Reyno Aren Movies
- 1990
The boisterous good humor of Jurmala (Mikk Mikiver), the nickel-mine owner, is, if anything, only barely dented by the raging battles in Finland before, during and after World War Two. In fact, everywhere he goes, he meets prospective customers on all sides of the conflict with his all-inclusive greeting "Friends, Comrades." Indeed, the resource he is wrenching from the earth's bowels is necessary to all forms of industrial activity, and is especially necessary for military applications. Thus, he has no reason to fear that he will ever run out of customers. This doesn't prevent him from using every possible means to entice them. At home, his relationship with his wife is not so prosperous, and they resort to some extraordinary means to try and keep on an even keel. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mikk Mikiver, Stina Ekblad, (more)
The desperate crew of a Soviet shipping vessel must struggle to survive after being hijacked and systematically exterminated by a ruthless band of modern-day pirates in director Boris Durov's popular box-office hit. Adrift in the ocean waters with a valuable cargo of opium intended for pharmacology, the unassuming crew of a Soviet vessel is violently seized by a sadistic band of criminals determined to claim the valuable cargo for themselves. As the trigger-happy pirates set about ensuring that no witnesses will survive to tell the brutal tale, a small group of survivors struggle to stay alive long enough to reach terra firma and escape a grim fate at the hands of their ruthless captors. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Nikolai Yeremenko Jr., Petr Velyaminov, (more)
Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations. Rarely seen in the US, this Hamlet (or Gamlet, as it was known in Russia) is not always successful, but is certainly more innovative -- and lively -- than Olivier's wildly overpraised 1948 version. Director Grigori Kozintsev would follow Hamlet with an equally radical adaptation of King Lear in 1970. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Mikhail Nazvanov, (more)
