Alicia I love this movie so much

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Vonia The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966) Director: Norman Jewison Watched: May 24, 2018 Rating: 7/10 Ah, the things we could learn from The Telephone Game, Amusingly confusing with half the film in poor English and (in the original version) deliberately unsubtitled Russian. An entertaining and heartwarming watch- though largely implausible, overdone, overlong, and predictable, A cheesy but completely unlikely ending that teaches love and harmony, because "I do not mistrust... not really sinceriously. I wish not to hate anybody!" Anyone who gripes that this Cold War satire is outdated should try replacing "Russians" with "Terrorists". ---- Gogyohka literally translates to "five-line poem." An alternative to the tanka form, the gogyohka has very simple rules. Five lines with one phrase per line. What comprises a phrase? Eye of the beholder- or the poet, in this case. #Gogyohka #PoemReview #GoldenGlobesBestPicture #War

mark.waltz While this certainly represents a part of history that is long gone (the cold war), new conflicts in the world are pretty much creating the same type of paranoia as that episode of world history did. It's not the citizens of these individual countries that deserve our hate or fear, it's their leaders, because the citizens are most likely even more oppressed by those leaders as we are afraid of them. In the case of these Russians whose submarine lands off the New England coast stuck on a sandbar, all they want is help getting unstuck and go on with whatever they were doing prior to the situation that got them there in the first place. What they are doing off the American coast is never really explained as the opening is all in Russian, but that doesn't matter: everything is pretty obvious from the start. It is indeed a mad, mad, mad, mad situation for the poor Russian men and the Americans either on vacation in this quaint coastal town or the people who live there year round. The Russians instill fear from their first appearance, trying to find out from playwright Carl Reiner and his wife Eva Marie Saint where they can get a boat to unstick them. Fear takes over everybody as the news gets around, and for gossipy Doro Merande, that means being put up on the wall bound and gagged in a chair where husband Parker Fennelly, deaf as a post, doesn't hear her attempts at screams or even notice her. Portly telephone Tessie O'Shea ends up tied together with a man half her size, and their attempts to get out of the telephone office will have you in hysterics. Ben Blue tries vainly while drunk to get on his horse to become a 1960's version of Paul Revere, but it's love at first sight with blonde American Andrea Dromm and the very handsome John Philip Law whose heart seems to be as big as all of the U.S.S.R. combined.Then, there's the law: Brian Keith, Jonathan Winters and Paul Ford, all comically inept, Russian commander Theodore Bikel and Alan Arkin as the head of the land-bound Russians who at one point seems to be gunned down by a hot headed American who shoots first and thinks later. The Russians really give them no reason to panic after the initial shock of their appearance and only resort to pulling out their arsenal of weapons when the Americans refuse to listen to them, only assuming the worst. This is continuously funny, but with subtle lessons of a need for world understanding that often gets overshadowed by the individual refusal to see people beyond the assumed stereotypes of their culture. As for the ending stand-off, it's both tense and poignant, as what could have been sappy involving Johnny Whittaker's young character nearly sliding off a church roof to his death. This leads to cultural understanding that had audiences in both the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. cheering and realizing how much we share as human beings, rather how different we are. I would say that this may have seemed to have been dated at one point, but the more time that passes, the more I realize how fresh it is today. Unfortunately, the environment that surrounds the world today would have this situation turning out more tragically than heroically, and that's a shame. Perhaps the viewing of this film is more important for that purpose alone, because it gives us the opportunity to think about our neighbors in more human terms and not see everybody out to bring others outside their cultures and races down.

eplromeo8 Russia and Communism seems to be of particular interest to the Reel 13 programmers what with this film, ONE, TWO, THREE last week and FIDDLER ON THE ROOF next week. Perhaps they'll want to replace BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK on April 19th with DOCTOR ZHIVAGO or WAR AND PEACE – just to keep the streak going.Not that I'm complaining really. This film, in particular, which I was seeing for the first time, was quite good and much more effective at political satire than ONE, TWO, THREE. It is frequently funny, led by the Oscar-nominated performance by Alan Arkin as a Russian sailor stranded with eight comrades on an island in the Cape Cod area. As a matter of fact, it's almost disturbingly funny, given that the hysteria of the townspeople in the film feels all too real and possible (though heightened here for comic effect). Even if the Russian-as-bad-guy theme is old news, it can easily be substituted with some sort of terrorist threat, which makes the film just as relevant today as it was in 1966.The film isn't without its hiccups, however. It's a little slow-paced for a comedy, though I realize it's a very different kind of comedy. There are a good number of clunky scenes to balance out the ones that hit all the right notes. The love story, for example, between the young, blonde Russian and the blonde babysitter is EXTREMELY lame and should have either been paid attention to more (the babysitter has something like four lines total) or abandoned completely. Additionally, I think Carl Reiner was miscast. He may be a comic genius, but more as a writer and sometimes a straight man on the variety show circuit. He never has been that strong of an actor and that is proved once again with his uninspired performance in THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING.Still and all, the film was really strong and you have to really give a lot of credit to director Norman Jewison, who, in spite of a very impressive track record, isn't much talked about among the elite film-making talents of the last forty years. Given that April is, to some degree, Norman Jewison month on Reel 13 (He also directed next week's FIDDLER), I got to thinking about his canon. I've decided that what's most impressive about his body of work is how eclectic it is in terms of style (he is very good at altering his style to fit the story he's crafting) and genre (he can do comedy, satire, drama, fairy tale and musicals). There is a connection in his work in terms of theme – he seems to be particularly interested in social injustice, whether it be racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism or what have you. Another consistency I noticed in the Norman Jewison oeuvre is a series of outstanding performances, too numerous to list here. So what we have here is a filmmaker that adapts his style to the story instead of vice versa with a particular focus on performance and character development. He may not be as celebrated as Hitchcock, Ford, Scorsese or Spielberg, but it seems to me if we had a few more young filmmakers emulating Jewison instead of Tarantino, we'd be a lot better off.(For more information on this or any other Reel 13 film, check out their website at www.reel13.org)

christhecat I remember watching this as a child with my parents and enjoying it. I watched it again recently and enjoyed it more because I understood a lot of the humor I missed as a child, even laughing out loud in some parts. It's perhaps a little slow in parts, but maybe because I've grown used to modern, non-stop-wise-cracking comedies.There are some aspects that are remarkably unrealistic: a Russian sub captain wanting to "sneak a peak" at the USA, a Russian Sub captain threatening to shell a town instead of using diplomatic detente (really-- I'm sure ALL the sailors knew how serious the tensions between the two powers were).There are some aspects that are remarkably realistic: how the rumor of invasion grows wings and develops purely invented details, how quickly mob mentality takes over, how everyone thinks they know what's going on but clearly do not (I note that the Russians are maybe more scared than the Americans, as they always seem to be perspiring.) Indeed-- one of the themes of the film seems to be mis-communication, and how quickly misunderstanding can turn into war.I was also thinking about "treason" while watching the film. The idea is brought up at least twice on screen. Carl Reiner's "Whittaker Walt" clearly is just trying to be a good samaritan, and doesn't want to see anybody get hurt, neither Yankee nor Slav. By the end of the film I was reminded of that sappy Sting song with the lyric "I'm sure the Russians love their children too"-- clearly the whole town has come to the same conclusion, and decides it's maybe better to be (perhaps) treasonous against their own country than to be (definitely) treasonous against their own humanity. (Besides-- how would it aid the US to go to war over a minor misunderstanding caused by a bumbling sea captain?)