The Protege Review — The Protege (2021) Film Review, a movie directed by Martin Campbell and starring Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, David Rintoul, Patrick Malahide, Ray Fearon, Ori Pfeffer, Robert Patrick, Florin Piersic Jr., Tudor Chirila, Velizar Binev, George Pistereanu, Eva Nugyen Thorsen, Tanja Keller and Taj Atwal. Director Martin Campbell delivers an [...]
Continue reading: Film Review: The Protege (2021): Maggie Q and Michael Keaton Face Off in Quality Action Picture...
Continue reading: Film Review: The Protege (2021): Maggie Q and Michael Keaton Face Off in Quality Action Picture...
- 9/9/2021
- by Thomas Duffy
- Film-Book
"A sly and intricate crime drama." Magnolia has unveiled the official Us trailer for Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu's acclaimed film The Whistlers, which first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. The film didn't win any awards, but it did win over critics, especially A.O. Scott (here's his review) who is quoted all over the marketing. This fun neo-noir stars Vlad Ivanov in the lead role, Cristi, a Romanian police officer who is secretly working inside the mafia. He heads to La Gomera Island to learn an ancestral whistling language. In Romania he is under police surveillance and by using this coded language he will continue to communicate with the mobsters to try and get Zsolt out of prison. Also starring Catrinel Marlon, Rodica Lazar, Agustí Villaronga, Sabin Tambrea, István Teglas, Cristóbal Pinto, and George Pistereanu. I caught this in Cannes and I had a great time - here's my glowing review,...
- 12/4/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Magnolia Pictures has acquired the North American distribution rights to “The Whistlers,” a crime movie from Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu that premiered in competition at Cannes, an individual with knowledge of the deal told TheWrap.
Magnolia intends to release “The Whistlers” later this year.
Porumboiu is one of the members of the Romanian New Wave of cinema and is the director of 2006’s “12:08 East of Bucharest” and 2009’s “Police, Adjective,” which won the Un Certain Regard at Cannes that same year. Porumboiu’s latest follows a crooked police officer who wants to free a businessman from an island in the Canaries but has to learn a bizarre local language involving whistling, hissing and spitting in order to do so. Here’s the official synopsis:
Also Read: 'The Whistlers' Film Review: Romanian Wild Ride Runs on Black Humor
In “The Whistlers,” not everything is as it seems for Cristi,...
Magnolia intends to release “The Whistlers” later this year.
Porumboiu is one of the members of the Romanian New Wave of cinema and is the director of 2006’s “12:08 East of Bucharest” and 2009’s “Police, Adjective,” which won the Un Certain Regard at Cannes that same year. Porumboiu’s latest follows a crooked police officer who wants to free a businessman from an island in the Canaries but has to learn a bizarre local language involving whistling, hissing and spitting in order to do so. Here’s the official synopsis:
Also Read: 'The Whistlers' Film Review: Romanian Wild Ride Runs on Black Humor
In “The Whistlers,” not everything is as it seems for Cristi,...
- 5/24/2019
- by Brian Welk
- The Wrap
Russian actor Sergey Puskepalis is to make his directorial debut and has cast Alexey Serebryakov, star of Cannes winner Leviathan.
Clinch is billed as a drama with tragicomic elements starring Serebryakov, who headlined Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, winner of best screenplay at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Clinch, which is being produced by Ruben Dishdishyan’s Mars Media Entertainment, also features the actress Asya Domskaya in her first screen role.
Speaking to Ria-Novosti, Puskepalis explained that the film’s story, which he had developed for the past five years, focuses on “the clinch of relations between the ‘next’ generations and people of my age”.
“We are not very good at understanding the kids who are around 20-22 years-old. And there’s an essential difference between us – they are citizens of Russia and we are all still from the Ussr,” he added.
Puskepalis and his co-star Grigory Dobrygin shared a Silver Bear at the 2010 Berlinale for their...
Clinch is billed as a drama with tragicomic elements starring Serebryakov, who headlined Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, winner of best screenplay at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Clinch, which is being produced by Ruben Dishdishyan’s Mars Media Entertainment, also features the actress Asya Domskaya in her first screen role.
Speaking to Ria-Novosti, Puskepalis explained that the film’s story, which he had developed for the past five years, focuses on “the clinch of relations between the ‘next’ generations and people of my age”.
