It has become traditional that foreigners treat us better than we do ourselves. In their “Russian” stories there is no taste of our own hopelessness.
There are no positive heroes in this film. But there are no negatives either. And all as in life, and even to the finished gopniks imbued with some sympathy - just their life is such, communal, and each of them has someone (grandmother, for example), who can give in the face, shouting: "You are a moron!"
It’s just like the reality here:
An actor with two wives who finally get acquainted due to the illness of a common “husband”
- a businessman from whom pro-government structures take away business;
One family sending a grandmother to a nursing home in the hope of “living normally”
- the second, sending from home barely received a passport daughter, because "in the evening there will be guests."
Several separate, completely life stories, masterfully intertwined into one.
And the most amazing thing is that everything is not as hopeless as it seems. Everyone swears, rushes, disfigures, betrays love, behaves exactly like “morons” – but in the end everything somehow works out. A new dawn is coming. The heroes have a reason to stay together again. Life wins. And this is how it is in this huge, pathetic, sparkling city: not so good, but not so bad.
9.5 out of 10
The City of Sins or Resident of Evil. The new adventures of Leviathan.
A very useful film from a moral point of view - after watching you want to go to a monastery, because to tolerate such an abomination of the world, in which, it turns out, we live, a decent person is not possible. So if anyone hesitates, I recommend watching. There is also a group of comrades who look not into the monastery, but beyond the hill - they, although already without morality, the film will be even more useful, and certainly will like it.
Thank you for opening people’s eyes and now we know what’s around us. We're wearing pink glasses. I, in general, feel like an alien — probably the wrong streets I walk and go to the wrong places — I somehow everything is not at all what in the film, comes across. It even became embarrassing that I was somehow not like that – like one nondescript heroine of the film, which falls out of the surrounding reality.
The film talentedly reveals the essence of the human personality, the true motives of its behavior. Those who are surrounded by mostly good people and used to trust them, he will help get rid of this illusion. It is felt that one of the main goals of the creators was to show a vast and truthful picture of Russian life, one that itself forms a worldview. Well, apparently, the money was paid by European friends, who rarely show such generosity to us.
The only omission — could play on the contrast, showing the life of the same New York, which escapes the hero Serebryakova — in the words of the film, “breaks out of prison.” To have hope in people, so to speak, a ray of light. I would even enhance the contrast by leaving this character’s lover in Moscow, so that through the prism of the drama of their separation, this light that comes from there to us will play with all colors.
If someone becomes ill after a cocktail of beautiful views of the beloved city interspersed with the low adventures of its inhabitants, let him look at Marlene Khutsiev’s “I am twenty years old” as an antidote.
5 out of 10
I'm very skeptical about what's going on with Russian cinema. Most of those paintings that come out in the Russian rental from our fatherland, alas, do not tolerate any criticism. And, unfortunately, it is worth noting that every time (or if you like, year) the situation gets worse and worse. I rarely watch Russian cinema. The choice for this picture, which has a rather trivial name “Moscow never sleeps”, fell solely because of Efremov. An actor whom I respect very much and try to find in his recent work the role of a non-alcoholic with a typical selfish type.
The first thing that is confusing about this film is the composition of the team that worked on it. It's like ours, but it's made and produced by the Irish. It would seem that in our time, such situations in the cinema are not at all rare, but as a viewer, of course, I am confused by how director and screenwriter Johnny O’Reilly will try to understand and show the Russian soul. I'm certainly exaggerating that. But, nevertheless, the view of a foreign person on our life, our life, our thoughts, the problem and in general on us is completely different and, often, wrong.
So here's a film that looks the same in structure as a large number of paintings in our time. Now it is very fashionable to shoot films in which completely different characters, having completely different destinies, not knowing each other, each of them moves to the same end. And in this film, we see the same story.
However, the writers here, I think, have overdone the characters. I mean, there's nothing positive about this movie. A ton of compassionate stories are dropped on us, each of which tries to show the viewer what a “non-human” he is. Here you and the old grandmother, who is taken to a terrible nursing home, and a terminally ill artist who, despite the fame, of course, tired and unhappy, and small Moscow apartments, which only ruin, old furniture and broken fates, and the singer, infinitely clean and airy, who wants real love, and has to live with a millionaire who has only money on his mind.
It seems that Moscow, which, as you remember, never sleeps, instead of sleeping, is engaged in mutilating and destroying first the souls of people, and then the bodies. There are only unhappy people and vile, selfish creatures who profit from these people, but do not become happy either. In general, this whole tape is a real mockery of our lives and everyday life. I consider the script disgusting, implausible, and, most importantly, very strongly stereotyped, which is perfectly shown in the characters of this tape.
