I just watched В бой идут одни "старики" from 1973. I think the English title is Only "Old Men" Are Going to Battle. Anyway, it's about Soviet pilots in WW 2 and I thought it was very good. I was prepared for annoying patriotism but instead got a nice film that had genuinely good acting, amusing humor, yet also moving scenes too. The part where a mechanic laconically tells his new pilot "you're my fifth one" still sends shivers down my spine.

As far as war movies goes, this was different in a good way. I think it managed to capture the grim nature of war and paid respect to the men doing their dangerous work but without overdone glorification like in some other movies. In a way it reminded me of Das Boot in this sense. The settings were also very good, though I at first had trouble recognizing some German planes as such, because obviously they couldn't use real Bf-109s and FW-190s in the film. It didn't bother me too much, though, because there are very few scenes where the props are used. In the fight scenes (there are not many of those) I think they used real gun-camera footage too, so it might just be that I'm bad at plane recognition.

The plot was easy enough to follow even with my limited Russian, though in the end I got little confused when it seemed that people just started dying without explanation offscreen. The ending also left me with a feeling that there should have been something more, it was very simplistic. But overall I would still recommend this.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070861/

Finally got around to watching A Night to Remember and was it good!
I was surprised to see how closely it followed the events as told by the survivors during
the inquiries, had just read a lot about Titanic due to the 100th anniversary and picked
tons of things from the movie I remember reading about from the survivors' accounts.

And it really didn't feel like a movie that was made in 1958, the acting was superb.
Especially Michael Goodliffe as Mr. Andrews was nice to watch, actually felt bad
for him in the end. :-?

Soooo, if you haven't seen it and you're interested in Titanic, watch it. Now.

Has anyone else seen Melancholia? Not a bad movie despite the terrible reviews it must have received -- that is, not bad as long as you can get through the first hour or so. As dull as the first half of the movie is, the last half kept us talking for two days afterward. A brilliant movie in its own way. Some of the visual work is breathtaking. The opening credits, for one, are a true work of art IMO.