Alexei Zharkov Movies

This Russian film is an updated version of Bertold Brecht's stage play. Brecht's plays always highlight the intersection between politics and life as it is lived, and his play, The Career of Arturo Ui is no exception. The story is about Arturo Ui (Aleksandr Filipenko) and his progress from being a penniless unknown to becoming someone with totalitarian power. The model for Arturo was originally Hitler, but in this film parallels are also drawn to the rise of Stalin, and to the new socialists seeking power in post-Soviet Russia. Slogans from Russian political campaigns are used for this purpose to chilling effect. Often, as in this play, Brecht collaborated with Kurt Weill to bring music to his stylized dramas, and as a result many of his plays occupy an ill-defined territory somewhere between classical Greek drama and the contemporary stage musical. Here, that music is supplemented by contemporary Russian folk music. The film retains many stage values; most actors appear in very stylized makeup, and the film's settings are very limited and contained. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Political rivals, divided by a bloody war, are forced to come to terms with one another in this drama, which was adapted from Leo Tolstoy's short story "Prisoner of the Caucasus." In Chechnya, two Russian soldiers, nervous rookie Vania (Sergei Bodrov, Jr.) and hardened veteran Sasha (Oleg Menshikov), are captured by Muslim forces. Abdul-Murat (Dzhemal Sikharulidze), the leader of the village where the soldiers are held, also has a son in the war, who is being held as a prisoner of war by the Russians. Abdul-Murat demands the release of his son in exchange for sparing Vania and Sasha, and a level of understanding and respect begins to grow between the Russians and their captors. Kavkazsky Plennik, released in the U.S. as Prisoner of the Mountains, received both Oscar and Golden Globe nominations as Best Foreign Language Film of 1997. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Oleg (Oleg Basilashvili) is in for a really strange time, that much is clear. Of course, just the fact of his desire to visit a gypsy fortuneteller in the first place is an indication of that. He's well past middle age, in his 50s, and is an established, well-known writer. When the fortuneteller told him the same thing (you will have an unusual time), he didn't really believe her. However, when he runs into a 25-year old man in his apartment claiming the same parentage, profession, name and birthday - as well as having a scar over his eye identical to the one older Oleg has, it seems like the prediction has already come true - but it is just beginning. Oleg the younger (Andrei Sokolov) says he's leaving for Israel in the morning, but between then and now, he's at Oleg the older's disposal. For some reason, the presence of this near-doppelganger lends the older man courage and recklessness unlike anything he ever had before, and as he sets things right and gets revenge for previous slights, strange adventures abound. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this satire, the Countess Masha (Lyudmila Mordovinova) is the young wife of an important government official in Tsarist Russia. She has been having a series of inexplicable nightmares. Eventually she comes to believe that they are experiences of the future - 1993 in Russia to be exact. She is horrified. When she tells her husband the contents of her dreams, he is horrified. When she dresses in a fashion from one of her dreams (the miniskirt), the Russian court is horrified. All the same, despite earnest attempts by her husband to propose some reforms which would prevent that future from happening, it is to no avail. Nothing, it seems, can prevent the "complete cretinization" of the Russia of the future. Her nightmarish dream/visions include one where she is a female government economics minister who sleeps with western moneymen in order to bamboozle loans out of them, in another, she works at a cafeteria as a waitress and must constantly be on the run to avoid being cornered by her lustful (male) coworkers. Actors from one time period reappear in other guises in the other. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In his hometown of Saratov, Bob is a pretty cool gangster and can be trusted to carry out his boss's instructions properly, so it's understandable, really, that his boss thinks of sending the leather-clad youth on a thousand-mile ride on his antique motorcycle to Moscow in order to collect a bad debt. He's never killed anyone before, but he is willing to carry out his boss' orders. The person he was sent to kill may be an old friend of his, but since Bob doesn't have a gun, the question is moot. While searching for one, he runs into a completely magical young woman named Net, who lives in a damp basement apartment which she claims was Ivan the Terrible's wine cellar. The two of them form an attachment that distracts him from his criminal obligations. To date, director Sergei Bodrov's biggest success was Prisoner of the Mountains (1996) nominated for "Best Foreign Film" Academy Award. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In 1987, director Alla Surikova scored enormous success in her home country with Chelovek S Bulvara Kaputsinov, an engaging slapstick comedy about an idealistic film projectionist trying to introduce the Old West to the nascent art of motion pictures. This film, aptly named Choknutye / Crazy People, features another idealist, an Austrian engineer (Ulrich Pleitgen) who comes to 19th century Russia to build the first railroad. A group of aristocrats sees him as a direct threat to their thriving stagecoach business and they employ elaborate schemes to thwart his project. However, with the help of a dashing lieutenant (Nikolai Karachentsov), a double-dealing agent of the secret police (Leonid Yarmolnik), and a mysterious young woman named Maria (Olga Kabo), he manages to get the czar's approval. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide

In this farcical dark comedy/melodrama, Lena (Natalya Negoda) manages to lose her place at college by virtue of throwing a minor hissy-fit when she catches her erstwhile boyfriend in bed with another girl. Instead of penalizing the boy for his behavior, Lena gets stuck with a court appearance and must pay a small fine, in addition to losing a boyfriend, her college career, and an apartment. Lena belongs to a film club which occasionally hands out awards, and the membership of it decides to send her into the Russian hinterlands to hand out an award to an obscure filmmaker. Once there, she is the object of many (married) men's attentions, which leads to one of the funnier moments in the film. Throughout the film, Lena has been associated with a bizarre con man named Stepanich (Alexei Zharkov) who, when his cons fall through, comes to her in the distant town she has gone to seeking her help in committing suicide. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide