How I Ended This Summer Reviews
April 23, 2011
It has a pared down quality that invites, indeed virtually compels, the viewer to see it as some kind of allegory.
April 22, 2011
It proceeds at a dour and Russian kind of pace, mildly intriguing without ever cranking up the pressure to become compelling.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
April 21, 2011
A gripping, involving and wonderfully acted piece of work.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 21, 2011
How I Ended This Summer is everything you could want from a tense two-hander set at an isolated Siberian weather station.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 21, 2011
Popogrebsky's film eloquently typifies Russian cinema's current frame of mind.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 21, 2011
Part psychological thriller, part a paean to the beauty and remoteness of its setting, How I Ended This Summer is shot by cinematographer Pavel Kostomarov with rare and atmospheric skill.
April 20, 2011
It's as though everything repressed and unconscious has become real enough to be photographed. What a terrific film.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 20, 2011
So-called 'slow cinema', if executed with delicacy, has the power to exert a trance-like hold over us, but this one falls flat at every dreary hurdle.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
April 18, 2011
With strong turns from its leads, this Russian drama will bury its way into your subconcious. Intense.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 13, 2011
The evocative cinematography, often showcasing the humbling scale of the landscape, perfectly counterpoints Popogrebsky's intimate, intricately observed direction.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 8, 2011
Though billed as a psychological thriller, How I Ended This Summer is basically a solemn art movie, leaving ample room for interpretation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
April 8, 2011
It's a bleak and austere film but Popogregsky knows about subtlety, as well.
April 6, 2011
This magnificent film is the third feature from young Russian director Alexei Popogrebsky, who is clearly a major talent, able to tell a story almost entirely through visual means.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
February 24, 2011
What stays with the viewer is a sense of a man unraveling from his own mistakes and weaknesses.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
February 4, 2011
Just when you think that nothing more is going to happen, all hell breaks loose in the form of a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
February 3, 2011
How I Ended This Summer combines memorable images of the gorgeous, rugged wilderness, meticulous sound design that emphasizes the characters' isolation, a dash of dark wit and a dose of madness.
February 2, 2011
Popogrebsky sets up the quiet tensions between his two generationally divided characters like a chess match pocked with occasional power grabs...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
February 1, 2011
Playing an ignoble protagonist, Dobrygin keeps his motives always quietly evident; later, lost in a fog painted red by an emergency flare, he's an abject vision of man in a hell of his own making.
January 30, 2011
A sort of reductio ad absurdum of the long-take approach to filmmaking.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
January 27, 2011
Above all How I Ended This Summer is a merciless contemplation of the fragile human psyche under siege.
Original Score: 4.5/5