Best movie of this year hands down!

That was an excellent one.

Just perfect...

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

The noughties has offered up another masterpiece. They are rare in this decade, yet here is another one. Very realistic film which follows a man who is suffering terrible pains in his head and stomach, moving by ambulance from his dingy flat to hospital after hospital in Romania, each one providing a different diagnosis and refusing his entry due to lack of space. Highly recommended! I should add, while it describes itself as a dark comedy drama, it isn't obviously funny (filled with gags or jokes) but incredibly subtle. Despite the depressing situation on screen I somehow wasn't feeling down. There is a satirical bite to this film which one may not notice but is prevalent throughout. The close tracking camera and tightness of the frame truly make you feel like you are sitting beside Lazarescu as he trundles along on his depressing and painful journey. Very moving experience.

This movie took awhile to get going. I was worried for several long minutes that I'd wasted my time and money renting it. Eventually, I got totally wrapped up in Mr. Lazarescu and his troubles and his helpers. It's a sad story about an alcoholic who is shunted from hospital to hospital with a seemingly minor problem. It's not that the health care workers don't care; the ambulance crew clearly does. It's just a lot of overburdened workers with problems of their own. The movie is done as if it were a documentary or reality TV show, and you really lose yourself in the story.SPOILERS:It's an absorbing movie, and the end is somewhat ambiguous. The version I saw had a key scene truncated to that it's not clear that he died. The scene was cut, but the sound was left in, so you're left with a black screen. The missing visual is the camera retreating from the view of Mr. Lazarescu's back - we're left seeing his body on the bed.

In the first 5 or 10 minutes you might find it boring because apparently nothing happens however once you've passed that you'll realize that progressively things get worse and the situation degenerates rapidly. The only description I could give for this movie is "Reality...live and uncensored" , during the whole 2 hours and a half I had the sensation that I was actually there witnessing the whole situation somehow passively involved in the unfolding of the events due to the fact that the actors played the characters exactly as they should ,with an effortless talent and the scenes were filmed flawlessly. Having recently experienced a situation similar to that of Mr.Lazarescu I must say that this movie can't get any closer to reality, every single second of this movie was an accurate portrayal of cold hard reality where under the influence of numerous factors you end up in a not-so-good state and the blame falls on everybody not on just one particular person or situation. There would be a small problem for people who don't understand romanian cause there are many idioms however I think that can be solved with a good subtitle. Over all this is a must see which I recommend to everybody cause it engenders many questions and makes you meditate on the condition of us humans, this may seem pretty far off the subject but if you give it a second thought maybe it isn't...

A near-three hour film about the lonely death of a cantankerous old drunk, and the failings of the Romanian health service, may not sound much like fun. But 'The Death of Mr. Lazarescu' has been called a black comedy, and, although that's pushing it (the comedy is really very dark indeed), superb naturalistic acting infuses this sad tale with a real emotional kick. Some of what we see bears resemblance to the themes of U.S. police show 'The Wire'; that a key part of the job of underfunded public servants is denying access to the service that is nominally being provided; and how those who work in such a system dehumanise themselves in order to survive. But thanks to the brilliant performances on offer here, we also see faint glimmers of surviving decency in almost all of even the superficially wost of those Mr. Lazarescu is unfortunate enough to encounter on his last journey. For those of us who live in richer countries than Romania, we may have reason to hope that our own ends are not quite so grim; but this is a universal story, powerfully told.