Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

treywillwest Both of Eisenstein's Ivan films are extremely impressive, though it is part two that makes them a water-shed moment in film, and to a degree twentieth century, history.Aesthetically, perhaps the most impressive thing about the films is the art direction. That sounds like a strange thing to say about a film as intricately constructed as this one but I'll stick by it. The set pieces are not just impressive, but constitute brilliant and unique works of art in and of themselves. The nightmarishly icon-covered walls of the sets, the gorgeous but sinister props representing stupendous luxury and power, but also id-infused terror, could fill the halls of a major museum and wow in their own right, even if they were not part of a watershed-film.This is the only one of Eisenstein's films, that I know of, to be composed almost entirely of interior scenes. This gives a very claustrophobic quality, and makes the "leader of the people" seem utterly cut-off from the land and people he represents. The incredible chiaroscuro lighting also leads me to believe that Eisenstein had managed to watch the then only 7 or 8 year old Citizen Kane. Eisenstein's famed close-ups are juxtaposed with Wellsian deep focus and disorienting angles including those of ceilinged sets.And yes, that sense of detachment is what becomes, much more pointedly in part 2, the work's famed political commentary. Eisenstein had surely been prepared to die when Stalin saw the second film. It's depiction of the leader is unmistakable and, indeed, was not mistaken. Stalin repressed the second film and the planned third installment was never begun. Ivan is depicted as not so much monstrous, but trapped by power. By the second film he is more pathetic than terrifying. A man who is left desperately lonely because he has murdered all of his friends.

Jackson Booth-Millard I read that Russian director Sergei M. Eisenstein had intended to make a three part series, but he only managed to make the first two films, dying of a heart attack before he could complete it. I had to see if it was indeed the masterpiece it is claimed to be, especially as both parts appeared in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. I'm not sure if the story was picking up where it left off, but basically Tsar Ivan IV (Nikolai Cherkasov) of Russia in the 16th Century, suffered the death of his wife Anastasia from poisoning, and his chief warrior Prince Andrei Kurbsky (Mikhail Nazvanov) defected to the Poles, and he makes a friend with Fyodor Kolychev (Andrei Abrikosov) who becomes Archbishop Philip the monk for Moscow. However Philip gets his decisions from the Boyars and tries to get Ivan to follow the church, but the Tsar in fact gets his private force the Oprichniks to find the Boyars. Led by Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya (Serafima Birman), Ivan's aunt, are planning to assassinate him in order to get her son Vladimir Andreyevich (Pavel Kadochnikov) on the throne. The Tsar does mock Vladimir with a crowning at a banquet and sends him in the robes to the cathedral where the assassin waits, and he does go out to do the murder, only to see the wrong man killed, and in the end Ivan kills the guilty people. Okay, I will be honest, I didn't catch on to all of this myself, it was hard to follow, and not just because I was trying to read the subtitles as well. Also starring Mikhail Zharov as Tsar's Guard Malyuta Skuratov and Aleksandr Mgebrov as Novgorod's Archbishop Pimen. What I understood of the story was good, the costume design is fantastic, the iconic imagery, such as the two scenes going into colour, is effective, it works without relying on moving camera-work (i.e. no pans or zooms), and there are certainly some poignant scenes, it may have be hard to read the subtitles due to scratchiness, but it is a historical drama to see. Very good!

globalgoodwill There is more than a passing resemblance to the easily-recognized ideological mantrums (and nostrums) of Cesar's Rome, Napoleon's French Revolution, Hitler's Third Reich, and modern day Myanmar-style dictatorships. It is worth remembering here that Bush II has been quoted as an admirer of Hitler in this regard; however, he had not yet seen Ivan the Terrible at the time of his remark. Sergi Einstein, Film Creator and Director, represents here the forces of enlightenment having finally penetrated the Art and Craft of cinematography, in the same tradition of today's Aung San Su Kyi in Myanmar, who penetrated the socio-economics of dictatorial politics became a martyr for Burmese political democracy, or Martin Luther King who became a martyr for religious integrity in America. Each penetrated the art and craft of the "media" with their message of enlightenment in their own time, and each was subsequently both lionized and martyred by the pallid posturings and inaction of the surrounding civilizations of their own time.The film today continues to serve as a brilliant expose of the psychotic "magical thinking" and egotistical self-delusion behind the ageless struggles for political and religious righteousness and supremacy, from neocon ideological "crusades" to terrorist socio-economic "jihad" in the name of destiny, righteousness, and, yes, even god, and clearly demonstrates the historical failure of concomitant collaboration between religious theological and political ideological "purity" to mask the ulterior pursuit of base self-aggrandizement in the all-seeing eye of history.

atrolleynatrain part two is undoubtedly the best half. not just for the entrancing colour scenes that flash before our eyes as a most generous gift, but also because the eerier ivan never gives in to the monster he seems to have become. ivan is depicted like a forgiving evil spirit and these opposite natures make the character the puzzling critique to despots and other scum of the sort it is. one of the works of art that has haunted me since i was a teenager and hasn't lost its spell. furthermore, the invocation of the tsar's childhood offers one of the best acting performances of both movies (part 1 and 2): ivan, the young orphan. in a way, we're eventually disarmed through the strange beauty of the boy, already the tsar, already the god-like figure. the love and care deprived angel grows into the grey bearded nocturnal predator with his thugs in black hoods only to concede damnation to his aunt, conceding her a bit of well-deserved distorted muliebrity in the lush portrait of the demented pietá. but both young and adult ivans are truly and deeply the depiction of righteousness, no matter what kingdom, no matter what purposes, and revenge itself takes the frame of sacrificial salvation with the Shakespearian counter-plot against his foes. to sum up, cherkassov's strabismus and thick eyelashes are just superficial baits to a huge masterpiece of film-making.