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bjorn5
Reviews
High Road to China (1983)
Lacklustre adventure
The Sinkiang province is 1 638 451 km². Somehow, the main characters manage to land in the one square kilometer where Evie's father is located. That's just one glaring plot hole and example of shoddy writing. Most of the movie is as flat and uninspired as the lighting of the scenes.
There are a lot of 9/10 and 10/10 scores, and I can't understand why. Either the reviewers watched it as kids and are real nostalgic over it, or they prefer their adventure movies bland and kid-friendly. While the story picked up a bit towards the end, the TV movie quality of the production didn't do it any favors.
With the exception for the flying scenes when crossing "Himalya", all the locations look like they were shot in Yugoslavia - which they were. It's a cardinal sin for a globe-trotting adventure movie to display such a boring series of "exotic" locations.
The villains are another weakness of the movie. Bentik is the kind of bad guy seen in Scooby Doo, and von Hess (Wolf Kahler) is seriously underused, There's that dogfight, and then he's gone. Brian Blessed's Khan as a rather nasty piece of work, but there's never any sense that he is a threat.
"They don't make movies like this anymore", some say. Thank goodness for that!
Nesokrushimyy (2018)
Mediocre
Unless you have a thing for Soviet armor, I would say that you should give this movie a miss. It's supposed to be about the second battle of Rostov in July 1942, but it looks like it's been shot in the same muddy field in northern Russia. The makers might have heard about tactics, but if they have, they have promptly forgotten almost everything. Tank vs tank combat is often within spitting distance, and the Germans appear to be dropouts from the Imperial Stormtrooper Academy of Shooting. Meanwhile, the Soviets hit with almost every round, and every hit is a penetrating killshot. The German tanks must have cardboard armor, though, as in one scene, a tank is knocked out by two hand grenades tossed at it.
While the "star" is a KV-1 tank (a rare bird in war movies), most other tanks are T-34/85, which weren't used until a year and a half later. All German tanks are supposed to be PzKpfw IV ausf. F2, but that tank was quite rare by that time. It's more likely that the real battle involved short-barreled PzKpfw IV's and IIIs with the 5 cm gun. The German tanks all sport side armor skirts (Schürzen), which were introduced in early 1943. They are probably there to hide the fact that the tanks are converted T-55s.
The Soviets are a motley crew of comrades, and only the political commissar is a bit slimy. The acting is OK, but a few actors stand out as pretty wooden. There's never really any real suspense, as the tank crew (while suffering losses) manage to defeat almost every German tank, even when the enemy assault with an entire company. The script has a love story of sorts, which appears to be there just to make girlfriends endure this rather mediocre 90-minute movie.
Stalingrad (2013)
Sam Peckinpah phoned and wanted his slow-mo camera back
This is the third best movie on the battle of Stalingrad since 1993. OK, to my knowledge, there have been just three Stalingrad movies in that span of time. This movie follows in an unfortunate trend among newer Russian war movies to sport lame plots, odd plot devices, and weak direction. Technically, it is nicely done with great sets and realistic uniforms, but unfortunately, it has a tepid story, unengaging main characters (OK, captain Kahn and Masha were somewhat engaging), dull musical score, and slow motion in Every. Frigging. Scene. Hey, it worked in "Cross of Iron" because Peckinpah used it for effect, not as an excuse for lame action. Here, it robs the battle scenes of the intensity most war movies get right.
From what I've seen of newer Russian war movies, about one in ten is really good. This one ranks among the nine others.
Schicksalsjahre (2011)
War messes up everything
This German two-parter tells an interesting story about Ursula Heye and her life before, during, and after World War 2. A typist and free-time piano player, she meets her big love Wolfgang, an opera singer. They witness the rise of Nazi terror and the persecution of Jews, but feel powerless to do anything. Wolfgang is conscripted into the German army, wounded, deserts and is sentenced to prison, all while Ursula tries to make a living while staying at her parents' house. Her relation with her mother is strained, and it doesn't improve when her brother is killed in Stalingrad. Back in the army, Wolfgang deserts a second time, and ends up in a penal battalion. Ursula has the opportunity to be evacuated on the passenger liner M/S Wilhelm Gustloff, but decides to stay as her son cannot swim. The ship is sunk a few days later, the biggest maritime catastrophe in history... When the war ends, Ursula ends up in the Soviet zone. Her search for Wolfgang ends when she learns that he was reported killed on the Eastern front. A widow and mother of two, she tries to adjust to life under the Communists, but her outspokenness marks her as politically unreliable. Together with her friend Norah, she manages to flee to West Germany. Some years later, she learns that Wolfgang might have survived the war after all...
Based on the memoirs by Uwe-Karsten Heye, the son of Ursula and Wolfgang, the miniseries tells a story that was probably rather common, but which hasn't been told to any great extent, at least not outside of Germany. There are no apologetics involved; Ursula herself admits on a couple of occasions that the Germans had themselves to blame. Her choices are seldom easy, and show that while one can hold lofty ideals, it isn't easy to survive without making compromises. The series is well worth watching, not least as a reminder that freedom is something precious that shouldn't be taken for granted.
The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
Impeccable animation
I've been a Tintin fan (got all the books) since I was ten years old (or thereabouts), so I was pleasantly surprised when the movie was announced. Considering that some previous attempts to put Tintin on the big screen had been underwhelming (the 1964 live action "Tintin and the Blue Oranges", or the animated "Tintin and the Lake of Sharks", 1972), I was a bit wary, considering that the script is a mash of three books. Watching the movie, I was pleased to see the cameo (of sorts) by Hergé (the cartoonist in the market), and the realism of the settings was quite amazing. I had several moments where I asked myself whether a scene was entirely CGI, or consisting of real environments and objects with the characters added in. But the photo-realism was a bit of a problem when it came to the characters. Whereas the comics work because they are obviously drawn, the realistic textures (down to Haddock's nose hairs) clashed with the exaggerated facial features. Many characters looked pretty grotesque, with big noses and all that. As for the story, it worked within the movie, and there were many faithful scenes, but the over-the-top action wasn't in the tradition of the comics all that often. Being loud, with lots of action and fast cuts, makes it more Hollywood than the comics (which might explain why Tintin didn't really make a hit in the US - he's too European). With the promise of a sequel, I hope that Spielberg will tone down the action a notch or two, and let the story speak for itself.