Marcel Iures Movies

Hampered by a low-budget, director Mircea Veroiu has still created an effective black-and-white film on the resistance movement in Romania in 1934. The story focuses on the exploits of Sarka (Gheorghe Visu), a circus performer, and Horatio (Claudio Bleont), a student, as they join forces to fight rising fascism in Romania -- but many viewers would read parallels to the situation in the country in the early 1980s (several years before the bloody dictator Ceausescu was ousted from his military rule and executed). Sarka and Horatio are shown risking life and limb; at one point, they hide submerged in a water tower to escape detection by Nazi soldiers, and at another point, Sarka is sprung from jail by one of his courageous circus friends. Eventually, Sarka and Horatio become separated, and although it might be easier for at least one to survive on his own, the odds against both surviving are very low indeed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Lucian Pintilie wrote this dramatic tale of a woman who travels through Romania on a journey to bury her father's ashes, while the countryside lapses into chaos during the final days of the Ceausescu regime. ~ Nicole Gagne, Rovi

A Romanian soldier must choose between family loyalty and political allegiance in this disturbing Romanian drama set in 1925. Capt. Petri Dumitriu has been reassigned to a lonely outpost on the Danube after his wife Marie Therese Von Debretsy refuses the advances of a highly ranked general. On the Danube, Dumitriu's life is thrown into turmoil after Romanian soldiers are brutally slain in an ambush by Macedonian bandits. In retaliation, Dumitriu is ordered to execute the innocent local Bulgarians who work in his family's garden. Marie Therese is appalled and Dumitriu must make a terribly painful decision. (aka Un Ete Inoubliable) ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The first motion picture produced by DreamWorks SKG, The Peacemaker (1997) was a spy thriller that married the exotic locations and derring-do of James Bond with the high-tech obsession and post-Cold War politics of Tom Clancy. Greedy Russian military officers crash two trains into each other, the warheads aboard one causing a nuclear blast. The accident is a cover for the theft of some of the weapons for sale to terrorists and rogue governments. In the U.S., intelligence officer Lt. Col. Tom Devoe (George Clooney), isn't fooled. Neither is Dr. Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman), the acting head of a White House task force on nuclear smuggling. Devoe and Kelly team up to find the nukes, and they are able to stop the transfer of the weapons in a raid at the Iranian border, but one warhead is missing. It's in the hands of Dusan Gavrich (Marcel Iures), a grief-stricken terrorist planning to call the world's attention to the war in the former Soviet Union with a nuclear explosion in Manhattan. Although fictional, The Peacemaker was based on the magazine article "One Point Safe" by Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn, a factual investigative news report about nuclear weapons smuggling in Russia. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

The collective crimes against humanity known as the Holocaust have been well-documented since the end of World War II, but lingering questions remain about how much was known about the Nazi mass-extermination schemes outside Germany, and what could have been done to prevent them. Political filmmaker Costa-Gavras confronts this thorny issue in this film, adapted from the stage drama The Representative and based in part on actual events. Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukar) is a German chemist whose work on various government health projects led to him being added to the scientific staff of the Nazi SS. While working on disinfection and water purification programs to stem the tide of typhoid among German troops, Gerstein creates a toxic cleanser called Zyclon B. Gerstein soon learns that the SS has found a different use for Zyclon B -- in gas form, it is being used to exterminate Jews and other political undesirables en masse. Gerstein, a man of strong Christian faith, is horrified by this revelation, and he is determined to tell the world in hope of stopping the genocide; however, in Germany, Sweden, and the United States, Gerstein's story falls on deaf ears. One man who does believe Gerstein is Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz), a Jesuit with ties to the Vatican and close contact with Pope Pius XII (Marcel Iures). Fontana urges the Pope to speak out against the ongoing massacre, but the Pope declines, believing Russia is a greater menace to the Catholic Church than the Nazis. In time, desperate to spread the word of the holocaust, Gerstein and Fontana find themselves joining ranks with Roman Jews being rounded up by Nazi forces in occupied Italy. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

An experiment in bovine genetic modification goes horrifically wrong in writer/director Billy O'Brien's debut feature, Isolation. John Lynch stars as Dan a cattle farmer on the remote Irish countryside, whose ex, Orla (Essie Davis of the Matrix films), a veterinarian, has convinced him to take part in a profit-driven experiment on his cows, run by John (Marcel Iures), an officious scientist who seems very concerned with maintaining secrecy. Orla is conducting a routine check on a pregnant cow, and her hand is inside the animal, checking the unborn calf, when something bites at her. John is called to the farm, and reassures them that the safety checks were all okay. He's more concerned with the presence of a caravan just outside the farm. The caravan is occupied by Jamie (Sean Harris of 24 Hour Party People) and Mary (Ruth Negga of Breakfast on Pluto), a desperate young couple who are apparently hiding out from something. That night, after Orla and John have left, Dan hears his cow wailing. Dan's phone is out, so he reluctantly turns to Jamie for help. After a protracted and painful delivery, Orla turns up, and decides to "shut it all down." She kills the mother and the calf. Examining the calf, she realizes that it was born pregnant, and the "severely malformed" fetuses have distinctly un-cowlike exoskeletons. Unfortunately for all involved, one of the offspring survives, and when John finally shows up, he suggests that the farm be quarantined, as there may be a danger of "infection." Isolation was shown by the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of the 2006 Film Comment Selects series. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Terror lurks deep beneath the surface of the Earth in this thriller. While on a dig in a Romanian forest, a group of scientists make a startling find -- they find a huge abbey, dating back to the 13th Century, which was built over the entrance to a massive network of subterranean caves. Eager to learn what lurks within the caves, the scientists discover to their peril that a large part of the cave system is under water. Undeterred, the remaining scientists hire a team of American spelunkers who are trained in exploring underwater caves, led by brothers Jack (Cole Hauser) and Tyler (Eddie Cibrian). Armed with new high-tech SCUBA gear that allows them to stay under water for a full 24 hours, Jack, Tyler, and the rest of their crew dive in to investigate the caves, but a mishap traps them in a cavern beneath the surface, and they soon discover they are not alone, as strange and bloodthirsty creatures make their presence known. The Cave also stars Morris Chestnut, Rick Ravanello, Piper Perabo, and Lena Headey. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi