It's another blast of vibrant, vicious, gloomy electricity from the always-surprising Russian film scene, and the beginning of an important career.

| Nov 5, 2013

This 2004 debut feature by Russian director Ilya Khrzanovsky is puzzling, intriguing, and often compelling, apparently set in the present but magical and futuristic in tone.

| Nov 5, 2013

The sheer surfeit of ideas in 4's first half hour alone could fuel a dozen warped movies; presented in this kind of rush, they leave you agape.

| Nov 5, 2013

A film to experience rather than understand, this bleak blend of Dostoevsky and Peter Greenaway will fascinate those prepared to surrender to its macabre absurdism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 30, 2006

If your art film tastes lean toward orderliness and tidy metaphors, you could spend the two hours of Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky's fearless and mesmerizing debut feature.

| Sep 30, 2006

Decidedly not for everyone, 4 is an incomparably unhinged act of disinterment, but it's also a fiercely willed feat of rebirth, raw and bloody and screamingly alive.

| Sep 30, 2006

This film might have been less shambolic if Khrzhanovsky had decided whether he wanted to preclude or solicit his audience's involvement.

| Sep 28, 2006

The result is a teasing, if trying, exercise.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 15, 2006

This seriously weird pic has a few flat stretches, but its bawdy comedy, bravura sound design and uncanny atmosphere will turn on auds with a taste for deeply oddball fare and baffle others.

| Aug 4, 2006

There's much in the movie that won't translate to audiences this side of the Volga, but there's also a humor and a fierce filmmaking intelligence that demand attention.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 4, 2006

The picture finally bogs down in a seemingly endless spectacle of grossness and ghoulishness.

Full Review | May 10, 2006

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 7, 2006

The terminally bleak meets the hypnotically beautiful in the Russian cryptogram 4, directed by the newcomer Ilya Khrzhanovsky.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2006

In spite of a handful of striking images, 4 never resolves into anything special.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Apr 6, 2006

Exhilarating, infuriating, mesmerizing, baffling, and out-and-out crazy, 4 certainly doesn't lack for ambition and outrageousness.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 4, 2006

Although Khrzhanovsky has several tricks up his sleeve, 4's most provocative quality is its ironic surplus of beauty.

Full Review | Apr 4, 2006

Haunting.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 22, 2005