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Reviews
Armadillo (2010)
this movie is like war, 95% boredom, 5% mindless action
The only redeeming feature of this documentary is the scene with the Afghans, like when the kids talk to the Asian guy telling him to go home or when one Afghan man tells the Danish military that they have guns, the Taliban have guns but those who get killed are the civilians stuck between the warring sides. That to me is the main truth about modern warfare. In almost all the military conflicts nowadays around 80-90% of casualties are the civilians. That is what is really sick about modern wars. That and of course, the utter criminality of the whole thing.
But instead the whole industry of movies about war and a good deal of literature all concentrate on the soldiers and their sufferings. And though, it is definitely possible to sympathize with the soldiers who have no choice but take arms to defend their homeland, it is hard to feel empathy for the Western youth who couldn't get a better job than go to a foreign land to kill people. This of course is always wrapped up in the heroic rhetoric but it is so thin and so obvious that there is nothing remotely enriching in this experience. You are there in the beautiful land with gorgeous mountains and you are just stuck at the base and can't even become real friends with locals. all you do is just blow up poor people's buildings, destroy their livelihood, and once in a while kill armed men or more often unarmed women and children.
New York: A Documentary Film (1999)
interesting but deeply flawed account
I like New York. I think it is a fascinating city, one of the earliest skyscraper cities of the West, one of the most cosmopolitan and dynamic places, and I don't really care about the slow pace of the documentary, but really, to tolerate the sheer number of ludicrous statements in every chapter is too much for me. Whatever the subject, be it the amount of immigrants, the speed of construction, even the metro system, everything is in superlative. Hearing those 'historians' speaking about New York one might think there has never been urban history outside of it. It is always the best, the most, the densest, unheard of, unparalleled and etc. I mean, there are many valid points to make, as New York was a kind of first vertical metropolis of the West but the constant gratuitous exaggeration of everything annoyed the hell out of me.
In episode 4 I hear one of the historians saying that those immigrants from Russia where (I am paraphrasing) nothing has changed much from the medieval times suddenly found themselves in the most modern city on Earth. Really? I mean, Russia wasn't the most advanced state in the end of the XIXth century, but it was still one of the biggest empires and Saint-Petersburg was one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Or when they say that the density of population of East Harlem was the biggest ever seen in the history of humanity. Wow, why not in the history of the universe? Why be so modest? These constant exaggerations really spoils what is otherwise an interesting deep insight into the urban history of the Western immigrant culture.