ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Victor Matei (viccraft) I don't believe this movie was made to win a prize. I also don't believe the cast tried to impress some critics that would give some high ranking in a list, somewhere in the world. It's a movie for romanians, more precisely for the hearts of romanian people. It's a healing movie, for if you understand your wounds, you can be your own medic. It's not a "see once" movie and you can't give a mark based on a singular experience. There is hidden beauty in it and that is revealed based on your state of mind. A scene can make you cry sometimes. The same can make you laugh a day latter. Or it can make feel ashamed. Or it can make you feel proud. Or infuriated. Depending on what your soul need, this movie gives you. Of course, some of the dialogs are meaningless for those who didn't grew up with the songs, words and attitude in the movie. But it doesn't matter if this movie took the Oscar or not because it took the "Oscar" of my heart.Thank you.

dromasca In Romania they call it the 'transition' period. Whoever invented this term meant to describe the period between Communist Romania and a normal society, a period where people can recover dignity, learn speaking the truth and trust their human fellows. The issue is that in Romania, as in all other former Communist countries this period was marked by a great amount of dis-illusions, by many broken dreams and destinies as the recovery proved not to be easy neither on the economic not on human plans. The place of human relations was taken by tricks and robbery, the emptiness of the Communist slogans was replaced by the emptiness of the commercial TV, surviving as a human being is tough.'Filantropica' presents a point of view which may be unknown or hard to catch for many non-Romanian viewers. The Romanian literature and theater has a great satiric tradition, and the founder of absurd comedy theater Eugene Ionesco was of Romanian origin. This is where the villain characters in 'Filantropica' like the one of the master combinator played by Gheorghe DInica come from, although the figure of the little professor of literature dreaming to overcome his miserable condition (through money? through love?) played by Mircea Diaconu is as universal as a Benigni or Woody Allen would have created it.Some comments consider 'Filantropica' as the best film of the Romanian cinema. I believe that this is an exaggeration, there are certain flaws especially the extended and un-justified use of off-screen voice in the first part of the movie. 'Moartea Domnului Lazarescu' of Cristi Puiu, another movie inspired by the reality of the same period is a better film, with somehow a more optimistic message. Yet this is an important film about this complex period in the history of Romania.

ben-727 I don't think this is a special good movie as it had stated in other comments. I wonder why the Romanian film critics call it the best in the Romanian film history. It is indeed better than a lot of American B-films, but you certainly find a lot of such type of stuff in French and Italian movies. Therefore saying this one as the best film in the Romanian film history it might be not really fair to those other Romanian films of good qualities. The acting of the main male leading role in this film is not special good. The support actors are also only so and so up to basic standard. The worse thing is that the whole movie is full of flaws. You call it black comedy? Where is the laughing part then anyway? Well, the story itself is a big joke, perhaps one should laugh for that. And where is the "black" part? I find the Russian film "The bride" can even in a simple and natural way to reflect the situation of the poor living lives.Technically the film is not badly made, it s just that the whole story of the movie is not special good in a way. If it comes and shows on TV, it is not bad to watch it and experience the Romanian way and standard of making films. Perhaps you will feel another way than mine.

SickBoy-Romania For those who don't know, the movie industry in Romania is very poor. Actually, it doesn't exist. In the last 12 years, there were probably made only 10 or 15 movies that worth mentioned and I can tell you that not even the Romanians know them. That's because they are badly acted, have a bad script and amateur filming and are not promoted. Filantropica is just the best of those films. Director Nae Caranfil, who used to work in France, somehow got a pretty big budget for his movie and started promoting it intensely. This is not enough, though, to create a masterpiece. Filantropica has an original idea, a pretty good plot and some remarkable performances by Diaconu and, especially, Dinica, but there is something that just makes it look amateurish and not credible. I don't know what, probably the director's cut or some gaps in the screenplay, but even if I enjoyed watching the movie, at the end it seemed like a waste of time. If it wasn't a Romanian movie, something very rare in Romania, I would definetively not have resisted to watch it. Still, it had a great box office success and it changed some things for Romania: first of all, there's a great interest for Romanian movies now and the film industry has started to grow. Second, I think that the "beggar's industry" was affected because, after watching this movie, one will think twice before giving away to bums. 6/10