Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor)
Sandy's Movie #6
The only thing I'd read about this movie was Kenneth Turan's ubiquitous "A popcorn movie with a vodka chaser..." tidbit, which told me absolutely nothing. Oh, and I think EW gave it a D-. Based on those preconceptions, I was pleasantly surprised by Night Watch. This wasn't Underworld: Moscow. There were some real production values (a-hem, not the editing... but some artfully-done subtitling and decent S F/X) and an actual STORY. It was a major blockbuster in Russia in 2004, and they submitted it as their Academy Award hopeful. Ha ha ha, that's funny, because as I was watching it I was thinking "Not an Academy Award movie by any stretch, but for Russia, pretty good."
posted by Sandy @ 11:36 AM
2 Comments:
I read mainly bad reviews of this movie as well, along with the qualifier that it's only good for a big-budget Russian movie. Is it really worse than what passes for mainstream Hollywood sci-fi? And why do people keep saying that it's good considering it's a Russian film? I suppose most of the reviewers are unaware that Russia has a great film tradition... hmmm, but recently, nothing is coming to mind.
"Good for a Russian film" to me meant that it looked expensive and had decent effects. Most Russian films I can remember seeing are of the Potemkin variety, or involved heart-warming stories about little boys and old men. Eh.
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