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My iz dzhaza (1983)
One of the best russian films of the 80-s
Jazz is often considered as synonim to freedom. That's why such a love&hate (mostly hate actually) relationship has been established between jazz and communism in soviet times. The film depicts the hard road awaiting a group of mostly young self-made musicians who discover in a post civil war Odessa a new sound that would completely change their lives. Shaped by both sporadical successes and severe destiny blows the band finally reaches their goal to become widely renowed musicians (even though one of the members highly improbably shoud be around 120 o more years old).
The director Shachnazarov managed to make a totally non-communist movie in a period when it was almost impossible, moreover merging the musical genre with a comedy drama. Most wonderly the same director nowadays became a hater of the same freedom he managed so brilliantly to hail in this film.
P.S. You'll find intersting to know what was left out of the film due to various reasons - both the "jazz loving" marine officer who finally helped the band to reach the stars as well as the prototypes of the same musicians in our sad reality didn't make it not even to the 40-s, say nothing about the 80-s. They were executed by the stalinist regime in the late 30-s.
The Gambler (2014)
100% pure junk
The only two things that I found to be incredible in this extraordinary example of useless junk are - the amount of first class actors engulfed in a meaningless and pointless "drama" and the exact quantity and type of prohibited substances the screenwriter used creating the most disgusting, unappealing and completely, insultingly imbecile principal character, very professionally played by Wahlberg though . In fact everyone's acting is of upper level - the only problem is that their efforts are completely wasted. It looks like heavy drugs interfered very heavily with the constructing of the story - for the characters of the "thugs" seem more like loving kings-magicians, understanding and forgiving towards their debtors like in a bad comedy, the girl find it OK to sleep with her teacher, finding as the most attracting treat of her lover his dumb "ability" of losing every cent of money he can grab from anyone. In other words having to face the dilemma of watching this mess or going to the dentist to get most of your teeth fixed - choose the dentist - it would do much better.
Tegeran-43 (1981)
One of the best Russian films of the 80-ies
One of the best Russian films of the 80-ies, a perfect wartimes spy thriller with ideology left aside. It has been nice to see how wonderfully russian and western actors interact in this 30 years-long saga, expecially Natalia Belochvostikova who makes a perfect match for Alain Delon. One of the best things is the soundtrack containing one of my favourite songs of Charles Aznavour.
Fame (1980)
One of the best musicals of the 80-s
I've seen it for almost 20 times (that'll make once for each year that passed since) & its getting only better. Maybe you would call it nostalgia for those days and especially for that music. The score of Fame, in my opinion, is absolutely super! As for acting, it has been wonderful to see young people acting so naturally. It's a pity you can't hear much of Irene Cara since.
A little memo for Alan Parker: 20 years have passed - why not make a sequel?