“We are not very good at understanding the kids who are around 20-22 years-old. And there’s an essential difference between us – they are citizens of Russia and we are all still from the Ussr,” he added.
Puskepalis and his co-star Grigory Dobrygin shared a Silver Bear at the 2010 Berlinale for their...
- 7/11/2014
- by [email protected] (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
Alexander Kott’s love story [pictured] awarded the Grand Prix and the prize for best cinematography.
Alexander Kott’s Test was the big winner at this year’s Kinotavr Open Russian Film Festival at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The jury headed by Cannes prize-winner Andrey Zvyagintsev awarded its Grand Prix “for the realisation of the dream” and the prize for best cinematography to Kott’s love story, set against the first hydrogen bomb tests in the Kazakh Steppe at the beginning of the 50s.
In addition, Kott’s film received the Elephant Trophy from the Guild of Film Critics and Film Scholars.
Test is handled internationally by Anton Mazurov’s fledgling Russian sales company Ant!pode Sales & Distribution, which saw its other three new titles by four women directors coming away from this year’s Kinotavr with trophies and diplomas in their luggage:
Anna Melikian’s Star received the prizes for best direction and best actress...
Alexander Kott’s Test was the big winner at this year’s Kinotavr Open Russian Film Festival at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The jury headed by Cannes prize-winner Andrey Zvyagintsev awarded its Grand Prix “for the realisation of the dream” and the prize for best cinematography to Kott’s love story, set against the first hydrogen bomb tests in the Kazakh Steppe at the beginning of the 50s.
In addition, Kott’s film received the Elephant Trophy from the Guild of Film Critics and Film Scholars.
Test is handled internationally by Anton Mazurov’s fledgling Russian sales company Ant!pode Sales & Distribution, which saw its other three new titles by four women directors coming away from this year’s Kinotavr with trophies and diplomas in their luggage:
Anna Melikian’s Star received the prizes for best direction and best actress...
- 6/9/2014
- by [email protected] (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
★★★☆☆ Romanian director Florin Serban's If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle (2010), based on the play of the same name by Andreea Valean, tells the story of Silviu (George Pistereanu), a young offender coming to the end of his four-year prison sentence. Silviu's younger brother, whom he has raised in the absence of their mother, informs him that their mother has returned and wants to take him to Italy. Distraught at the idea of losing his sibling, Silviu attempts to find a way to keep him in the country until his release.
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- 8/21/2012
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
The Dictator (15)
(Larry Charles, 2012, Us) Sacha Baron Cohen, Anna Faris, Jason Mantzoukas, Ben Kingsley, John C Reilly. 83 mins
Having run out of unsuspecting Americans to prank, Sacha Baron Cohen takes the conventional fish-out-of-water route this time, as his Arab tyrant comes to terms with western democracy. But if the story plays it safe, the comedy treads a risky line between lampooning Islamophobia and fuelling it. The high gag rate, animated performance and general broad-spectrum offensiveness help him get away with murder, and worse.
The Raid (18)
(Gareth Evans, 2011, Indon/Us) Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Yayan Ruhian. 101 mins
Throwing more punches than every other movie this year combined, this single-minded Indonesian martial arts epic doesn't let up until everyone in its baddy-infested apartment block, and the auditorium, is pummelled into submission. Pacifists, look away now.
2 Days In New York (15)
(Julie Delpy, 2011, Ger/Fra/Bel) Julie Delpy, Chris Rock, Albert Delpy. 96 mins
Welcome return for Delpy's chaotic,...
(Larry Charles, 2012, Us) Sacha Baron Cohen, Anna Faris, Jason Mantzoukas, Ben Kingsley, John C Reilly. 83 mins
Having run out of unsuspecting Americans to prank, Sacha Baron Cohen takes the conventional fish-out-of-water route this time, as his Arab tyrant comes to terms with western democracy. But if the story plays it safe, the comedy treads a risky line between lampooning Islamophobia and fuelling it. The high gag rate, animated performance and general broad-spectrum offensiveness help him get away with murder, and worse.
The Raid (18)
(Gareth Evans, 2011, Indon/Us) Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Yayan Ruhian. 101 mins
Throwing more punches than every other movie this year combined, this single-minded Indonesian martial arts epic doesn't let up until everyone in its baddy-infested apartment block, and the auditorium, is pummelled into submission. Pacifists, look away now.
