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Kukushka, a review by Danae Cassandra

Where We Are:  Russia
wikipedia

What We Watched:


Kukushka (The Cuckoo)
Year of Release:  2002
Directed By:  Aleksandr Rogozhkin
Starring:  Anni-Kristiina Juuso, Viktor Bychkov, Ville Haapasalo
Genres:  Drama, Comedy, War

Overview:
September 1944, in a land torn apart by war, a Finnish sniper is labeled a coward by his compatriots; as punishment, he is nailed to a rock and left to his own devices. Not long after, a disgraced Russian Captain, en route to his court martial, is injured in an accident. Both men are about to find out how they have one thing in common. Wounded and emotionally tortured, they are taken in by Anni, a young, resourceful war widow, who offers shelter to one while nursing the other back to health. None of them understands the others' languages, but it doesn't seem to matter. Isolated, the three unlikely roommates - a Finn, a Russian and a Lapp - overcome both comic and tragic misunderstandings to form a passionate three-way...relationship. Because after a day of hard work on Anni's farm, who needs words?

My Thoughts:
I must say, I'm glad Mom insisted we watch this one out of our Russian films.  We really enjoyed this film.  It has a stark kind of beauty to it, especially the landscape once the focus gets to Anni's farm by the lake.  It's also a powerful anti-war film.  In the featurette on the making of the film, Haapasalo talks about how once you get to know someone you can't go to war against them, for you see them as a human being just like yourself.  The film has the same message, in the eventual friendship between Ivan and Veikko.  That friendship, and their mutual friendships with Anni, however, are only so deep.  Though they find a way to communicate without language, and do come to understand each other to a certain degree, their relationships would have been much deeper and much stronger than they became.  The film really emphasized to me the fundamental importance of language in human relationships.  The language barrier led to several very humourous parts of the film, especially the sequence between Ivan and Anni about the mushrooms, but it was also the biggest tragedy between all of them.  Of course, had they been able to communicate we might not have gotten another valuable point the film tries to make - that one should not judge someone so quickly.  Ivan believes Veikko to be a fascist, when Veikko is trying to tell him that the war is over for him and all he wants is to go home and live in peace.

Ultimately, this is a film that promotes the idea that love, friendship, pleasure, and life are really what is important and what are really worth striving for.  The only thing I wasn't happy with was the ending.
I think I understand why the director chose to end it as he did though.  A wonderful film, though, and recommended.

Bechdel Test:  Fail

Overall: 3.75/5

(From Around the World in 86 Movies on September 2nd, 2013)

Amped, a review by addicted2dvd

Title: Amped
Year: 2004
Director: Richard Poche
Rating: NR
Length: 71 Min.
Video: Widescreen :1
Audio: English: Dolby Digital Stereo
Subtitles: N/A

Stars:
Shelby Barendrick
Richard Poche
Elizabeth Di Prinzio
Susan Stuart Brazell
Trish Christensen

Plot:
The new lead singer of the female fronted rock band, the "Danger Dolls", is found dead of an apparent cocaine overdose. But detective Holden begins to question the circumstances surrounding her death.

Extras:
Scene Access

My Thoughts:
Not being into music of any kind... this is not normally my type of a movie... but I am review this one at the request of a friend. This movie is from the Mortuary of Madness boxset I got this past October. Like many of the movies in this set... the acting leaves much to be desired. But I have seen worse acting in other movies in this set. Now I can normally just ignore music in a movie... but in this case... the singing was bad. And it is much harder to ignore bad singing then it is to ignore the music of real musicians. This woman's voice just goes through me and hurts my ears. At one point I actually had to fast forward through a song that played while showing some clips. Which is something I can normally ignore... but not with this movie... not with this singer. It also seemed the camera man liked to get a bit on the creative side. using some unneeded close-ups, over the shoulder shots and the like. Then there was the mixture of color and Black and White.  (B&W for the flashbacks). I found the story to be slow. The movie was only an hour and 11 minutes... and it just seemed to go on and on. It just really wasn't that interesting. I just wasn't too impressed with this movie.



(From Weekend Movie Marathon: Unwatched DVDs on December 18th, 2009)

Tom's Random Star Trek Reviews, a review by Tom

ENT 4.19 In A Mirror, Darkly, Part II
Cast: Scott Bakula (Jonathan Archer), John Billingsley (Phlox), Jolene Blalock (T'Pol), Dominic Keating (Malcolm Reed), Anthony Montgomery (Travis Mayweather), Linda Park (Hoshi Sato), Connor Trinneer (Charles "Trip" Tucker III), Gary Graham (Soval), Gregory Itzin (Admiral Black), John Mahon), Derek Magyar (Kelby), Pat Healy (Alien), Majel Barrett (Computer Voice), David Sobolov (Slar)

In this second part, Archer has taken control of the Defiant (which is of the same starship class as the original Enterprise). So we get to see his crew onboard a ship which is very similar to the old Enterprise. They even wear the appropriate uniforms.
This episode is a good conclusion to the two-parter.

Rating:

(From Tom's Random Star Trek Reviews on September 26th, 2009)