As for the actors, then, probably, if you can single out anyone, it is only Eugenia Brik. In my opinion, her character, despite the stereotyping and eerie caricature, seemed to me a little bit alive. As for Efremov, this role is a continuation of a huge number of his roles in recent years - selfishness and alcoholism. Not bad Stoyanov, but he here, in fact, plays himself, so talk about any merits is not necessary. The rest of the actors are quickly forgotten and erased from memory.
In the end, I want to say that this is a completely passable movie, which is absolutely not worth watching. Boring, banal, fading.
The fact that the film was shot by an Irishman, I learned after watching and even a sigh of relief broke out. That is, this “no” movie can be explained, for example, by the mentality of the author, although he lived in Russia for 12 years. Or they may have been the ones who were. It's just a Leviathan thing.
The actors were not surprised - each in its usual role. Serebriakov repeats himself, and it seems that the worse they say about Russia, the more he fits into the plot with his gloomy “Canadian” face. Efremov is always an alcoholic, but with such a stunning heredity. Stoyanov was not surprised at all, it is much more interesting to watch him in a show on some central channel. These are actors who apparently do not like the country they live in or no longer live in, but work in. After all, consent to such roles should be motivated not only by money.
Of course, the script worked well. It's modern, it's a little florid. It doesn't ruin the movie. And panoramic shootings of Moscow look quite decent. And of course, City Day didn’t just come here. And, in fact, everything is said in the title of the film. Moscow is different, for each its own and so much is intertwined in it.
But there must always be hope. And not only hope, but also objective reality - it became better!
The film was watched, "the sediment remained."
It was quite unusual to see that the film was Russian, about Russia, with Russian actors, but with staff from Ireland. I decided to watch it in the hope that the film will shoot. My expectations were shattered.
A film without meaning and without morality. The creators just took and showed all the worst that is in Russia. Dear creators, you will not believe it, I see it every day! Okay, not like that. I see it as "dosed." And then they threw it all in my face! And categorically. The creators do not make you think that everything can change for the better. Simply put, after watching “Moscow” I had an unpleasant residue in my soul.
In addition to life itself in Russia, the creators did not fail to pour dirt on residents. They showed us such vices as greed, corruption, callousness, arrogance and many others. That was unpleasant to watch, too. Moreover, acting attempts were not enough even to convey these qualities to the fullest.
Russian cinema has disappointed me once again.
3 out of 10
So, the picture is shot in a rather common now manner, when the fates of the heroes are intertwined and all of them, without suspecting it, are moving to one point at which their roads should converge, at which everything should become clear and put in their places.
Everything in the picture moves along a chain. The elderly, beloved by the public comedy actor (Yuri Stoyanov), waking up in the hospital, learns that he lives without surgery for several days. He is tired, he is exhausted and his decision is unyielding.
Many different people are squeezed into the film with their skeletons in cabinets, which are thrown out of them as the plot unfolds.
Discovered as time-saturated bones, old conflicts between loved ones, break up couples, climb out the vices of weak, sometimes insignificant people.
They live as they can and all this household with drunkenness, opportunism and debauchery, the director draws us, the audience, with broad strokes, sparing no colors.
The film is not brilliant but very successful. The actors please the eye and are carefully selected, the plot is vital and therefore is perceived not as something far away, not touching us, but as reality, rough, sometimes gray but reality! It's all about us, people like us. That’s why I love Russian cinema when it doesn’t have a vomiting taste. Sometimes you want to plunge into life, hang out in it, feel what it is like: send your mother and grandmother to a nursing home, exchange love for a thick purse, love two women all your life and not be able to make a choice until the end.
Being a teenage girl and living in a stepfather's house as a bait.
Life is life, say we all have our own, but we all have one thing in common. We can change something in our fate, realize something and have time to correct mistakes ... or maybe someone has not been given this.
I really liked the role of Efremov (I don’t like this actor very much), he coped with it very well. A cynical, drink-loving, ingrained in his callousness person, for whom everything in life is simple, there is no need to stir anything up and change, let everything go as it goes.
All events in the film take place in Moscow, on the day of the city. But they could well happen and happen in other cities of our vast homeland.
Everything ends not so bad for someone, for someone worse, but people slowly get closer, begin to realize the value of each other.
And Moscow is living its own life! Cars are rolling on freeways in a continuous stream. In the distance, the stars of the Kremlin abound... the city never sleeps and lives by its secrets, its troubles and joys.
Always after sorrow comes joy, even if for a short time.
Moscow Never Sleeps is a joint project between Russia and Ireland.
But Johnny O’Reilly, although he was born in Ireland after graduating from college there, as well as received a film education at New York University, has a very wide experience of participating in Russian projects as a director and screenwriter and has long lived and worked in Moscow. He also has good luck in the field of cinema and is considered a very good director and screenwriter.