2 Days In New York (15)
(Julie Delpy, 2011, Ger/Fra/Bel) Julie Delpy, Chris Rock, Albert Delpy. 96 mins
Welcome return for Delpy's chaotic,...
- 5/18/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★☆☆ With debut feature If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (2010), Romanian director Florin Şerban explores the youth penitentiaries of his home nation, presenting a closed system where the ruthless prosper and the more vulnerable are left to fend for themselves. The story (adapted for the screen from his own stage production of the same name) revolves around reserved detainee Silviu (George Pistereanu), who has just 5 days left to wait until his sentence ends and he can be reunited with his younger brother (Marian Bratu).
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- 5/18/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
The culmination of this tale of life in a Romanian young offenders' institute proves as despairing as it is tense
This punchy, economical Romanian drama establishes a strong sense of place (a young offenders' institute in the countryside) before gradually coming to describe the trouble its protagonist, Silviu (George Pistereanu) – a hothead with two weeks remaining on his sentence – finds himself in. The close-knit, Dardennes-like approach, hewing squarely to Silviu's shoulders, catches the boy's growing isolation from his fellow inmates as well as the world beyond the gates. It also prompts a simmering performance from Pistereanu, forced to prove himself amid an ensemble of actual young offenders whose roughhousing looks and sounds very much the real thing. The standoff that results, as Silviu finally decides to grab what he wants in life, proves as despairing as it is tense. Not for the first time, a Romanian film shows us an...
This punchy, economical Romanian drama establishes a strong sense of place (a young offenders' institute in the countryside) before gradually coming to describe the trouble its protagonist, Silviu (George Pistereanu) – a hothead with two weeks remaining on his sentence – finds himself in. The close-knit, Dardennes-like approach, hewing squarely to Silviu's shoulders, catches the boy's growing isolation from his fellow inmates as well as the world beyond the gates. It also prompts a simmering performance from Pistereanu, forced to prove himself amid an ensemble of actual young offenders whose roughhousing looks and sounds very much the real thing. The standoff that results, as Silviu finally decides to grab what he wants in life, proves as despairing as it is tense. Not for the first time, a Romanian film shows us an...
- 5/18/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
High time to round up the films at this year's Cannes Film Festival that never saw entries of their own and send them on their way. Today: Un Certain Regard.
"Bakur Bakuradze's The Hunter seems like a ficticious version of Raymond Depardon's Modern Life, a trilogy on farming that was screened in Cannes in 2008," finds Moritz Pfeifer, who also interviews the director for the East European Film Bulletin. "With no soundtrack, no professional actors, little dialogue and a minimalist plot, the film depicts the daily life of Ivan (Mikhail Barskovich) as he peacefully runs his pig farm in one of the less populous areas of northwestern Russia…. Clearly, Bakuradze wants to depict an alternative world, and the spirit of his film is more utopian than its hyper-realistic images suggest."
Grumbles the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt: "There is maybe 10 to 15 minutes of actual story located within this 124 minute slog,...
"Bakur Bakuradze's The Hunter seems like a ficticious version of Raymond Depardon's Modern Life, a trilogy on farming that was screened in Cannes in 2008," finds Moritz Pfeifer, who also interviews the director for the East European Film Bulletin. "With no soundtrack, no professional actors, little dialogue and a minimalist plot, the film depicts the daily life of Ivan (Mikhail Barskovich) as he peacefully runs his pig farm in one of the less populous areas of northwestern Russia…. Clearly, Bakuradze wants to depict an alternative world, and the spirit of his film is more utopian than its hyper-realistic images suggest."
Grumbles the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt: "There is maybe 10 to 15 minutes of actual story located within this 124 minute slog,...
- 5/31/2011
- MUBI
If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle won best film, director and first feature film for helmer Florin Serban at the Gopo awards, Romania's 5th annual national cinema awards. According to Variety, the film won supporting actress for Clara Voda as well as the Young Hope Award for star George Pistereanu. Serbin directed from a screenplay written alongside Catalin Mitulescu. The film is produced by and Catalin and Daniel Mitulescu. About If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle Silviu has only two weeks left before his release from a hostile juvenile detention center. But when his mother, who abandoned him long ago, returns to take his younger brother away - a brother Silviu raised like a son – those two weeks become an eternity. While his outcries for help fall on deaf ears, he finds himself mercilessly taunted and harassed...
