What makes it different from others?

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

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.

This is a very rare picture, in that Western films very, very rarely mention Stalin and even fewer feature him on film. It's funny because although several movies have been made about Hitler, films about Stalin (and Mao) are conspicuously absent. That is why I appreciated this film so much. Although Stalin was not the MAIN character in the movie, but his projectionist, it gave great insights into this monstrous man. What also is very interesting is how Hulce's character adores Staline, but over time he becomes more and more horrified of him--sort of like how the USSR viewed him over time as well.The acting, direction and camera work are all excellent and there is really nothing negative I can say about the film. An unusual and important film historically.

As an armchair historian who's read dozens of book on Stalin and the Soviet Union under his control, I was fascinated by this movie. A great cast helps underscore the paranoia, backstabbing, and fear of the Stalinist system as seen through the eyes of a small-time player who's been thrust into a very dangerous circle.Hulce is terrific as the simple, hard-working Soviet citizen who wants nothing more than to believe in the system that dominates his life, yet he knows it's a system riddled with traps and monsters. Hoskins is equally good as the real-life monster Beria - Stalin's chief of state security and main hatchet-man.A highly underrated movie.

There are a myriad of insightful techniques in this film that reveal themselves with repeated viewings. The recurring images of cows being led to slaughter are my favorites. A great tale of a horrible situation.That being said, I did not appreciate Russians speaking English with Russian accents. I compare it to the way the DeNiro film "Stalin" dealt with language. Ethnic Russians spoke with very proper British accents, ordinary Russians with common English accents, and Stalin with a rough accent, using simple language, that was hard to place. I also found Tom Hulce's performance to be excessively maudlin. The sense of irony that all the other characters seemed to have was absent in his.

This has to be the most boring movie I ever sat through. It is dreary and drab, has no excitement, the acting by Hulce is terrible as Hulce cannot pull off the proper accent required for this film. The story is stupid and I sure wouldn't recommend this crap for anyone unless you want to die of boredom.