You can see that in the picture. It is all Russian, saturated with the Russian atmosphere, and no one hundred percent foreigner could not make a film about our life except a person who knows our life like his five fingers. I liked the musical accompaniment - it is very adorns the film, continues its theme.
In fact, the project is completely created by Johnny, he is both a director and producer and screenwriter. This is his brainchild.
Having recruited Russian, top actors, he clearly did not miscalculate and the film turned out! Whatever fans of American melodramas and blockbusters write about him.
In general, I do not advise people to watch Russian cinema, if they are biased towards it in advance.
I don't even want to read bad reviews. I know perfectly well what respected film critics write, write and always will.
“Moscow never sleeps” is a true shade from the English word “shit”. Such a black woman was filmed in the 90s, from lack of money and hopelessness. Such films are usually very popular at international film festivals. Actually, the picture of the Irish director, shot with European and American money, has every chance to receive a bunch of awards.
Experienced writers and screenwriters have a funny phrase in the course: "about the one-legged dog of a disabled boy." If you ask, “What is this movie about?” the answer is “about the one-legged dog of a disabled boy.” This is Russophobic speculation on the feelings of the viewer: here you and the grandmother, who is given to a nursing home, and an artist dying of heart disease, rampant drunkenness, betrayal of loved ones, the arbitrariness of officials, flight from the filthy Rashka, young bandits in tracksuits, girls pouring cloffeline - in general, a one-legged dog for every taste.
Producer of the film AI FILM, headed by the legendary Hollywood producer Lawrence Bender (not to be confused with Ostap). The film received financial support from the European International Film Fund Eurimages.
Johnny O’Reilly studied in Moscow in the 90s. He lives in a city that he clearly hates. The whole of Russia, too. “Don’t you think we’re living in prison?” "Exactly," his driver replies. "How do you get out of jail?" "Bribe the warden." Then other heroes come to the conclusion that New York, of course, is better than the shitty Moscow. The businessman, by the way, is played by Canadian emigrant Alexei Serebriakov. He lives there, works here, because in Canada, according to his own words, no one needs.
A businessman is betrayed by a beloved woman. The businessman is thrown by partners from state structures. A businessman is forced to flee Russia to avoid being killed. At the same time, he is a cruel russkiy muzhik - hits the face of a nice guy, his wife's lover.
A terminally ill artist (Yuri Stoyanov) is kidnapped by young scumbags in tracksuits to show his grandmother. I wonder where Johnny found such young people in modern Moscow. I last saw a man in a tracksuit on the street in '98. The scumbags are poisoned by clones. Their father is an alcoholic (another drunkard played by Mikhail Efremov). He and his nephew give his grandmother to a nursing home.
And in the nursing home and in Moscow apartments - flying plaster, devastation, old furniture, tarnished torn wallpaper. The author of the film was clearly looking for nature for a long time, wandering around the houses of alcoholics and other antisocial elements.
There are glimpses of kindness in the characters, but, in general, there is complete hopelessness on the screen. Life in Russia and Moscow is terrible and difficult. I am glad that I live in another city. Not the one where Johnny O'Reilly and his Euro-American sponsors find themselves.
Director of the film “Moscow never sleeps” Johnny O Riley has lived in Moscow for 12 years. He worked as a journalist, received a film education at New York University. After that, he made many short documentaries, received more than one award for them. In the Russian space shot before the thriller “Hide!” (2010). Five years later, there is a new film. According to the director himself, about Moscow, about people, about Russia in general, about which so little is known. For which I thank him - it really did without balalaikas, bears and khokhloma, which even our directors sin. He tuned in to the stories of the modern city, its inhabitants and the cockroaches in the heads of these residents. An elderly actor-comedian (Yuri Stoyanov), who has only a couple of weeks to live and his only desire is to get drunk. The son, at the request of the young wife, transports his mother to a nursing home. Businessman Anton (Alexei Serebryakov) collapses and is forced to leave the country, continuing to lead a love triangle. The husband (Mikhail Efremov) finds out the relationship with his wife on the part “Where is the money, Zin?!” Their youngest daughter is looking for her real father, and as a result, together with her sister, almost becomes a victim of violence from two Gopniks. By the way, they still walk with the actor. And the actor's son will dodge the businessman's mistress. In short, what is not there?
