A boring and pretentious movie about a boring and pretentious movie maker (yawn)

Early in New Zealand film making, or at least early from my point of view (the early '80s) there was a trend to making deadly boring and pretentious films and call them deep. Unfortunately for the industry, Vigil, an early example of this type, was a hit with the critics and up and down the country film makers tried to emulate it.

For me, until I married a film maker, NZ movies were a gloomy no-go zone. Let's face it, even the good ones are seldom a laugh a minute - The Piano, Once Were Warriors, even Whale Rider.

So here we have The Russion Snark, a boring pretentious movie, a throw back to 1983, about a boring pretentious film maker - and the critics don't seem to have learned much - they like it!

1. If you're making a movie about something boring it has to be interesting, or at least funny. There's nothing funny about this movie.

2. Main characters, no matter how flawed, need to have some humanity, Misha (the pretentious Russian film maker) is childish, humourless, self centred, lazy, deluded and immoral.

3. Characters must be believable - Misha's foray into petty crime makes no sense, and his "redemption" at the end comes out of nowhere. We absolutely do not believe this is the same character.

4. His beautiful wife, who has put up with him for a long time, deserves, when she leaves him, better than the writers deliver. When she goes back to him it's a kind of defeat. We don't believe he's a better man.

5. When they sail off into the sunset nothing has been achieved, unless you believe Misha's a better person (yeah, right!) - to me it seems certain the whole sorry mess is due to be repeated at another location.

6. Most of the movie is Misha staring gloomily into nothing, Misha's awful black and white movie, and Misha groaning on about art and meaninglessness. The whole plot (such as it is) is crammed into the last quarter.

There are two good things - the black and white photography is terrific (just FARRRRRRR too much of it) and the actress playing Misha's wife Nadia is mesmerisingly beautiful.