Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

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

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

blanche-2 Harry Lloyd, Vera Farmiga, Mark Strong, and Anton Lesser star in "Closer to the Moon" from 2014.This is a fictionalized version of the The Ioanid Gang's bank robbery in Romania that took place in 1959. The gang was made up of six Jewish Romanian intellectuals (at least in this film, though there were others involved apparently). They stole Romanian lei, about $250,000 U.S. dollars from an armored car at the National Bank of Romania.This was a controversial robbery (to say the least) because no one exactly knows why they did it. The Romanian lei could only be used in Romania and not exchanged for hard currency, though supposedly the money was going to Zionist organizations. However, none of the robbers were Zionist.The film comes up with a theory. These people were underground revolutionaries fighting the Nazis in WW II. At that time, they knew they could be caught and killed at any moment. The leader says to them, robberies are never committed in Communist countries, it's something done in capitalist countries. Let's rob a bank and make people sit up and take notice and question the ideals of Communism. We never expected to live this long anyway, so let's make our lives count. If they are caught, the punishment is execution.They pull off the robbery under the guise of shooting a film. They are caught and then re-enact the robbery for a propaganda film. Were they forced to, were they told their executions would be canceled - no one knows.A strange film on a strange subject for sure. My problem was that it was presented at times in a very lighthearted way with jaunty music which was odd given that the end result was going to be execution. There's nothing wrong with using humor in serious matters - Divided We Fall is an example, as is To Be Or Not to Be, and The Producers - but this was an odd mixture that, while interesting, didn't come off.The film was also slow-moving and lacked excitement.In the real story, the woman, played by Farmiga, is not executed and ultimately freed because she had two children. In the film she has one child, and a slightly different reason is given for her freedom.The acting was good, particularly from David DeKeyser and Alan Corduner. This I don't believe is an accurate re-telling of that robbery, but if you have any interest in it, you may like this.

tony-70-667920 The synopsis sounded intriguing, and I'm a fan of both leads, so despite misgivings I went to see this film. Big mistake.The main problem was the inappropriately jaunty, comic tone. Even when they were in the dock and being sentenced to death the gang were fooling about. It's safe to say that Communists aren't renowned for their sense of humour, and are unlikely to be at their perkiest when facing death. I was so bored I fell asleep, so never found out why they pulled the robbery, or who had fathered Alice's child. The fact that this won 9 Romanian Oscar equivalents, including best picture, doesn't reflect well on that country's cinema. Funnily enough there were no awards for the acting, which was the best thing, apart from the actual propaganda film at the end. (The man on whom the leading character seemed based was as bald as Mark Strong, so why was this fine actor made to wear the least convincing toupee since Wayne, Stewart and Heston were last in films?)

Moviegoer19 About five minutes into this film I had the sinking feeling that I had just paid to see a film I would not want to watch. I chose it from a list of "On Demand" films on TV and the blurb was misleading otherwise I probably wouldn't have chosen it. The blurb said something about WWII, Jews,and Communism, so I thought it was about WWII and the Holocaust, but it is not. Anyway, I would have stayed with it but found it both confusing and boring. It struck me as an artistic film that's more about the acting and other aspects of its production, than it is about storytelling. I found it to be similar to watching an early Fellini production in which a certain grotesqueness about the actors' faces and behaviors is supposed to be moving and often, humorous. Perhaps if I had had more knowledge about the history upon which the film is based, I would have enjoyed it more? Somehow, I don't think so.There's also the possibility that the discomfort I felt watching the film was the reaction the director and producers were going for. If that's the case, I suppose it warrants a much higher vote than I gave it.

Daniel S Excellent movie. A quintet of Jews seeing their status drop in postwar Romania rob a bank in Nae Caranfil's Closer to the Moon, only to be caught, convicted, and forced to reenact their crime in a slyly anti- Semitic propaganda film. Though based on a true story, the film discards some of its claim to authenticity right off the bat, casting Brits and Americans in all the leads and having them speak English instead of Romanian; later, it will have trouble establishing the gang's motives for a crime they all but knew would lead to their execution. Stateside potential is modest for the semi-convincing yet enjoyable tale, relying on familiar names in a cast that acquits itself well given the demands of the unusual plot. The dialogue may not sell viewers on the motivations for a robbery where the loot was a nearly worthless currency, but the setting offers a melancholy that would be welcome elsewhere in the film.