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Reviews
Amadeus (1984)
A child of its time
I know I thought highly of this movie in the past, I remember that our music teacher in school actually recommended to see it. But now that I recently watched it again, I was gravely disappointed by it.
Basically none of the story is historically (the time and circumstances of his death; the relationship between Salieri and Mozart; the relationship between Mozart and his father; the origin of Constanze; Mozart as a drunkard) or musically (most music one hears is clearly recorded using modern instruments; how the conducting is portrayed; how Mozart "dictates" the music to Salieri) true, some of the set decoration and costuming was awful (modern pool table in a home in 1791; obvious electrical candles in quite a few scenes; modern fabrics were used in the opera scenes). If one finds the characters as laid out in the script believable (which I don't) one could probably find the acting to be outstanding, but since I don't believe the story (any more), I cannot subscribe to that any more, either.
What remains is the powerful use of some of Mozart's greatest music, for that I agree with Neville Marriner who has supposedly said that he was happy to see this movie built around the music and not vice versa. This still raises the film above the average level.
Wallander: The Dogs of Riga (2012)
Weird mix of 90s story with 201x Riga
I read all of Mankell's Wallander books and "Dogs of Riga" was a pretty good one (although not his best), describing the state of Latvia and its connections to Sweden in the early 90s very well.
Now this film takes the book, presents basically the same story in 2011 (or 2012), and fails miserably. It seems that the author forgot that Latvia has gone through enormous changes in the last 20 years. These are very well captured in the pictures (Riga would have been a much more gray and gloomy place in 1992!) but the story is not at all believable any more now, after the Baltic states have been part of the EU for almost 10 years.
Additionally, the seasons kept changing wildly throughout the film (it starts with snowflakes in Sweden, then it is obviously summer in Riga, in between the fields in Sweden are green).
Finally, the only connection to the previous episode was Ann-Britt in hospital, Wallanders previous live-with woman was never even mentioned.