mta333 Reviews

Dead Europe (2012)

A continent of lost souls...

[8/10 · 15 March 2014]

Dead worth seeing. The camera and director got out and about - in the mountains of Greece and in the dodgy areas of Paris. Refreshing and raw in turns - I felt like I was sitting in a car with the windows down. I liked the variety and European scope of the locations. The music was peppy not derivative nor bouzouki or Dvorak. Characters were acted easily and convincingly apart from Ewen's which was unconvincing and all earnestness.Also no love interest and no hearts of gold.The characters outgrow the familiar plot. They are well-rounded and never reveal all.In the end we are not sure about any of the characters and what they have revealed. Like at the end of a documentary you are left figuring out just what you have seen.

Enjoy the ride as film takes you places you seldom get to see.

Stalingrad (2003– )

A film about suffering not battle.

[6/10 · 15 March 2014]

This is a conventional and limited treatment of an extraordinary subject. It is conventional in its use of film and is limited to the suffering caused by war. It is a film that deals with a battle only in a broad and almost incidental sense: Suffering is the exhaustive theme.

One film would have been adequate to see alternately survivors sat in artfully dimmed spaces emotionally and repetitively recounting suffering and footage of people on the move or killed. To make the point and lather it home we get the clichéd Volga vistas and stirring orchestral music, too.

Film should be employed innovatively (or not) to match the subject - be it suffering or the account of a siege and urban warfare. These films deal with the former blandly and little with the latter. If we are not to become inured to suffering then director's please rise to the occasion.