Tag: Russian

Russia likes to make movies. I have seen quite a bit of Russian films over the years. Not as many as British films, but certainly more than Australian. Probably.

But if you asked me to name any director, I would have just made Russian noises, sneezed, and ran away. I literally know no names. I could only tell you some of the films.

Like Leviathan! It was nominated for Best Foreign Film a few years back. And apparently that director, Andrey Zvyagintsev, is a guy who also directed Loveless. Wow, multiple films in a few years up for Best Foreign Film. That has to be impressive.

And yes, I only accidentally found out this information. I would have easily gone on with my life thinking there was no overlap between the two, except for some fate.

The same fate that brought us this kid, who really hates his life.

Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin) are a typical couple in Russia. They have a son, Alyosha (Matvey Novikov), and they don’t love each other. Whoops. That might not be normal.

Boris has a good job, as a sales person in some big company. But the CEO is super Orthadox and would only hire people who were married with a family. People in his company don’t get divorced, because then they’d lose their job. These are things that can happen in Russia apparently. He is really putting off this divorce thing, despite the fact that BOTH of them have already moved on physically and emotionally by finding new lovers.

And he made his lover pregnant already.

Either way, with the arguing, the staying at other places, the two of them were not back at their “home” for almost two days, where they eventually found out that their son was not in school and had been gone for a couple of days. Holy shit. Time for panic, time for resources, time for putting their anger behind them. Even if they didn’t want the kid originally, they have to admit they need him now, right? Right?

Also starring Andris Keiss and Marina Vasileva.

Time to sensually look out this window, naked, to look for their son.

Loveless is a bleak film. You can tell it from the name. Hell, you can probably tell from the Russian name, Nelybov, without knowing the language. This is not some zany film about a kidnapping that brings the parents back together to find each other and end their strife. Hell no, this is stressful as fuck and does nothing for repairing the damages that had already been done.

Sure, they can tolerate each other more, but that is just for the sake of hoping to find their son alive and not dead in a bag in an ally. It took awhile for the plot to get going, as they spent a lot of time about their relationship with their loves, and their general angst, before the boy disappears. But when he does disappear, it ramps up in various layers of story.

There are few side characters in the volunteer search and rescue unit and they just feel so goddamn professional. Not the police force who can’t help, but a group of people who just know how to find missing kids and have had plenty of training. I hope it is based off of a real group in Russia, because it was astounding. These scenes featured a lot of quick and intense dialogue and made me excited about kidnapped children.

Basically, this is a good movie, and Kidnap is not.

You could say that the Russians are kind of good at hockey.

Not Canada good, but really high up there. In fact, during the Cold War, their national hockey team was the pride of their country. It helped that they had a literal national school to foster players into the team, to practice all the time and become the very best. Like no one ever was. And to beat them in 1980 was our greatest test. Freedom was our cause.

Okay, no more pokemon references.

Either way, they were a dominant team and often seen as a villain of the hockey world, mostly due to the fact that we leave in America and they were communists and communists were/are bad.

But what history fails to teach over and over again is that on the other side, there are also people. People who are playing for their country, for their families, for the joy of the game. And in the Red Army documentary, we get to hear from those players their stories and how everything went down.

Here are the original Russian Five and boy, are they FABULOUUUUUS!

For the most part, the stories told are told by Slava Fetisov, famed young defensemen for the Red Army, who later became the captain of the National team, outscoring most of the forwards and leading them to a couple of gold cup medals. He has also had a bit of a tragic life trying to get OUT of the Soviet Union, where coaches and government officials promised he could go to the NHL and you know, changing their minds.

The plight of their hockey players mirrors the plight of a lot of their citizens in the last 10-20 years of the Cold War before Russia became Russia again.

And it felt kind of awesome hearing their side of the story. The other half of the coin is usually fascinating, and frankly one sided history is boring.

I was a bit confused at first that they had multiple different interviews with Fetisov, so he was wearing different outfits and not having glasses, made me think it was a different player a few times.

But more importantly, the film also touched on the Russian Five 2.0, which played for the Red Wings, the best organization in all of professional sports. It got me pumped about the team despite their playoff loss, and also didn’t get me all sad about the car crash following the cup victory. They didn’t mention it at all!

Go hockey, hockey, the greatest game in the land.

By all accounts, I don’t think I will be able to see any other movies up for Best Foreign Film before the Academy Awards. Sad face.

I only had Ida before thanks to Netflix. Now I have Leviathan. And it won a Golden Globe, so it has something going for it.

