The New Zealand Film Festival is on at the moment, giving us all the chance to see exciting, stimulating cinema from around the world; and also this film.
Paper Solder is a Russian production set in the weeks before the launch of Yuri Gagarin’s famous day trip. The story focuses on Daniel, the medical officer in charge of monitoring the cosmonauts as they prepare for the launch. The stress of the job (and a complicated personal life) is getting to him and he grows erratic as the big day approaches.
The big problem with Paper Solder is that it has no defined plot. Events occur, but there is no sequence to them. In fact for the first half hour I thought that the film was setting up the story with a series of lengthy non-linear flashbacks before I realized I was mistaken. I found myself wondering if the English translation was a rush job. A lot of the conversations (Paper Solder is a talky film) seem kind of pointless, but that may just be me. It doesn’t help that the English subtitles are often unreadable against the wintery Russian landscapes.
I think the film is actually about the state of Russia during the 60s (which to be fair probably did suck), and a lot of the plot is metaphoric. But that doesn’t make it any more interesting to watch. The one good thing about Paper Solder is the photography and direction – the film looks amazing. Its just a shame that the clever camera isn’t pointing at anything interesting.
Not really recommended except for dedicated followers of Russian history.
After years of hearing “Hyperion is the bestest book evar!”, I finally managed to read it. And frankly, it is pretty good.
Ok, obviously I failed in my resolve – but in my defense I found it at a secondhand book store so the author gets nothing from my purchase. 
As a stand-alone work, Watchmen is less of a success. It is very, very long and filled with talky scenes whose purpose only becomes clear later and sometimes not even then. It’s not that it is a terrible movie, just that a viewer not familiar with the source material might easily lose track of what is going on. So much of the plot hinges on the motivations of the characters – the book provides extensive back stories that the film cannot linger on, leaving the story feeling a little flat.
If you are getting a bunch of guys together to play a board game, you may as well make it a nerdy one. 
The summer holidays are the one time of year when it is acceptable to stuff your face with cheap food and drink, and stuff your brain with cheap paperback novels. As with the food, you tend to have a good time during the consumption of the books but regret it later on. So it is with 
The city of Los Angeles finds itself protected by an honest-to-god super hero with the unlikely name of John Hancock. Unfortunately, this hero causes more damage to the city than he prevents due to the extreme lack of due-diligence expressed during his slapdash crime fighting activities. One day Hancock saves a mild mannered PR consultant named Ray. In return Ray uses all the tricks of his trade to redeem Hancock’s image in the eyes of the public, over the objections of Hancock himself (who sees little reason to change) and Ray’s increasingly skeptical wife.