These are the stories. Sad and sad. You can see that the director was working on the script. It's like a complicated clock in which all the wheels work in their place. But the watch itself is very badly winded. And the watch is very small, such an unobtrusive alarm clock. Which will wake us up at the end of the movie. Such an alarm clock, even the whole tower clock was built by director Sergey Loban in his film “Chapito Show”, where in four separately shown stories all the characters intersect in various moments. But in "Moscow..." this move is idle. Why? Because the stories are quite banal and scant. And even the selected roles are surprisingly banal. Efremov is an alcoholic (in which film was it not?), Stoyanov is a former comedian (The Man at the Window), Serebriakov is a stubborn fighter for his happiness (Cargo 200, Leviathan, Pyramid). At the same time, everyone played at the proper level, the dialogues did not annoy, but the plots did not catch. The claimed “bright portrait of the metropolis” is assembled from incredibly gray patches, carefully sewn together, but not producing any impression. The director assembled the design, but did not think about the architecture. Neither the stated star cast of actors, nor the cameraman Fedor Lyass (I will be near, Duhless), on the composer Roman Litvinov did something for the tick. As Efremov’s character says in the film, “We don’t celebrate, we celebrate.” I would like to celebrate at least a little. And not just celebrated another film for City Day, which was the failed almanac “Moscow”. “I Love You” was made in the style of previous films about Paris and New York, but did not find delight in the audience. The picture of Johnny O Riley is less like a movie, and more like the eternal serial everyday life, where “laughter, tears, and love.” But after the movie, I don’t want to laugh or cry or love. I don't want anything at all.
"Moscow never sleeps" like a game of the Mafia, there are bandits, doctors, tangles, law enforcement. Not without the dead heroes.
Seriously, the Irishman Johnny O’Reilly saw the capital without a bear with a balalaika, but in all its contrast, mounting sleeping areas with skyscrapers Moscow City. Russian cinema has previously maneuvered between the poles of the modern day ("Simple Things, Two Days, Kokoko, Bitter!), trying to marry not a black woman with glamour, but a prince and a beggar (don’t consider it propaganda that it is impossible to propagate) and eventually talk time, capture it. It turned out without hanging cranberries and almost without an accent.
Family values are at the forefront: enmity of step sisters, grandmother and grandson, a seriously ill father and husband, betrayal, betrayal, reconciliation. Each hero has his own dramatic situation, everyone must make a difficult choice, act according to conscience, and not as the easiest way. And all this on City Day, when millions of Muscovites take to the streets to hear music, the noise of the city, fireworks and say goodbye to the summer.
“Moscow Never Sleeps” is an autumn film, serious, not party, despite the name, trying to enter the territory of the so-called “Oscar” cinema (by the way, from Ireland and there will be a nomination), of those that, as fervent film lovers write, “makes you think.” It can be watched not only at home, but also on the big screen, the benefit of the most relevant Russian cameraman Fedor Lyass ("Duchless, "Thaw", "Homeland", "About Love") and the star of hipsters Mujus made the image and sound not like a TV movie.
This film is not about a city, but about a person, whether he is a resident of Moscow, Kopeysk or Dublin, it does not matter.
The plot of this picture twists long before its shooting. Some Irish decide to make a film about Moscow in the style of the almanac “The City I Love You”, the action of which will take place on the day of the city, knock out money for this and promote one of the unknown companies, recruit a decent cast: Serebryakov, naturally playing a man strangled by the vertical of the Moscow government, Efremov, of course an alcoholic and Stoyanov playing himself. Add to this a guest specially trained composer with a well-known world name in narrow circles and public shooting with quadcopters. It would seem that everything is for a large urban masterpiece, but the road to hell is lined with good intentions.
The storylines and the contrast on the actors’ play were pumped up. The oligarch’s officials squeeze the business on orders from above, he is going to fly to NY, which would fight with the help of a court with the totoletonic-corruption-official system in our country. The aging actor learns that he is terminally ill and goes into all serious, as it imagines the Irishman who shot the film. Playing days for a flight in the PSP grandson under pressure from a cohabitant remembers that in his next room lives an elderly grandmother, takes her to a nursing home, which is more like a hospice, and then seeing for some reason I do not understand, returns the old woman back to the moment when the cohabitant has already bought three rolls of wallpaper for repair in the former room of the grandmother.
The remaining storylines and their “tricks” do not deserve special attention, everything is very banal and flat. Humor does not cause laughter, and dramatic moments do not touch to tears, and despite the very high-quality picture with the naked eye it is clear that the picture has no soul. As always, the incomparable play of Serebryakov, worthy of Efremov and just a good Stoyanova is broken up by talentless acting talents, according to the feeling of graduates of theatrical vocational training Evgenia Brik and Oleg Dolin... A bright spot in the roles of the second plan – Lyubov Aksyonova, the girl is ripe in all respects for big roles.
If you take everything that I wrote above and leave only the image of the city presented in the film, you will get a 10-15 minute masterpiece about Moscow under a very decent high-quality author's music, where all your favorite places will be recognizable and close, where you will see from the height of the flight of the quadcopter familiar streets and hats of buildings, this will become very warm and ticklish somewhere at the bottom of the stomach ..., but I do not recommend watching this film, it is better to walk along it, climb the roof and shoot such a picture for your heart and soul ...
5 out of 10