A few reviews

[TM2YC]

Death Race 2000 (1975)

^ What it lacks in budget it makes up for in crazy, transgressive, satirical fun. I bet a lot of people like me sought this one out after playing 'Carmageddon' in the 90s .



Andrei Rublev (1969)
Although more or less released in 1969 as 'Andrei Rublev', Andrei Tarkovsky's "The Passion According to Andrei" was completed in 1966 but not allowed to be released by Soviet censors until a few years later. It's an extraordinary biographical depiction of the Russian Medieval religious icon painter, although it's structure is experimental and conforms to few of the conventions of the biopic genre. The film is structured into eight separate episodes in which Rublev features (not always in the foreground), plus a symbolic prologue and an epilogue showing Rublev's paintings in closeup. The epilogue is the only sequence in colour, the rest is in stunningly composed and lit high-contrast black & white scope. It's also the only part that really focuses on his paintings and Rublev isn't shown painting at any point in the film. The drama isn't about how he paints, it's about why he creates, what inspires his talent and what makes him turn away from it. It's about the choice to create beautiful art in and for a world of cruelty and chaos. The episodes also mirror aspects of the life of Christ, several characters are depicted being tortured or misused in cruciform poses. We are shown events that have a profound effect on Rublev, like a vision of a snowy Russian passion play, a naked pagan forest ritual, the ravaging of a town caught in a feud between Princes (who Rublev is employed by) and finally the forging of an immense bronze church bell. It's an epic sequence about the will to create against all opposition, that feels like you are really back in the mud drenched, smoke filled 15th-century. The massive crowd scenes and medieval vistas are something to see in this masterpiece.