SnoopyStyle Tales from the Golden Age consists of six urban legends from Romania. Golden Age being the era referred to by communists. In The Legend of the Official Visit, a high official motorcade is suppose to pass through town and the folks rush around to prepare for it. In The Legend of the Party Photographer, a photo of leader Ceaușescu sends the newspaper into chaos. In The Legend of the Zealous Activist, overly-eager party activist arrives in town to improve literacy. In The Legend of the Greedy Policeman, a policeman is given a live pig but things go wrong. In The Legend of the Air Sellers, a con man collects bottles for the deposits by pretending to be a water inspector. In The Legend of the Chicken Driver, poultry driver tries to sell the eggs laid by the chicken on his truck.I kinda like the first story. It's a slow start but I got to find the villagers funny in their quirky ways. It would have been nice to stay with them and build up their characters. Just as I get to like the story more, it ends and the next story begins. It takes more time to get involved with that story and it doesn't really happen. It does end in a funny way. Then the third story starts and I stop caring. These stories are much more meaningful for other people like folks who lived through the communist regime. For me, it's a decreasing rate of return.

florinc This is how we lived. We were forced. We were not naive. Looking back 50 years I feel my life was unreal, but not. It is true to the letter. Only, what? Looking back the stupidity of the system (it did not build in 50 years a war destroyed country, but destroyed what was left from the war) appears funny. We had to cheat in order to survive. To cheat ourselves and others, on many levels. But mostly we cheated the system. This is so funny and sad about the movie. And yes, there are inconsistencies in many details, but is is so important the color of the license plate, or some uniform detail? No, IMHO. It is the impossible situations people were forced to live every day and survive. And among it all there was love, honesty, theft... A life. It is a wonder how people can smile and laugh at those hard to believe "legends", but that's life. The movie is funny, cause stupidity is funny. The movie is human because it is about simple human being in stupid situations. If you will not laugh, at least will enjoy realistic acting and directing.

paul2001sw-1 I love Kieslowski's films of morally compromised lives in communist Poland. But communist Poland was never half as scary as Ceacescu's 'Golden Age' in Romania, which is perhaps why it's only now that Romanain cinema appears to be enjoying it's own golden era, with many great films looking back at the dictatorship and its legacy. Chris Mungiu's 'Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days' is perhaps the finest of them; here he has scripted a bunch of illustrative (and not necessarily so tall) tales, which are directed by himself and a number of collaborators (though who produced which episode is not acknowledged). In some ways, the first tale (about an official visit) is almost unbeatable, a black comedy that had me laughing out loud; the last (about a couple of bottle-stealers) has the most obvious stylistic echoes of Mungiu's own work. But all of them capture the mixture of poverty, deference, fear and, paradoxically, individual selfishness, that characterised life under communism. The stories are superficially slight, but the smallest of transgressions carry grotesquely exaggerated weight Bitter wryness and naturalistic acting, camera work and dialogue, mark the films as a whole: a highly recommended set.

Macovei Vlad First thing first, this movie was no news for a citizen of Romania, just a reassurance of what we were. In the theater people were laughing at the apparently comical events that were presented in the film, but if we stay and think for a minute or two, we realize that these things really happened in Romania, and they were ordinary. Not only that, but people were really used to it and gave up easily when for example they had to be nice puppets and obey the higher officer's orders and act like you are a slave. Some people in that period actually fought and obviously lost, ending up in prisons or working as real slaves on different dirty and disgusting jobs. The occidentals can not despise us more than we despise ourselves for what we were, but if you watch this movie, you will know for sure.In other words, this is a movie worth seeing, which is for Romania that used to hide it's past behind the finger, a really cruel movie and even if on the facade it might be funny this movie is the most brutal ones in a while. Can't wait for the next one that's coming up this month!