ГорÑчий Ñнег (Hot Snow) got off to a promising start.
Until recently I had put off watching it all the way, through, and now wish I hadn’t bothered.   It turns out that a better title would have been “Sleepingwalking through Stalingrad.”  The actors went through the motions, and I suppose they really were awake, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.
A look at the YouTube comments shows that a lot of Russian people like this film, though.  I find that strange, because it’s not as though there aren’t good Russian war movies against which this one should be compared and found wanting.
I suppose one possibility is that these people are filling in all the action and character development from what they know of the book, and are projecting that on the screen. (I haven’t read the book, but I trust it’s better than the movie.)  Or maybe some of them have family connections to the Battle of Stalingrad, and that helps them to provide the emotional setting that the movie-makers left out.
Oh, well.  Now that I’ve got this out of the way, I should move on to posting about some excellent movies I’ve seen recently.