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Reviews
Amadeus (1984)
Beautiful
I don't care if this film is historically incorrect, there's so much poetic truth in it. People apparently don't realize that the narration form is "unreliebale narrator". It means we see things the way the old and deluded Salieri remembers them, nobody says this is what actually happened.
The movie is full of emotion, psychology, interesting faces and beautiful music.
Apart from the 3 main characters (Mozart, his wife and Salieri), I especially liked the emperor and Mozart's friend. To see what Renaissance Europe (kinda) looked like is really wonderful. I mean especially the lower class people, like the maid secretly hired by Salieri. And the women who pass past Mozart's body in the rain in the end. I also liked that part where the sick Mozart is carried out of the theatre and three little boys dressed like angels curiously walk behind him. His fate was already sealed.
The part where Mozart's pranks prevented Salieri from secretly eating a candy from the archbishop's table is funny. So he took Salieri's woman and his faith in God, and even the candy, aaaaaaw that's mean.
The beginning of the movie is light and cheerful, the second half is dark and gloomy. That reminds me of James Cameron's Titanic.
It also got me into classical music, when I was 10. So I recommend it.
Enemy at the Gates (2001)
Stupidity at the gates
This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's not about real people and problems but about Freudian archetypes like the handsome hero, the two lovebirds, the genius little boy etc.
First off, real Vasiliy Zaitsev was ugly, but I guess that would be too complicated for the Western audience so they used boyband like, raspberry looking Jude Law instead. Who cares for the complex truth when there are so many good feelings to get.
Second, if a 12-year old boy would reach the proficiency with German language that would allow them to talk freely to an officer, the NKVD would not let him walk around freely, they would lock him up in the Gulag or at least use them for their own purposes. In any case, he wouldn't run around in shorts and a thin jacket in the Russian winter that killed the German army.
Third, when the Russian people are undergoing genocide and the fate of the world is being decided in Stalingrad, a soldier would not run around in his bunker, happy that his face has been printed in the Pravda, like a hipster who just opened its first weblog. I realize that modern Western people are all about recognition from their peer group, but trust me, during the biggest war in human history, people had other problem's on their minds.
If you watched this film and you didn't feel intellectually insulted, I suggest you.... take a Russian history class.
Taken (2008)
A crime against human intellect
I've never written a review before, but this movie angered me so much I felt it's my civic duty to protest.
The movie is so full of clichés and unrealistic it's unbelievable it was made by adults. Apparently, we're supposed to derive some kind of psychological gratification from the Freudian symbols of innocence, fatherly love, superhuman strength and righteousness. It actually reminds me of the fantasies I had when I was 8.
Here's the plot: a rich, spoiled American virgin girl goes to Paris with a friend and gets abducted by Albanians and sold into sex slavery. Luckily, her daddy happens to be a ex-CIA agent and tracks them down effortlessly, kills and tortures them in a blood-curdling fashion and gets to his daughter just before she gets her throat slit by the evil (yet also stupid looking so you can still feel good about yourself), toad-like sheik. On his way, daddy makes a such a spectacle of killing and torturing people that it makes you wonder whether anyone would take so much trouble if no third party was watching. He doesn't even spare people who are innocent and are unlucky enough to get in his way. Like the wife of a French agent involved in the mess, whom Neeson shoots in the arm, because her husband refuses to give him information on St-Claire. (Meanwhile, their kids have been tucked into bed 5 minutes ago yet they don't seem to wake up. Yep, totally.)
All the circumstances are miraculously in Neeson's favor. His daughter is talking to him on the phone when she gets abducted. (otherwise, how would he know? Most victims of sex slavery are poor East European girls who don't have cell-phones, which would be too boring). Also, she's standing in the bathroom from where she can see her friend being abducted first, so daddy has enough time to instruct her how to hide and to shout out the details of their complexion while being dragged away (at which she miraculously succeeds, despite her panic and the struggle she puts up).
Also, multiple men can apparently easily get into a hotel room and abduct two girls, but Neeson has to use Spiderman skills to get inside. Well, thank God the bas relief of the wall was adjusted to his height exactly; otherwise, the movie would have ended there.
Another point that disturbed me very much is Neeson indifference to the scores of other girls who have been drugged and raped by Albanians. Apparently, the PRINCIPLE of sex slavery doesn't concern him, just the fact that it happens to HIS daughter.
In the end, Neeson returns with his daughter to America, with only a broken arm after fighting hundreds of heavily-armed men. Also, he has no trouble leaving France after killing each and every one of them. (France must be a Third World country). Everyone is happy and his ex-wife has to admit he's not such a loser after all. Every Freudian fascination has been satisfied trice over.
This movie does absolutely no justice to Eastern Europeans (all Albanians are shown as stupid scum and we're supposed to gloat seeing them being electrocuted), and above all, the REAL victims of modern sex slavery. I could write a lot more about this piece of garbage but I think I've made my point now. Thank you for your attention.