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84
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83
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81
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81
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78
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77
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74
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71
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71
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70
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69
Charlie Wilson's War
68
Business of Being Born, The
68
Delirious
68
War Dance
65
Great Debaters, The
64
Cloverfield
63
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
63
11th Hour, The
63
Hannah Takes the Stairs
60
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
57
Romulus, My Father
57
Teeth
55
Resurrecting the Champ
53
Music Within
52
Hollywood Dreams
51
Golden Compass, The
49
Good Night, The
47
Bella
47
Lions for Lambs
47
27 Dresses
46
Reservation Road
44
Nina's Heavenly Delights
43
Youth Without Youth
43
Final Season, The
41
Mad Money
41
First Sunday
39
Alvin and the Chipmunks
39
P.S. I Love You
38
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
37
P2
32
Untraceable
30
Over Her Dead Body
30
Cover
29
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24
One Missed Call
15
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
7
Hottie and the Nottie, The
xx
Moondance Alexander
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
East-West
Sony Pictures Classics
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for violence and brief sensuality
Starring
Sandrine Bonnaire,
Oleg Menshikov,
Catherine Deneuve,
and
Sergei Bodrov Jr
In 1946, Stalin invites Russian expatriates to return to the motherland. A promise of open arms turns into a situation where many of them are shot or imprisoned. This film follows the story of a young family from France.
| GENRE(S): |
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Sergei Bodrov
Louis Gardel
Rustam Ibragimbekov
Régis Wargnier
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Régis Wargnier
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: October 3, 2000
Video: October 3, 2000
Theatrical: April 7, 2000
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
120 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
Spain / Russia / France / Bulgaria |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
French / Russian (with English subtitles) |
Also known as "Est-Ouest"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
88
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Picks up steam from the ominous opening scene and ends as a quietly suspenseful thriller.

88
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
The movie that deserved to win the Oscar for foreign-language film, and one of the best movies ever made about life behind the Iron Curtain.
88
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Feels like an old-fashioned movie in the way it deals with bold sacrifices made in the name of love, while its setting and chary view of the era's political machinations mark it as distinctly modern.

88
San Francisco Examiner
G. Allen Johnson
A grand, old-fashioned movie of spies and Communist repression.
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Has the sensibility of a Hollywood "woman's picture" of the '40s -- the weepie saga of a married woman trapped in an untenable situation.

80
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
Takes the most somber of predicaments, and makes it involving, romantic and ultimately intensely suspenseful.

80
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Wargnier's sumptuous, moving new film, captures both the hope of the returning Russians and their brutal betrayal.

75
Baltimore Sun
Ann Hornaday
One of the unique virtues of the cinema is its ability to bring history to life with engrossing detail and gripping immediacy; East-West does this.
75
Portland Oregonian
Diana Abu-Jaber
With its fiery tone and fierce intensity, East-West offers a profile of a country suspended in fear as well as of one woman's indomitable passion for freedom.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Has great themes and great actors.
70
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
The two-hour film never feels a minute too long.

70
Time
Richard Schickel
This complex, heartbreaking film recounts the brutal struggle of one couple to survive.

70
TV Guide
Stephen Miller
It's Deneuve, in little more than a cameo, who commands your attention and doesn't release you until she's good and ready.

63
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
Isn't always easy to sit through, but it repays patience. It's an honorable film, and it earns its undertow of poignancy derived from.
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The movie as a whole lacks the conviction of a real story. It is more like a lush morality play, too leisurely in its storytelling, too sure of its morality.

60
Village Voice
Leslie Camhi
Wargnier has assembled a stellar French and Russian cast, but all that talent can't overcome his heavy-handed screenplay.

60
Mr. Showbiz
Michael Atkinson
Packed with melodrama, and often it works in the passionate, easy-to-watch manner of an old-fashioned "woman's film."
60
Variety
Derek Elley
Too often caught between trying to be a sweeping period drama and intimate love story at the same time, with a script that's never fully satisfying on either count.

58
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Wargnier directs his French historical drama, a foreign film Oscar nominee, in a way that allows little perspective on the extent of Stalinist cruelty; even when terrible things happen, they do so sedately.

50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Wargnier chooses a sweeping title and a sweeping topic, then turns everything into half-baked melodrama, heavy on over-the-top emotion but light on subtlety and ideas.

50
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Although it's interesting and well-performed, East-West never locates its crux: It's all over the map.

50
San Francisco Chronicle
Bob Graham
It is well-made in an old-fashioned way, and its straight-arrow lack of cynicism may be old- fashioned as well.

50
LA Weekly
Ernest Hardy
By the time the movie ends, having traversed numerous plot twists and character revelations, the viewer is emotionally drained in a bittersweet sort of way.

40
Chicago Reader
Lisa Alspector
Stodgy storytelling and a hyperbolic score reduce their experiences to melodrama.

40
Film.com
Peter Brunette
Wargnier is also a lousy storyteller who seems not to understand how to shape a narrative.
40
Dallas Observer
Andy Klein
The film looks great, but Wargnier is so heavy-handed in his portrayal of postwar Russia that it casts suspicions on the film's reliability as history.

40
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Director Regis Warginer ("Indochine") lets his film degenerate into a turgid melodrama.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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