70
Its bawdy comedy, bravura sound design and uncanny atmosphere will turn on auds with a taste for deeply oddball fare and baffle others.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
It's another blast of vibrant, vicious, gloomy electricity from the always-surprising Russian film scene, and the beginning of an important career.
70
Although Khrzhanovsky has several tricks up his sleeve, 4's most provocative quality is its ironic surplus of beauty.
80
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Puzzling, intriguing, and often compelling, apparently set in the present but magical and futuristic in tone.
63
Looks great but has a shambolic, off-kilter feel that might not be entirely intentional, and is alternately tedious and shocking.
80
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
As opaque as it is mesmerizing, 4 demands open eyes and open minds, but neither is it as difficult as all its weighty silences, oblique detours and countless images of glistening, sweating animal flesh - Mother Russia's raw and seriously overcooked - might suggest.
50
In spite of a handful of striking images--4 never resolves into anything special.
75
Immense, mystical, and deranged beyond immediate comprehension, Ilya Khrzhanovsky's 4 is an apocalyptic allegory of Mother Russia and its current state of squalid exhaustion.
88
It's not always clear exactly what's happening in this dark tale, full of barking dogs and slabs of meat. But you won't be able to take your eyes from the screen; nor will you quickly forget this fiercely original eye-popper.