Review of Russian Ark (2002) by Kenny C — 13 Oct 2008

I watched it just to see the epic feat of filming an entire film with one shot. This provides many opportunities for clever camera/set movement, but this wasn't exploited anywhere near as often as it could have been.

The plot was beyond boring, since there's no explaination for those of us who don't know much about Russian history and the magical, random time travel was completely unexplored as a plot element until the last line.

Overall though, I was impressed by the sheer existence of a 96 minute shot, but there were definitely points at which it seemed like Sokurov was stretching scenes out as long as possible, then going over them again and again.