prelibation Reviews

Dead Man's Evidence (1962)

An interesting, relistic spy movie

[9/10 · 7 January 2023]

The complain I hear most about old movies is the "slow pace" . The audience was conditions over the last decades to faster and faster action, cuts lasting a fraction of a second, jumps from scene to scene that can make one nauseous. But nothing like this happens in real life and a more pedestrian pace is not only more realistic, but much more rewarding.

So if we ignore the "slow pace" we have here a good solid story slowly reaching its solution. And really everything is going in favour of the movie: good acting, good photography, authentic locations. And like any movie from some 60 years ago, it is an interesting document, a time capsule with the real objects (not fake props), the real customs and details. We usually do not see this in the anachronistic period movies made decades later.

From the very first image of the classic British binoculars, the WW2 Bar & Stroud Cf41, to the scenes of the Dublin airport with the Vickers Viscount airplanes - it is all as authentic as it can be for the early 1960s.

Johnny O'Clock (1947)

A disappointment

[4/10 · 17 December 2022]

Could have been much better: good actors, good photography....but a hopeless script. The plot is full of holes - but this is nothing unusual in most crime films (especially today).

The worst parts are the dialog (consisting almost entirely of cliche one-liners) and the many tedious, superfluous scenes that add nothing to the plot.

Despite a honest effort by most of the actors the charters come out flat like cardboard marionettes.

This was Robert Rossen's first attempt as script writer and director. His other efforts as a screenwriter were much better: for example "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" and "The Hustler"

The Mill and the Cross (2011)

A unique treatment

[9/10 · 17 December 2022]

This is a unique attempt to transpose a painting into alive action. There were other films inspired by paintings; for example the "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (2003) and "Nightwatching" (2007) - but this is the first time I see a painting slowly coming to life on the screen.

"The Girl with a Pearl Earring" is a decent fictional story inspired by the subject of the painting by Vermeer and the incredibly bad "Nightwatching" can forever ruin Rembrandt's "Night Watch" for art lovers.

However in the Mill a Cross there is no any real plot; it just portrays the brutality of the Spanish occupation by random vignettes based on the details of The "Procession to Calvary" by Bruegel - a major masterpiece of this Netherlandish genius.

The seamless integration of the painting's landscape, slowly filled by the figures and finally materializing into Bruegel's vision is very skilfully done and impressive, as is the richness of colours, textures and details. My only criticism is the often unnecessary graphic depiction of violence. Yes, those were violent times but a better approach would have been the one in fact used by Bruegel himself, hinting rather than directly showing: the distant gallows, the row of torture wheels on the horizon, the remnant of a cloth on the right margin wheel.

Nightwatching (2007)

Where is Rembrandt?

[1/10 · 17 December 2022]

Luckily spared from this bit of a porno flick. It is amazing that such garbage can be considered (by some) a serious movie.

I know nothing about the director (Peter Greenaway) and this is the first film by him I've watched. In fact I do not care at all who the director (or the actor) is and try and judge the work only by its merit (or by the lack of it...). The only reason I've watched this film is my admiration of Rembrandt's works. This film did not diminish my admiration, but left me with a bad taste in my mouth (and headache from all the shouting).

The film "Rembrandt" (1936) by by Alexander Korda certainly has it flaws, but still shines after over 80 years - especially when compared to this c__p.

T-34 (2018)

Mindless video game

[1/10 · 11 December 2019]

I assume that if one have experienced war only through video games this film will be just another tank game. I've never played video games, but I did take part in a war in a tank unit. What we see in this film is even below the worst of the war movie trash we got used to see in the last decades and an insult not only to soldiers who fought real wars, but to any intelligent viewer. The idea that one can make a film based mostly on computer generated imagery and ignore any realism may work in a fantasy film, though the computer graphic in this and most modern film is so artificial and crude one can get nostalgic about the simple miniature models used in some films of the past century. WW2 in Russia, the "Great Patriotic War" as it is known there, was an unparalleled tragedy with Russia (or Soviet Union as it was called then) loosing 27 million people, almost half of all the casualties of WW2. Hardly surprising that the war as a subject featured heavily in the post war film and literature. There were some great masterpieces and some poor propaganda films in the 30-40 years following the war but nothing as bad and mindless as those we see now. The "Liberation" film series released in 1970 was maybe one of the most expansive and realistic using hundreds of real tanks and thousands of troops. It was not a great film, but I cannot even start comparing it with this garbage. "Destiny of a Man" the1959 Soviet film is as well about a Russian soldier captured in the first months of the war, going though a terrible ordeal in concentration camps and escaping 3 years later by driving (a car, not a tank) across the front line back to the Russian side. How one can even compare this masterpiece with the T-34? Maybe it came to my mind because of the superficial plot similarity. And now, 60 years later, with all the new technology all that we can make is an idiotic computer animation.