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Figured we should move this discussion out of the list forum.

Damn Swo, warn a man before letting them go into an ending like that. Really amazing film, despite being so heavily about (among other things) semantics this really is a silent. A very funny silent with masterfully crafted mis-en-scene at that. Just as an aside the thing I found funniest, may not really have been intended. Just loved how out of date the Police department was tech wise even when compared to its own people.

Slow film (I don't think I have seen this much walking in a film since Gus Van Sant's "Gerry") with an in-depth take on the moral dilemma for which there is a given solution for any Hollywood cop. I never thought I would refer to a scene in a film as "the climactic dictionary scene".

I feel like I'm alone in my complete hate for this film. Maybe I have skewed ideas of what's funny and what's not, but this was one of the few films in recent years that I've found practically intolerable.

I decided to watch on Christmas Day of last year after hearing so much enthusiasm and gushing over the film from Scott Foundas of the L.A. Weekly. I can understand stand Cornelieu Porumboiu was trying to do in a film that was the complete antithesis of the typical crime picture, but it just felt like I was being suffocated. The long scenes of hearing your wife play the same bad song over and over again and the arguments over petty semantics weren't very funny to me as completely rage inducing as these are the types of things I've had to deal with several times and it's just frustrating. Maybe I reflected myself in those situations, but when the cop Cristi just sits there with no way of arguing back to his superior, it's infuriating, not funny. I know that Porumboiu meant it to an indictment against Romanian politics and their harsh policies on minor drugs and a criticism of the crime genre film, but I felt like that's all it was and had nothing else going on in it. I felt no charm or soul from the screen while watching it. It felt too conscious of what it was doing and why it was doing it.

I really feel like there's something I might be missing, so I'm waiting for the day it get's released on DVD so I can end up watching it again and reassess it, but for the most part, all the ideas Porumboiu wanted to discuss in the hour and thirty minutes of the film felt like they could've easily have been put into an essay or a short form story, not cinema.

I really must get round to watching this: I've had a screener for ages.

I suspect I'll like it, as I'm a huge fan of Porumboiu's debut 1208: East of Bucharest - whose entire second half also largely revolves around a debate on semantics, namely the definition of what constitutes a revolutionary act. And if he managed to make that laugh-out-loud funny (my reaction on both occasions that I saw it), I imagine I'll be on his wavelength here too.

I loved it -- now that the dust has settled, by far the best movie at NYFF 2009.

I think it boils down to whether you like Eric Rohmer or not -- it had aspects of both the non verbal side of Rohmer (The Aviator's Wife) and his moral tales.