- 3/30/2011
- Upcoming-Movies.com
If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle won best film, director and first feature film for helmer Florin Serban at the Gopo awards, Romania's 5th annual national cinema awards. According to Variety, the film won supporting actress for Clara Voda as well as the Young Hope Award for star George Pistereanu. Serbin directed from a screenplay written alongside Catalin Mitulescu. The film is produced by and Catalin and Daniel Mitulescu. About If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle Silviu has only two weeks left before his release from a hostile juvenile detention center. But when his mother, who abandoned him long ago, returns to take his younger brother away - a brother Silviu raised like a son – those two weeks become an eternity. While his outcries for help fall on deaf ears, he finds himself mercilessly taunted and harassed...
- 3/30/2011
- Upcoming-Movies.com
Ashlee Thompson, Jennifer Lawrence, Isaiah Stone, Winter's Bone Debra Granik's drama Winter's Bone was chosen as the Best Film at the 2010 Stockholm International Film Festival, which wrapped up last Nov. 28. In the last week or so, Winter's Bone also topped the Gotham Awards and earned a slew of Spirit Award nominations. The film's star, Jennifer Lawrence, was Stockholm's Best Actress, while the film itself also received the International Film Critics' (Fipresci) prize. The Best Actor was George Pistereanu for Romania's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar entry, If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle. The 2010 edition of the Stockholm Film Festival was attended by 130,000 moviegoers who, according to the festival's press release, gave a standing ovation to Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Harriet Andersson (the star of Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly), got to watch Gus Van Sant and Stellan Skarsgård slap each other "open heartedly at the Skandia...
- 12/9/2010
- by Steve Montgomery
- Alt Film Guide
George Pistereanu, Ada Condeescu in Florin Serban’s If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle (top); Grigory Dobrygin, Sergei Puskepalis in Alexei Popgrebsky’s How I Ended This Summer (upper middle); Shinobu Terajima in Koji Wakamatsu’s Caterpillar (lower middle); Sebastian Hiort af Ornäs in Babak Najafi’s Sebbe (bottom) Romanian filmmaker Florin Serban won two prizes for If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival: the Grand Prix Silver Bear and the Alfred Bauer prize for innovative filmmaking. If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle focuses on an incarcerated young man who takes a social worker hostage shortly before he is to be released from a youth detention center. The film is one more example of Romania’s [...]...
- 2/21/2010
- by Arthur Leander
- Alt Film Guide
Films by Roman Polanski and Martin Scorsese may be the headline-grabbers at the festival this year, but the real gems, such as Banksy's new creation, are to be found elsewhere
The star of this year's 60th anniversary Berlin film festival was crowned in his (inevitable) absence: Banksy, the British street artist, situationist, anarchist and all-round genius, presented us with his movie Exit Through the Gift Shop. The man himself only appeared in darkness, with his voice distorted. This was both tricksy self-portrait and cheeky docu-scam, satirising contemporary art craziness.
Blanked-out tongue somewhere in his pixelated cheek, Banksy tells us the story of his supposed relationship with a hyperactive French videographer, one Thierry Guetta, who has, it seems, been following him around – Boswell to Banksy's Johnson. A few years back, allegedly encouraged by Banksy, this man apparently suddenly stopped being an amateur cameraman and suddenly turned into a self-taught street artist called Mr Brainwash,...
The star of this year's 60th anniversary Berlin film festival was crowned in his (inevitable) absence: Banksy, the British street artist, situationist, anarchist and all-round genius, presented us with his movie Exit Through the Gift Shop. The man himself only appeared in darkness, with his voice distorted. This was both tricksy self-portrait and cheeky docu-scam, satirising contemporary art craziness.
Blanked-out tongue somewhere in his pixelated cheek, Banksy tells us the story of his supposed relationship with a hyperactive French videographer, one Thierry Guetta, who has, it seems, been following him around – Boswell to Banksy's Johnson. A few years back, allegedly encouraged by Banksy, this man apparently suddenly stopped being an amateur cameraman and suddenly turned into a self-taught street artist called Mr Brainwash,...
- 2/15/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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