Zoltan Bezeredi Movies

A man discovers it doesn't hurt to have a cool car if he wants to meet women in this comedy. Janos (Andras Stohl) is young, good-looking, and a well-to-do businessman, but his love life is not making him very happy; the only women he meets are vacuous and more interested in his money than in himself. One afternoon, Janos is tooling around in his new BMW when he accidentally runs into Vera (Eszter Ondori), an attractive young woman on rollerblades. Immediately smitten, Janos tells her that he's just won a special contest in which she's won the use of the car for a month -- and he'll be her driver. Very happily she accepts the offer, but before long, Janos realizes that he'll have to do a lot of double talking to conceal his real identity and explain his absence to his staff. Meseauto is a remake of the 1935 Hungarian feature of the same title, which starred Ella Gombaszogi. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In 1956, there was an uprising of Hungarians against their Russian overlords, which the Russians briefly allowed to flower and then ruthlessly suppressed. One suspects that the country's rulers knew about the uprising in advance and permitted it to continue so as to be able to identify who was most actively involved. In this film, it is 1958, and five very different men are waiting in their prison cells to be taken out and executed. Their dreams, fantasies and recollection relieve what might otherwise seem to be an unnecessarily repetitive situation. The internationally known French star Matthieu Carrière plays one of the condemned men. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this surprisingly amateurish production for noted Hungarian director Karoly Makk, Fitz (Christopher Plummer) is a well-known Broadway actor longing to get a leading role in a truly successful movie when his wife Lily (Maggie Smith) comes up with a sure-fire script. Too bad for Fitz, the male lead in Lily's script just has to be a blond Italian. Not one to be put off by minor details, Fitz dons a blond wig and an equally unconvincing Italian accent and lands the part. Soon the cast and crew are jetting off to Budapest, the filming location, where their parody of filmmakers may leave some viewers wondering if Lily in Love might have been successful as a parody itself. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Although its title may sound like a children's story, this finely-tuned comedy-drama is about an expert watchmaker in a small Hungarian village during World War II when the Gestapo come in to run the affairs of the town. The watchmaker Arpad (Tamas Jordan) is known as "Mr. Clock" because he has the rare talent of being able to tell the exact time of day or night without looking at a timepiece. After the Germans take over the village, their Gestapo chief, who has a large collection of clocks, becomes friendly with the watchmaker. That friendship is doubly dangerous because Arpad is Jewish. Before long, several local authorities are arrested, along with a Hungarian colonel, many ordinary citizens, and the watchmaker himself. A scheme is afoot to spring the colonel from prison, but since the prisoners have all been stripped of their watches, the success of the clockwork escape plan depends solely on Arpad's uncanny ability. The original actor cast as Arpad, Lajos Oze, one of Hungary's most accomplished thespians, died before this film was completed, and he was replaced by Tamas Jordan, in a topnotch performance. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The Hungarian Oh, Bloody Life reflects on the heavy emotional toll taken by the repressive Stalin regime. Dorotya Udvaros plays a young actress from a high-born family. The government bias against persons of wealth threatens to destroy her career before it begins. As a final blow, she is threatened with deportation. The exasperation inherent in the film's title is only the tip of the iceberg. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A supposed window dresser is really a thief by natural inclination and he comes up with several ingenious schemes to make money. In one robbery, he and a few accomplices steal a statue from a church, sell it for an exorbitant sum to a few West German citizens, then cause the West Germans' car to crash -- whereupon the thieves take back the statue and set it up in the church again. In another robbery, some jewels from an antique shop are hidden in a special, trick place inside a wooden table that the thief had sold to the shop. Once the jewels are safe in the table, the thief buys the table back and he leaves the shop with the hidden jewels, no problem. Basically, this seems to be a do-it-yourself instruction kit for anyone with sticky fingers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi