Alexander Porokhovshchikov Movies

Stanislav Govorukhin directs this revenge drama that skewers both that country's pandemic corruption and nouveau riche thugs. Ivan Fedorovich (Mikhail Ulyanov) is a former railway worker who served during WWII as a sharp shooter in a crack Voroshilov regiment. Long retired, Ivan lives with his attractive teenaged granddaughter Katya (Anna Sinyakina), while her executive mother chases both business and men abroad. One day, Katya is picked up by a trio of wealthy young "New Russians" who have a taste for expensive cars and violent Western movies. They take her to a neighboring apartment complex, get her drunk, and then take turns raping her. The three boast that she is not the first girl they have ravaged and will not be the last. When Katya staggers home and tells her grandfather what happened, he immediately informs the police. The cops arrest the rapists and beat a confession out of them. Yet before the criminal trial can proceed, the district inspector (Vladislav Galkin), who coincidentally is the father of one of the rapists, orders the charges be dropped. After angrily complaining to a series of unreceptive bureaucrats, Ivan decides to take manners into his own hands using his old marksmanship expertise and a black market rifle. This film was screened at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Hungarian director Janos Szasz based this film on a famous 1837 German play, changing the alienated title character from a soldier to a railroad worker. Woyzeck (Lajos Kovacs) is a slovenly flag man in a Budapest railroad yard. At work he is harassed by his boss, an army captain who makes him run errands, shave him, and sweep the tracks constantly. At home he is cuckolded by his wife Marie (Diana Vacaru), who finds a policeman more exciting than her dull husband. Woyzeck's only friends are a homeless boy, a doctor who uses him for bizarre experiments, and a tattered Bible. As his humiliation increases, Woyzeck decides that it's time to make some changes in his life. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

In this watchable sci fi story based on a novel by Sergei Pavlov, the time is the 21st century, and the space security organization has a dangerous situation on its hands -- it seems four individuals from outer space have the ability to change form and to affect radio transmissions and magnetic fields. Their powers could threaten governments on earth and seem to derive from an unusual accident on one of the moons of Uranus shortly after four astronauts landed. Now the space police have to bring this potentially disastrous situation under control. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide