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Aurora (2012)
Exceptional movie for exceptional people
Finally, I got this movie to watch in 2014. As always watching Lithuanian movie I never expect something very attractive or interesting. Decided to see it just in case - maybe something has changed. Here's my honest thoughts about this movie.
The plot idea is quite interesting, but badly realized due to low budget, I guess. Movie is concentrated on the characters and not on the experiment of neuron-transmit technology itself, which IMHO supposed to be the main catch" to watch this movie. The whole movie is based on a mistake made by a medical-IT scientist. It's hardly believable that scientist could lie about such an important experiment and fake the result. It's a science experiment, not a personal machine for your sex and other desires. I think this is a main plot hole. The idea itself about connecting two people via wire is not new at all. It reminded me of Inception and some episodes of Fringe, but without much of VFX, of course. At the beginning I even thought: Oh man, this will be something like surrealistic mini-series Prisoner"". Well, not really. At least it tried to be that way. The problem with this movie is that most of the movie contains some art-house thing, which is not interesting at all and even awkward to watch. Yeah, it had some secret meanings, but sometimes you miss the idea of the particular scene. Another thing I didn't like were nude scenes. Yeah, explicit nude scenes are present in this movie and some of them were really disturbing to watch. Especially scene with fully naked running man (and woman in a distance somewhere). I had to scroll forward that particular scene. The other huge problem – movie hardly gives you any feelings after you watched it – neither sadness or happiness (drama), neither food for brains (sci-fi), neither passion (romance movies), neither a thrill (in horror or thriller movies).
I have to admit video quality was quite impressive. Camera work could be more dynamic while filming dialogs to create suspense, which was absent in this movie. Audio in some scenes is too quiet to understand the words. It's not understandable even if you change your volume levels. Well, too bad. At the end you're given important information about the plot in form of whispers. It was very nice idea to end movie like this, but was disappointed at this point as I had to re-watch the ending several times to hear what they're saying.
Unlike other Lithuanian movies, in this one you won't see that crazy and ridiculous acting, which was taken from cheap Russian TV shows and movies. Everything was quite a professional, Scandinavian type of acting. I liked this right from the beginning and this is the strongest side of this movie. But it's not enough – somehow acting doesn't make you feel for the characters. Maybe it's because of weak directing or even weak scenario itself.
This movie looks exceptional and it has been awarded in some European movie awards, but it lacks some serious aspects that could be attractive for casual viewer like me.
Stalingrad (2013)
Not what I expected from this film
Oh dear, I expected to see some war actions like how the city was attacked on first days, more changes of battle place, more focused on time line of the greatest Stalingrad events. More passion in peaceful moments or some cross-story in nowadays would make this film even more dramatic. But this movie disappointed me. And this is why.
This is a Russian film, so expect to see much of unnecessary talks and quite a bit shots that tells you nothing at all. Russian acting is Russian acting - nothing new in this case, except actors from abroad. So you have to deal with this funny and sometimes even irritating acting.
The Story. Well, movie starts from very strange actions in Japan and ends like that, too. I didn't feel necessity of these Intros and Outros. Main action starts somewhere in the middle of the battle in the city of Stalingrad. Ban, bang, bang. Some awesome burning shots and then boom - action went away. And from there a love and revenge takes place. No big tragedies of starving or cold. I really missed the reality of Stalingrad. Instead you're given audio flashbacks/flash-forwards of main characters told by narrator. Blah, blah, blah. For what? Is it supposed to be documentary? I barely can say it's a movie about Stalingrad as the whole War Action. More like about one place particularly - House of Pavlov, which in my opinion had too be the MAIN TITLE and not Stalingrad. But then you may think more deeply - as it goes around one girl - maybe it could be Saving civil Katya" :) ? Oh, by the way, you get even two love stories in this movie, but none contains a lap-dance or passion, so it ruins the romantic side of the movie. The whole war strategy is a real mess here on both sides. I couldn't get it. It's not realistic to me somehow.
Characters. Well, their actions are mostly illogical as they fight for the love. They get outside without any commands given. Walking like a bosses in their own yard. Killing comrade from OTHER division for his thoughts about taking some action instead of sitting was also very strange behavior as it would get the killer to war court. And reaction of those folks after this non-sense just killed me. It was so unrealistic. There were other problems with logic in dialogs, too.
Technical side of the movie is done very very well. CGI effects and background are brilliant and I really enjoyed some of the action like tanks and mines scenes, but it lacks of really fast intense action scenes of soldier fight seen in Band of Brothers, The Pacific etc. Scenes that thrills you and makes you say - Oh, man. War is a such a terrible thing". Slow-mo scenes were... they were nice to see, but there was way too much of it. And not in particular scenes, in which slow-mo would really make you to feel for the character. Like the main hero is looking around and feels confused, scared in slow-mo. No, you won't get it here. Audio quality is outstanding, BUT as always and this drives me crazy as hell - some dialogs are very quiet (mainly problematic for Russian people).
The Employer (2013)
Not the movie I would recommend
I was tempted to watch this movie by nice and neat title and poster. And oh, God, this was terrible mistake.
The plot is boring and predictable, because idea of kill-others-to-survive in this movie seen thousands and thousands times. The movie gives you almost nothing about the company, neither about the employer itself - what they're doing or why etc. So no strong background for the plot. And this is why this movie seems not as serious as others in this kill-to-survive category. Most of the flashbacks were not interesting, boring and almost unnecessary as they don't really untangle characters as much as you would want.
I don't know if this supposed to be gore or psychological movie, but it really lacks both of those elements. You can't feel the intensity, suspense in this movie (like in Would You Rather, which I really liked). At all. Action in kidnap flashbacks is all the same. Well, IMHO, it could be more original than just grab-and-go.
Half of the actors seems like they're don't know what they're doing here. I've seen hundreds of thriller movies, in which you can really feel what characters feel etc. Hell, even in Yotube short-movies you can see better acting.
So I guess it is a one night stand movie with bad hangover. Not bad, but it could be far more intensive as it supposed to be thriller, right?