Michal Suchanek Movies

Three Czech thieves find that while making off with a fortune is a breeze, remaining low-key after the heist poses an unexpected problem in director Jiri Chlumsky's breezy crime comedy. Upon botching a potentially lucrative scam of Cuban autoworkers, Ondrej (Ondrej Vetchy) is incarcerated, Tomas (Tomas Hanak) flees to France, and Michal (Michal Suchanek) begins turning a profit by taking tourists through Prague. Years later, the trio is reunited and dreams up a heist that is more ambitious than ever. While their first attempt proves unsuccessful, their second attempt lands the take of a lifetime. Now, if the three bumbling thieves can only maintain their modest lifestyles, they may actually get away with it. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A young college student begins to question his family's expectations of him -- as well as his own expectations of himself -- in first-time Canadian director Ori Kowarsky's film Various Positions. Law student Josh Szchevisky (Tygh Runyan) -- eagerly following the educational path his parents (L. Harvey Gold and Marie Stillin) have plotted for him -- begins preparing to spend the Passover holiday at home when he meets a hot young coed named Cheryth (Carly Pope). The two embark on a quick and intense romance, which leaves Josh fearful of announcing his relationship with a non-Jew to his devout family. As Josh eventually decides to bring Cheryth to dinner, his father and younger brother Tzvi (Michal Suchanek) give her enough grief to inflict some damage on Josh and Cheryth's fragile relationship. Furthermore, their treatment of Cheryth also gives Josh pause as he questions how his family's desires for his future conflict with his own. Various Positions was selected for inclusion into the Panorama Canada program at the 2002 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide

From the award-winning children's series The Inventors' Specials, comes this entertaining and educational glimpse into the life and work of Thomas Edison. The series combines fact with fictionalized stories to highlight a key period in the lives of famous inventors. In Edison: The Wizard of Light, the inventor rescues a boy from a truant officer after the boy appears in his lab. Edison decides to take the boy under his wing and share with him the excitement of the inventor's world. The program introduces the concepts of patents and recounts the birth of the movie industry. Other programs in this series designed for youngsters between the ages of eight and 13 are Albert Einstein: Light to the Power of 2, Leonardo: A Dream of Flight, Galileo: On the Shoulders of Giants, Marie Curie: More Than Meets the Eye, and Isaac Newton: A Tale of Two Isaacs. ~ Sally Barber, All Movie Guide

"What if they're right?" screamed the ad copy for the TV movie Y2K, referring to the millions of otherwise rational, level-headed people who lived in mortal terror that virtually every computer in the world would malfunction on December 31, 1999, because of an imbedded inability to "read" the year 2000. As it turned out, of course, "they" were wrong, and no worldwide technical meltdown occurred: but the producers of this film, which originally aired November 21, 1999, on NBC, were clearly not above exploiting everyone's panic over things to come to make a few bucks. In traditional disaster-flick fashion, the film offers a multitude of subplots with several different sets of main characters, all of whose lives will be profoundly altered by the cataclysmic events of Y2K. Likewise adhering to tradition is the notion that only one man is capable of saving the world from plunging into a computerized abyss. That man is MIT-trained "systems failure" expert Nick Cromwell (Ken Olin), who on the eve of the new millennium races against time to prevent a nuclear disaster in New York City -- one that threatens to dwarf a similar reactor meltdown that occurred a scant few hours earlier in Sweden. To juice up the suspense, the script contrives to place Cromwell's wife Kelly (Jane McGregor) and daughter Alix (Kate Vernon) in jeopardy while dad is off being a hero. The film's level of credibility reaches a crest when Jay Leno makes a cameo appearance as himself. Seen from the vantage point of the post-9/11, post-Hurricane Katrina era, Y2K seems as quaint and naïve as a 1908 Biograph one-reeler -- perhaps even more so. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Zdenek (Vladimir Javoprsky) is a gangly, rural and homely hayseed who studies music. When he takes a summer job as a mailman, he quickly becomes the object of affection for several willing females. One tells Zdenek she is pregnant and later runs off after abandoning the baby on his doorstep. He ends up caring for the infant despite learning that he is not the father. Although the feature is a comedy, it is hard to find humor in an abandoned baby, the plight of an emotionally troubled unmarried mother, and a suicide. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide