Aleksandr Kuznetsov

Two Prosecutors

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Aleksandr Kuznetsov as Kornev

What happens when a state goes mad and its leader starts to behave like a king, ruling by whim? Two Prosecutors (aka Zwei Staatsanwälte) is asking that big question right from its opening frame, in which state prosecutor Kornev (Alexander Kuznetsov) arrives at a 1930s Soviet gulag and asks to see a prisoner. Other countries/regimes are also available. As the film goes on we’ll learn something about Kornev but Ukrainian writer/director Sergei Loznitsa, working off Georgi Demidov’s novel, holds back vital information and to an extent leaves us in the dark about him and about what’s going on. Two Prosecutors, the title says. Here’s Kornev, he’s one, but who’s the other one? All … Read more

Why Don’t You Just Die!

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Andrey throws the TV

The trailer does not lie. Why Don’t You Just Die! (Papa, sdokhni in the original Russian) is a camp melodrama awash with blood, gruesomeness, novel ways of hurting people and comic-book cruelty. It’s as if all the horrible things that ever happened to Wile E Coyote were bundled together and then brought to the screen by a Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez in one of their Grindhouse jaunts. The opening shot: a young man with a fantastically broken nose (Aleksandr Kuznetsov, and that’s his real nose) is waiting outside an apartment with a hammer behind his back. The door after much knocking opens. It is a bullet-headed man (Vitaliy Khaev). Andrey, the young … Read more