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Talvisota (1989)
Not as good as I hoped
I wanted to like this movie more than I did. True, the land battle reenactments are pretty impressive and, so far as I could tell, technically realistic. And where else can you see T-26s in action? In other areas, though, the film's low budget (relative to Hollywood) shows, especially with the Russian aircraft, which are pretty obviously radio-controlled models. Those I-16s were just too good to be true! The artillery bombardments and small arms fire are very well handled, however.
More seriously, the film lacks compelling characters or much of a story. It's a pretty straightforward account of several naive young men who go to war and experience hell, but continue to fight bravely to the bitter end. To be fair, the thin plot may be a result of the severely shortened version of the movie available on DVD in the US. Original Finnish prints run 195 minutes; the DVD is 125 minutes.
As it stands, the cut version of the movie will appeal primarily to military history buffs.
Sin City (2005)
All style, no substance
Visually, 'Sin City' is incredibly impressive - it's impossible to conceive a more effective rendition of the modern comic/graphic novel. Fans of that genre, and devotees of slasher movies and Tarantino-style gorefests will be duly impressed.
I was looking for something with more substance (I know, stupid me, should have known better), and came away disappointed. The best thing about classic noir literature and movies, reflected to some extent in graphic novels by Frank Miller and others, is the sense they convey of social disarray and alienation. The fun is not just in the thrill, but in the knowledge that the sex and violence is telling you something about modern society - even, in an ironic way, criticizing our infatuation with sex and violence itself.
In 'Sin City', as in all the Tarantino-inspired crap so common today, sex and violence is an end in itself. True, Tarantino and his disciples love to masquerade as artists and cultural critics. Yet their cinematic sadism is simply juvenile. It consists of nothing more than pushing the envelope a little further, making your violence a little more graphic, a little more stomach-churning (castration, torture, suicide) - and outraging the same conventions that the dictates of political correctness makes it safe to outrage (the Catholic Church is always an easy target, and sure to delight the usual crowd: thus shooting a priest in the confessional, making a cardinal a cannibal, etc.; bashing the police provides the conventional anti-establishment tone). Of self-criticism of modernity by a modern there is, of course, none. - making Sin City wholly unlike the really great works of classic noir.
Was I the only one who found it ludicrous that while we're supposed to approve the torture, murder, etc., some of it aimed not just at villains but those who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, we are still asked to show outrage at wife-beaters and child-molesters? Rodriquez, Tarantino, et al. still have their taboos - perhaps more than most of us.
Of course, as soon as you criticize 'Sin City' for its violence you'll be labeled as a religious fanatic or a hopeless prude. But these kind of accusations are nothing more than a dodge. I have no problem with book or movie representations of sex and violence, used artistically. Used as it is in Sin City, Natural Born Killers, or Kill Bill, it's just pointless and boring.