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willy9812
Reviews
Podolskie kursanty (2020)
Excellent WWII film - if you know and appreciate history
On a scientific trip to Russia way back in 1997 two things became forever imprinted upon me.
In Dmitry Bibikov's very old Moscow apartment I sat drinking tea and learned that yes, in 1941 he could "hear the shelling" from there. He must have been perhaps 8 or 10 years old at the time. Eventually he became a world-famous zoologist who studied marmots (which is how I came to meet him). "Yes we could hear the shelling from that window especially" while pointing at the small west-facing window was an observation not lost on me.
On the same trip I learned: "if you meet a Russian and make a friendship, it is permanent. If you make an enemy, it is equally permanent...and will turn out badly for you."
This is a fine movie indeed. I have no complaints about the acting or camera techniques or WWII equipment being used. Indeed this the only time I have ever seen the basics of katyusha rocket artillery tactics shown on film. The history is factual. Painstakingly so.
Yes there is CGI and it still bugs me. But those Ju-87s and He-111s and ME-109Fs and Il-2s look pretty good to me...and given that there no flyable examples of any of those types...get used to it. I think we're not too far away from making the "flight models" almost "convincing".
For those who complain about "lack of character development" I will politely disagree. I saw plenty. Most viewers here don't speak Russian and have to suffer through English subtitles. Just like Downfall (2004).
And just like that one - I would be happy to share it with a group of university history majors with the admonition "spot the errors - go on, make my day"
Awakening the Zodiac (2017)
Fantastic - and I kinda know what it feels like
This movie "sings to me". I published my first scientific paper based on hawk nesting records kept by a local naturalist and kept in his basement for over 30 years by the time I got to see them. So I know what that feeling of discovery in a dusty storage unit "feels like".
As for the movie itself, there's nothing special about the acting, the locations or anything else to set this one apart...but I thought the premise was good. Matt Craven played a convincing role and Stephen McHattie made for a convincingly scary "Zodiac". The Canadian filiming locations were also convincingly "not Canadian".
For me, this ranks nicely on the spectrum of "serial killer" movies somewhere between Citizen X (1995), Seven (1995), the Silence of the Lambs (1991) and "Zodiac" (2007).
I ofen watch movies and then use the internet to "learn more". This one made me want to "learn a LOT more" about a subject that was only "mildly interesting" to me beforehand. Hence my ranking.
De slag om de Schelde (2020)
Best WWII drama of 2020 - period
I watched it this evening - and was hugely impressed.
There's a lot of (very well done) CGI. So the Airspeed Horsa gliders and Handley-Page Halifax towing aircraft are all there, as are Dakotas and Lancasters, T-34s and Panzerfausts, Bren guns and MP-38s.
But unlike many WWII films, this is a "character study" of various people caught up in it. And all of the unknown (to me) actors gave me a glimpse into the extraordinary human carnage of it. Everyone was fighting their own war...and some survived it.
Personally I'd rate this film as being on a par with "Saving Private Ryan" (1998)" or "Dunkirk" (2017) or "1917" (2019). We're seeing an era in which "set design" and "production design" are making things "possible" for the first time.
But in this case? The film literally took me to places I've never been but have read countless books about.
This time I would recommend: yes, read the books. And see the movie to understand that it was very not only "worse"...it was personal.
Starship Troopers (1997)
A fine movie
OK, so I'm a complete sucker for war movies and technically and convincing historical details. Anthony Hopkins using an accurate sten gun in a "Bridge too Far", and the wonderful realisation by Micheal Caine in the "Battle of Britain" that spitfires tend to overheat when sitting too long on the ground. This is the amazing stuff that I look for in a Spielberg movie or from British filmmakers.
This is a completely different kind of movie, and one I thought I would hate. Quite the reverse. Sometimes its just an-over-the top science-fiction flic, and yes it is indeed that. But it does say something, in my opinion, about the youth that governments typically send into battle, and why they behave as they do.
Combining humour, pretty good CGI, an unlikely plot (it is science fiction after all), it still rings true for the sense of what young people have been asked to do for the rest of us. Lay your sense of disbelief aside, enjoy the shower scene, and revel in the fact that Hollywood did something quite good in this film.