Skullen

This is a beautiful, honest, tough, harrowing, and very necessary depiction of the life of women in Russia in the 1910s/20s, and the unromantic nature of the revolution and subsequent civil war. The film follows Varvara, a peasant woman, who's married off to a drunk. He treats her badly, beating and abusing her, and things just get worse from then on for her. But although the film doesn't shy away from showing the awful things she undergoes, it rarely feels as if it's too much: the action is intelligently portrayed, all the acting is top- notch, and the images are so beautiful that the squalor of Varvara's life is always watchable. Less poetry in the visuals and folk context (the peasants' singing, clothing, housing...) - say if it were set on a modern-day housing estate - and it would have been a different matter, just another depressing kitchen-sink drama. But the setting is fascinating, and it's portrayal artistically justified. The film is truly remarkable and worth seeing. It's a tad long and very intense, but repays the effort.

Vdrebezgi (Smithereens) is an interesting attempt to make a multi-plotted, multi-charactered tale where all the strands come together in the end. There are guns, sexy girls (and unattractive Russian men), blood and coincidences - all slightly reminiscent of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, just set in the crumbling, decaying land that is Russia. Some of the scenes are a bit ropey, but overall the acting is generally good, the camera-work tries hard to be inventive, and there are some good one-liners (which made the Russians in the audience at the Sputnik Film Festival in Warsaw laugh a lot. I did too, but not quite as much). Sometimes the interwoven plots strain credulity a bit too much, and there's a little too much gore, but the light, black humour helps get through it. Worth watching, and worth watching the writer-director's future efforts probably.

Hmm, to be honest, I shouldn't even be writing this. This film shouldn't exist at all. The first Burnt by the Sun was perfect - and ended perfectly. When I heard that there was to be a sequel, my heart sank, and having finally seen the film, my heart is still down there... This film is bad. From the lack of plot, to the ropey acting, to the appalling FX (oh my word, God save us from yet another one of Mikhalkov's badly rendered German planes!), to the bad choice of shots (few still camera shots, showing Nikita's lost his nerve and belief in his ability to frame a shot well and meaningfully), to the absurd events that occur (e.g. defecating out of planes)... this film has nothing to commend itself. Save yourself... keep the pure memories of the first film and don't watch this.