If you are someone who understands and appreciates cinema, who loves inventive, never-before-seen filmic experimentation, someone who drools over hyper-lavish cinematography and screams at the chance to be shocked by the creative moxy of a true auteur, you should stop whatever you're doing, close this window, turn off your computer, and go to the video store right this instant. If you are at work, tell your boss you’ve suddenly come down with the bird flu, if it’s too late or too early for the store to be open in your city, you owe it to yourself to go and stand outside and wait for them to open so you can rent this Russian film:



For the way in which the subtitles are integrated into the landscape of the film - something never done before, to my knowledge - this film is worth watching a dozen times. Not to mention camera-trickery beyond the Wachowski's wildest imagination. Granted, the resolution in Act III is somewhat dubious, but the kind of unbelievable creativity preceding the ending far outweighs whatever criticism one could muster. Seriously, this movie is not just pretty to look at or fun to watch or constantly surprising, it's downright groundbreaking, indisputably - that is, you cannot argue with the fact that this director did things in this film that no one has ever done before, that transcends genre, that elevates the art of filmmaking to a whole other level.

The bar has officially been raised. Click here for the Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) official site.