Rocky IV

Rocky IV is a fascinating film to examine given the way an altered perspective through time can mean so much. In contemporary reviews the film was mostly derided and received several Razzie nominations for its name. Today though it has far more than a cult following as it fortified itself well into pulp culture, and not as a bad film. It instead has become this embodiment of the 80's specifically the idea of an American exceptionalism where a single man can not only single handedly defeat the will of the Soviet Union not through war rather fighting a single foe, and delivering a speech that defies explanation. Now in a contemporary view of the time this may have seen ridiculous however looking at the film as an artifact of the Reagan era 80's it is a different kind of ridiculous. The film takes Rocky even further into the absurd from the 3rd film. The thing is this is never problematic despite how different is from the first film because of how wholly it embraces this idea. This puts forth the idea from the outset with the film basically opening with Rocky having bought his brother-in-law Paulie a robot for his birthday. The film simply is not hiding this there, or in any facet as Stallone directs the film with all the gusto of this over the top exercise in the realization of Rocky as this titan facing down the foreign dragon, here aptly named DRAGO, rather than the Philadelphia brawler we met in the first film. The key is the sheer embracement of this excess idea in every regard as the film is more montage than man now, with well most of the film being made up of montages to lead Rocky to avenge his friend Apollo and perhaps save the world entire. The film does not hide in its ridiculousness it relishes it and in turn is a wildly entertaining realization of the film that could have only been made in 1985. There is a reason it has cemented a place in pop culture almost as strongly as the original film and that's because what it does it does well. Now that may seem silly or illogical, but boy is it so much fun in all its silliness and all of its lack of any normal sense.
4/5

Come and See

Come and See is a stark depiction of Nazi occupation founded from the most intimate perspective of a young boy who attempts to join the partisan fighters in Belarus. The plotting itself seems simple enough but is the approach of director Elem Klimov that makes this film a truly harrowing experience. The film features that perspective closely where the horrors are often just in the peripheral view of the frame, which seems to make them even more disturbing than if they where bluntly placed at the center of the screen. The film attempts to inflict the viewer with the same experience through this constrictor that is very effective in this approach. We are not granted a broader viewer, even a broader hope, we only know what our young boy sees which one horrific sight after another. Now this itself could be numbing if not for the film's particular approach that leaves every instance an impression on your memory. As it creates the sense of the confusion of the life in the occupation, those attempts to fight back, but mostly being lost with the only checkpoints being those moments of the very worst of humanity. The film startling in the ease of the events in a way particularly a village massacre that the perpetrators almost treat like a picnic. What is as disturbing though is the depiction of how this weighs on the people and particularly this boy who seems to age into a hardened older man by the film's haunting last sequence where the boy blindly rages at a photograph of Hitler. Where Downfall portrayed the rot on the man around him, Come and See is a startling depiction of the rot and victims of the man's hate filled agenda.
5/5