Change Your Image
ehren-50501
Reviews
Velikaya voyna (2010)
Yes, yes - modern means of CGI and animation...
...and reenactment, not to forget, do their best to clean the thing up & sugarcoat it a good deal. Not so convincing to me. But, o. K. Russians understandably do their best to make a heroic sense out of their 1st part of 20th century history.
Four Hours at the Capitol (2021)
Frightening & somewhat shocking insight
Saw it on German tv, January 5th, 2022. Ask myself, if the perpetrators really were so disoriented and clueless that they didn't knew where there were going. So that a single police officer, or some other police officers, by their intelligent behavior, could have led them some few meters away from real dangerous results, i. E. storming certain bureaus or the the joint session hall itself. Was this, eventually, only a "probe" ? Notice that obviously no firearms were brought in. Believe, the casualty outcome - whit due respect to the quite heavy injuries of some dozens of people - remained lenient, in regard of the angrily yelling aggressive masses involved. Another point was, in my opinion, a bit glossed over. On grounds of politeness and piety, due to this eminent place: so there were, over some hours, literally thousands of people strolling around and in capitol building. What about peeing. Or - horrible to say - defecation on improper places. Need would have been, more than enough. Can't believe that discipline was so strong that any soiling could be prevented.
North by Northwest (1959)
nice clean US in late 1950s shown, but this pic has aged badly. Towards ridiculousness
First, nice, so much properly-dressed, handsome-normally looking people, can be seen in the streets or at the train stations eg. (not lousy cloth, shabby or over-fat as today's majority), one can't believe that was the case some time. But it was, year was 1958, some 63 years ago ! Gosh.
Great color footage.
Plot is laughable. Clumsy "killers" try to eliminate Thornhill. Complicated schemes: make a man drunk and force him to drive into an abyss, so he'll find his end. Problem is, that underrated 50-something "Mr Joe" Roger Thornhill not only jostles his thug co-driver out of the car, but manages to distance his pursuers, racing the Mercedes, extremely over-drunk as he is (after 10 seconds of car chase you know, that soon Police will appear, even if you haven't seen the pic before...) And, crash boom bang rear end collision, here they are !
Thug throws a knife in the back of the "real" Diplomat in UN building, while this man is talking to Thornhill. Many people standing around, but nobody having seen that. Diplomat is dead, Thornhill grabs the knife (for fingerprints), declaring the shocked crowd - a photographer is at hand for snapshot - he has nothing to do with that - and, not enough, escapes without great effort out of the people-packed multi store UN building, fleeing aimlessly to train station, only covered by sunglasses. There he meets the femme-fatale Kendall, scheduled for him (? - how was this managed at such short hand ?), only a few moments before train's departure for Chicago.
F. F. Falls for him (at least, a part of her - viewer would know that after 10 seconds, both sitting in the dining car, they two would finish the film as lovers, together. For the last idiot to grip that, sweet music sets in...)
But then Kendall, after arrival in Chicago, sends our unlikely hero (her handlers have instructed her during train ride by notepad to let Thornhill act) coold-blooded to a certain deadly meeting-point out in the fields, where he is attacked by a crop-duster plane (!), with gunfire and spray. But - that quite complicated "killing by strafing plane" fails, as plane crashes into gasoline truck !
Not that much of a problem for him, Thornhill makes it shortly after to Kendalls hotel-room, love-interested as before. Kendall wants their ways to part. While Thornhill fakes taking a shower, she runs out of the hotel room for a date with her handlers.
At an auction - again in a crowd of people - Thornhill manages to catch Kendall with her handlers (Boss Vandamm is Kendalls Boy-friend, a very jealous indeed, soon we would learn. But, btw, he sent her to pick Thornhill up in the train, covering him from police officers searching for this murder suspect & allowing her to have sex with Thornhill in the sleeping compartment at the night ride to Chicago ??)
Again threatened by Vandamm's armed thugs, here, in this auction crowd, Thornhill employs a trick to get "saved" by two police officers (surely, Vandammes henchman would have finished him off, by gun or knife or sth., right in the auction rooms - what ? Please ? I thought, they prefer more difficult methods for eliminating people..suggestion: hit by falling balcony or sth. Like that ?) - Alas, cops bring Thornhill to the Chicago airport, where he learns to know "the Professor", a kind of US intelligence mastermind supervising the case (and permanently risking Thornhill's death, while doing this).
At Mount Rushmore, instructed double-agent Kendall shots Thornhill with blanks, in a restaurent, dozens of people around being witness. Anyway, she can run out of the place, unimpeded by anybody, get to her car and drive away. Professor, Thornhill and Kendall meet shortly after in the woods. Problems arise between the elderly spare time pre-Bond & his 26-year old love interest !
Professor now must conduct the operation somewhat harsher. Thornhill, knocked out by his driver, is brought to kind of Jail-hotel ? - a hotel room which can not be opened from inside. After a chat the Professor is out for a bottle of whiskey for the two of them. Meanwhile, it's practital, that Thornhill can espace from his secure "cell" out of the window ! Fine: there's a ledge at hand, so he can easily get to the neighboring window, climb in - pleasently surprising the lady in bed there - quickly gettin' out of her door & so escaping intelligent US security agency's custody !
So much for that. Too long stretched. After two hours or so of this rubbish I was served and clicked TV out for good. May this super Hitch masterpiece rest in Peace.
(won't bother too much about other laughable details as the casting of a some 8 years older actress as Thornhill's "mother")
Evilenko (2003)
A Rrussian Cannibal ?! - Yeah !!! Of course, what else !
Typical Russian name - born in RRussia - Rrussian National, for Sure - btw, ev'rything bein' evil (EVIL) Must Came from Rrussia (even if it was, in fact, produced & its mother tongue - btw. - was Ukrainian. Same as with Chernobyl) - That Certain individual Named Chikatilo.
Afghanistan: Das verwundete Land: Das Königreich (2020)
The Kingdom ?
The documentation covers a time span from 1960s quite into the 1980s, Mujaheddin vs Soviet military & communist regime, so why "The Kingdom" ? Kingdom ended in 1973, so this title might be called a mismatch.