That and a sweet sweet name. The country it comes from is okay.

Wanna know how I know this movie is Russian?

Leviathan is a story about land dispute. Because if anything, Russia doesn’t have enough land, causing the citizens to fight over it.

Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) is a down on his luck guy. He is good as a mechanic, his “Friends” in the community use him for favors, but it is too small of a town to really make a living there. But he has been there for a long time, has a sweet house with a lot of land on the coast.

His wife (Elena Lyadova) seems pretty distant, and his only child, a son from another woman (Sergey Pokhodaev) is kind of a dick and an average student.

But the mayor (Roman Madyanov) of the town is trying to take his land. Quite successfully! Using some legal loopholes, he is getting it for quick. Kolya is trying to fight it through the law, and through appeals, but he is losing over and over again. It seems like everyone is out to get Kolya and they all just want to use him.

And well, that is kind of true. Basically.

Also with Vladimir Vdovichenkov as a hot shot lawyer from Moscow coming to save his buddy.

Wanna know why I know this movie is called Leviathan?
(I actually have no idea.)

Leviathan is one of those movies that has a boring ass plot description, but one that ends up being far more interesting than it has any right to be.

Again, it is about a dude fighting a legal battle to just keep his home. But only kind of about that. It is about that and people treating him like shit and shit keep hitting him in the face. Literally!

No, not literally.

But still. A lot of fucked up things happen by the end, but even better is that it all makes sense by the end too. The plot points all wrap up! We aren’t left wondering anything! Yay complete films!

I mean. It has its boring. But it definitely tells a pretty good story while doing so. Glad it just wasn’t another super boring foreign film.

Snow Queen? A CGI film? If you got to see the film cover, it had a tagline at the bottom that states “A Magical Adventure in a FROZEN Land!”

It also states that it is “From the Legendary Hans Christian Andersen, Author of The Little Mermaid.”

I haven’t reviewed a cheap knock off Disney movie yet, unless you count Chop Kick Panda, but Dreamworks isn’t Disney. But this one clearly has to be right? It capitalizes the word Frozen in its ad, and also makes a true but misleading claim about where the story comes from.

I can’t wait. I can’t wait.

Eh. Maybe I can wait a bit.

For those of you who actually know the original Snow Queen story, this one basically seems to follow that exact same plot. Down to a letter. Nothing new about this one, just an animated tale of a famous story. So I guess, its like any book to film adaption. Since I don’t know the Snow Queen story, it is basically a new plot for me.

Basically, mirrors be crazy. This woman got so mad, she became a Snow Queen (Cindy Robinson) and tried to put the world into an endless winter. She also wants to destroy all art, for some reason. She really hates this glass maker dude, who has mirrors that reflect the soul. So she kills them. Whoa.

Well, he had children too, so the threat to her rule isn’t gone. Boy, Kai (Marianne Miller) and girl, Gerda (Jessica Straus) become orphans and don’t even remember each other. Eventually, the Snow Queen realizes that they are a threat, and sends a troll named Orm (Doug Erholtz) who has the power to turn into a black weasel only, to kidnap the boy so she can presumably kill him too.

Gerda, just realizing she has a brother, gets rightly pissed off, and journeys across the land, with the troll and her own weasel, to try and save him.

On the way they run into land pirates, crazy plant ladies, and just bitter harsh cold.

I am now going to imagine that as the face of every troll on the internet.

Alright, turns out I was wrong. This movie is NOT a cheap Disney knock off. Besides the fact that it is a movie of the actual story, it also was made by Wizart Animation. Who are they? A new CGI film company out of Russia (making this film foreign), and this is their first release. It came out last year and was in development for awhile, so the Frozen thing is basically a coincidence. Obviously not their advertising of it, they are still trying to latch on to its fame, but the idea wasn’t a copy cat. Heck, they also are already working on a sequel.

Unfortunately, the animation was the worst part of the movie. Something seemed off about it the whole time, it is pretty obvious it isn’t using state of the art / new technology to bring us this movie. Probably pretty old technology, graphics wise. Reminded me of a video game.

I actually enjoyed the story line and some of the visuals in the film though. By the end, I was getting a bit tired of it, sure, but the early parts of the movie kept interest for awhile. The crazy plant lady came out of no where, but looked really cool as it went down.

Nothing I will say will convince you to watch this film, and honestly, there is probably no reason to. But if you are forced to watch a newish animated film, there are a lot worse you could pick.