Popular reviews

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★½ 8

  my only complaint: a bit too much montage

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  Review by Underground Opera Singer ★★★★★

  Well, there was one shot I really liked...

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 4

  Filmed entirely in one-take, Russian Ark is a fantastical and sweeping look at Russian history aided with a sense of aching melancholy and lost memories, slowly floating away into the deadening atmosphere of crumbling civilization.

  I admire it more than I actually enjoyed it, but man, that climax is a knockout. It makes you feel really really really sad, but in a good way. Kinda.

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  Review by CinemaShadow ★★★★★ 2

  It made Eisenstein turn in his grave but this so-called stunt, shot in an unbroken take via digital steadicam, has considerably more to offer. A guided tour through one of the greatest museums in the world, the film is quite literally akin to travelling back in time, more specifically through the past three centuries of glorious Russian history and how it has come to be interpreted within the context of the nation's larger European identity. It's a demanding film for sure but those who stay with it will be rewarded at the end.

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★★★ 15

  Anti-Eisenstein masterpiece for the modern era which main concept is derived from "L'hypothèse du Tableau Volé" (1979), in which we step on the shoes of an unseen, confused wanderer whose past memoirs start slowly to be recovered through Platonic reminiscence, and a visible, conscience-like figure dressed in black, quite possibly symbolizing the darkness of the blurred memory. Seen in that way, the ending makes perfect sense, from the moment that the guy dressed in black decides to "stay", to the final minute with the spoken conclusion. Meanwhile, we are displayed more than two complete centuries of culture, mainly through reflections, surreal interactions with the dreamlike inhabitants and the jaw-dropping displays of the museum, which is the central point, that is,…

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  Review by Andrew Liverod ★ 4

  A tedious and fawning, single-take, artistic tour of an odious aristocracy by a pair of irritating time-travellers, one of whom has the most soporific voice in the history of cinema whilst the other spends most of his time huffing, puffing, blowing dubbed raspberries and spouting irrelevances, during which we learn nothing other than that the Tsars and Tzarinas were misunderstood and without whom art would have perished; the serfs, meanwhile, are conspicuous by their absence (serfdom/slavery was only abolished in Russia in 1861).

  Was my long-winded, single-sentence review necessary? No, it was not. Punctuation is important, it gives structure and enhances legibility. It allows language to breathe, to have rhythm. Just because you can do something does not mean that you should. Think on that, Alexander Sokurov.

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★★ 1

  There are films edited to give the appearance of being captured in one-shot, and there's a much smaller list of ones genuinely filmed that way, Russian Ark is a breathtaking example of one from the latter category. It commences with two strangers investigating an unrecognised time and place, and with the employment of a first-person narrative, an anonymous narrator (believed to be French nobleman Marquis de Custine) begins to escort the camera leisurely through the halls of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The effect is comparable to an extraordinary historical tour, and the absence of a conventional storyline is hastily made meaningless.

  Director Alexander Sokurov has created an engaging experience together with an impressive way of illustrating a small…

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  Review by Timcop ★★★★★

  In Soviet Russia, movie cuts y

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  Review by Steve Moyle ★★★★★ 12

  Like many people I sometimes name other films or filmakers in reviews in an attempt to explain any kind of similarities whatever movie I'm writing about might share with another film. Obviously it can often give the reader a little idea of certain elements to expect and if they've already seen the particular film it can be interesting to know if they also felt those certain connections. I have a big admiration for everyone here who is able to write about every film they see, for me I can go a long time with just rating movies as even when I know why I love something I just have long moments where I really can't seem to put my experiences…

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  Review by travis k ★★★★½ 2

  A cinematic symphony of a man out of time, a phantom watching the world go by.

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  Review by Leighton Trent ★★★★½

  Its technical achievement is stupendous: 95 minutes, one shot. What it manages to say in that 95 minutes may be even greater as it manages to capture the ideas of life, existence, art, death, history being in the past, moving on, moving forward all within its images, camera movements, and dialogue between our unshown narrator and the man in black guide. It's a extraordinary film, one that deserves to rank amongst the greatest in cinema for its technical mastery which matches its grandiose representation of ideas. This is what great film/art is about.

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  Review by Steven Sheehan ★★★ 2

  The idea was an audacious one. A single take film encompassing three centuries of Russian artistic history sweeping along the halls of the Hermitage museum. An hour and forty minutes spent trapped in a dream world floating through the echoing halls of time. Technically the film is a triumph, a marvel of choreography and design shot with breathtaking confidence.

  The eye focuses in on the gimmick looking to see if it is really true, that such scale can be captured without cutting corners and it's clear that Sokurov achieves what should be impossible. There have been a number of notable long one-take sequences over time that have been lauded for technical prowess but nothing that can compare to this.

  It…