Piter FM

This movie i found to be a little tempting because i thought that we were going to see the two characters actually publically intereact with each other at the end of the film and that did not happen. I think that the city itslef played a very important role in this film. The movie made it look beautiful with all of the unique buildings, to the cool escalators and the river running through with the bridges. I think also that the film used the city as the main obstacle preventing these characters from meeting. I also like how close the characters were to each other throughout the film and how many taimes they literally walked by each other without knowing each other. They kept making eye contact with each other as well and it made me just want to tell Maxim hey thats Masha thats her right there. I thought it was funny when he called into her  radiostation at the end to apologize to her on the air when she was the DJ at the station. In the end i found this movie to be not bad for a Russian love story.

The Return

I found this film today to be very interesting and a little bit confusing. I would have like to have known what the father had found in that little chest and wonder why he had to bring his two boys on that horrible journey? I found the father just to be a complete dick who didn't really seem to care at all about his sons until the very end before he falls off the tower. He also just makes both of the boys very upset throughtout most of the film, espicially Ivan who questions his father from almost the beginning and Andrei who kind of just does what he is told and really doesn't have any conflicts until the end of the movie with the father. I also wondered if the father had changed right before he died because he seemed compassionate to Ivan when he said "I Hate You" and ran off. Another thing i found interesting was how after the dad passed the kids seemed really to be pretty calm about it and you get the sense that they were almost prepared for the dad to die. I also noticed that this director like Tarkovsky used one of the four basic elements in this film alot with water. There were several scenes where wate was being shown with such vividness and purity and it was the focal point of those scenes. It definatley looked very similar to some of the scenes in Mirror.

Brother

I was a big fan of the film we watched today, I thought that the main character Danila was awesome. As a character i'd say that Danila was kind of a comic book vigilante while he does kill several people in the film they all seem to be bad people. Danila is a very violent character while i think he does not wish to be one, the main reason that he kills most of the people is to protect his brother or innocent civilians who he later becomes friends with like the German. This is what makes him more than just an ordinary mobster because he actaully cares for the innocent people in the story and he protects them almost like a crime fighter. I think that the film wants us to approve of his acts because the movie portrays just how bad St. Petersburg was in the 90's and I think that they were trying to suggest that the city needed some kind of super hero to clean up the city. Danila's background definately helps him out throughout the film as a solider in the army while he claims that he only worked in the "HQ" i find it hard to believe that an HQ officer would know how to assassinate i mobster in the middle of a public market. Music plays a huge role in this movie for Danila because it helps him to escape reality and keep him sane from all of the violence that is going on around him. I think that without music Danila might have lost his head and just gone insane.  

Little Vera

The film we watched was called Little Vera and i found this film to be just depressing. The thing i noticed was how the make most of the scenes in this film very shady or sketchy looking. They made it just look like a very poor terrible place to grow up in and it really set the mood for the entire film. This is in sharp contrast to the movie Moscow  does not believe in tears where in that film many of the scenes are in very beautiful scenic places. The reason for this is to give a good appearance of the Soviet Union and Little Vera gives off the exact opposite kind of vibe to the viewers. Another thing i noticed about this film was all of the drinking in it and how badly it effected the characters in the film. It seemed like whenever they started to drink in this film only bad things happened after. Vera's father is the character in this film who really becomes a bad person when he drinks and it negatively effects every character in the movie. I feel some extreme sympathy for Vera she just cannot seem to catch a break in the movie, and she seemed to be kind of ignorant of her whole life situation. I wasn't suprised at all when i saw her try and commit suicide at the end and honestly i can't really blame her.

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

This film Vladimir Menshov in 1979 revolves around three young ladies who live in Moscow in the late  1950's or the Thaw period. The first lady's name is Katerina and she is one of the two girls who has good morals, she is also a very hard-worker and this gets noticed at her factory and eventually gets her promoted to Executive Director. I felt really bad for when she became pregnant and her boyfriend just abandoned her and she was all on her own, but i was glad that she was doing very well for her and her daughter twenty years later. The next lady was named Lyudmila and she was the trouble maker of the group. She was basically just a gold-digger who thought she could just marry a rich guy and be set for life without having to do anything herself. She was a very shortminded person who didn't think about how her actions would effect her future and this comes back to hurt her later in the film. I could tell early in the film the type of girl she was going to be when she had on that strawberry mask and said it helped heal her skin. The third lady Antonina seemed to be the most modist of the three and she meets her future husband in the beginning of the film and gets married shortly after. Antonina and husband live happily married and have several children together. One thing i noticed about this film was the kind of blue collar attitude that all of these characters portrayed and i think that this was a great symbol of the Russian people. I think the title of this film also symbolized how Russian people on the outside all appeared to be really tough but when you get to know them it showed how they had several issues with the way their lives were going.

Ballad of a solider

I had some mixed feelings after viewing this film. I thought it was very good but i wasn't a big fan of the ending. It was definatley a little suprising the way it ended i thought that main character Alyosha was going to either meet up with the girl Shura again or that he was going to stay home with his mother and neither happened. But i can see why the movie did not have that kind of ending because it was trying to send a different message that that of a Hollywood fairytale or with a tragic death at the end. This film doesn't really explore the battles of war but more of a solider return home and the people he meets along the way. While the film is about more than just a solider on his journey home he hirst meets the man who is also returning home and lost his leg. He spends some time with this man then they part ways after he reunites wtih his fiance. Alyosha the sneaks his way onto a cargo train where he meets Shura, who is very irratating at first and wants to jump off the train when she sees him. She calms down and they spend some time together on the train and get to know each other a liitle better. Another significant meeting he has with a solider father who he gives the gifts of soap to, you can see just how much it meant to the father and the people around him after receiving this gift. This makes him feel good about what he has done for the father by giving them good news of his son. The last encounter is with his mother who is just thrilled to see her some again but gets her heart torn apart when he has to turn right around and head back to the army. I really felt for him and his mothe during this scene because if  I would have had to turn right around and head back after only seeing her for a few minutes. the message that this film sent was that you have to get the most out of time you spend with people and that some encounters can change your life forever.

Mirror

Well obviously i had some trouble trying to understand what whas going on in this movie but lets start at the beginning when the lady is standing at the fence. She is approached by a man who just comes walking out of the somwhere and he starts talking to her then he just leaves and we never see him again but i think im not sure that it might be that man's voice that narrates a few times through the film. Another thing i noticed in that scene was that the was a strong gust of wind and this re-appeared at the end of the filmmaybe to show that the characters ended up back in the same place. Later in the film the main charcter lady looks into a mirror and it turns into an old lady and we later see the old lady again walking in the field with children and maybe this symbolizes how quickly people's lives go bye without them realizing it. Another scene i found interesting was with the boy in the house by himself when suddenly a mysterious lady appears and starts telling him oreders then she dissapears and i wonder if the boy had some kind of disease. Another thing was that there were so many characters in this film and they all seemed to be rather irrelevant for the most part and I kept thinking that we would see some of them again and we never did. In the end i was left very confused by this film and I am interested to discover the actual plot of it.