kickin' ass superwoman!
Rane (1998)
quite subjective
Take `The Clockwork Orange', add `Trainspotting', add `Once Upon a Time in America'...Throw away all the cinema glamour. Add harsh reality. I do not know what you will get as a result and I can't promise you it will be something good. But if you are Srjan Dragoevic, you will get `Rane' and it will be breathtaking.
I've watched tonns of various movies - & felt like nothing could impress, thrill or shock me - till I've discovered Yugoslavian/postYugoslavian cinema. Black humor. Real passion. Authentic - might be the best definition. The characters are a l i v e and you just wonder how the director managed to put so much pieces of real life inside the picture. What other cinema schools tried to archieve through `experiments' - like Dogma for example - that is to say by inventing boarders, limits & rules for itself - those Yugoslavs did or do by working in often ordinary, may be even classic way - and the main trick is that they seem to have no boarders! The movies I've watched were dark but still they never lacked `lust for life'. Yugoslavian cinema seems to have national specific but always keeps in mind the best examples of European/American cinema. Almost all listed above refers to `Rane'. Mix `Trainspotting' with `Clockwork orange' add a little bit of `Once upon a time in America' & put it on the streets of Belgrade of the nineteth...Take two teenagers who do not know any reality except hatred, violence, crime & poverty - and put them inside the story. One of the most bizzare things for me was - how it reminds the Russia of the early ninteth - rapid inflation, depression & political madness. Two main characters are the guys from my area. It makes me wonder - why former Yugoslavian directors managed to make a number of brilliant movies - trying to expalin what is happening - during extremely hard times - while Russia hadn't already produced even a single good & honest movie about what is happening in Chechnya? Well may be one or two but it is still doubtfull. That's a shame.