Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

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

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Kirpianuscus Maybe,it sounds not convincing for a public far by period or East realities. but it is a real masterpiece. first, for its unique freshness. because it is more than an inspired love story but a precise and profound wise portrait of society. second...because it is so deep Russian. not only as area but as spirit, in tradition of great literature and cinematography. not the less - for performances. for small presence , in cameo role of Innokenti Smoktunovski, for Batalov and for the magnificent work of Vera Alentova. not the last, for the taste after its end. a sort of emotion who escapes to description. because it is like the air of morning at the first steps out of house.

Roedy Green You might say this is a Russian version of American Graffiti. It starts following the lives of a large group of Russian teens in 1958. However, it follows them through the next 20 years as well. The movie gets more and more interesting as the characters evolve to become more serious. The gradual ageing of the players is quite well done, and pangs of nostalgia for how short life is. Nothing too dramatic happens, marriages, divorces, unplanned pregnancies, meddling mothers. It is all in Russian with subtitles. The characters, though often silly, love each other a lot, and stand by each other. Everyone just revels in the joy of hanging out with friends. It makes you wish you were Russian.

federovsky Two periods in the life of a Russian woman trying to find romance. The title seems to come from a Eurovision-type song, though it's not clear exactly who or what 'Moscow' is meant to represent - the Kremlin perhaps. It's a long film but maintains momentum after a manic start and few scenes outstay their welcome - many skip onto the next before we're ready. There's a thick overlay of tacky music, sometimes inappropriate, and loads of dismal but fascinating 70s interior décor. The Russians too are a strange bunch, especially in the brusque way they treat strangers that seems to come from a 'don't-expect-anything-from-me' kind of social inhibition rather than hostility. But this is basically soap opera and the psychology is unconvincing. The woman is formidable at her job, rising from factory worker to some kind of director - almost a national celebrity - yet all the while floundering in her emotional life. She is cold, severe and humourless in the office. If that was meant to represent some spiritual sacrifice, it didn't come across. The little wistfulness in her personality is hardly enough to make her likable. You could pick any woman off the street and find a more involving story. In Part 1 she gets pregnant first time over "Besame Mucho" (it always works) to a guy who's not interested in her. Part 2 resumes 17 or so years later when she finally meets that rare commodity, a decent guy - giving us two emotionally charged bookends to a bleak, workaday, if economically comfortable life. Mr Perfect though is annoying in his unconventional charm and the film gets a little wayward towards the end. This beat "The Last Metro" and "Kagemusha" to the best foreign language Oscar in 1980 - no doubt because it portrayed the Soviets as human and fallible as everyone else, which must have been a relief to the rest of the world.

shusei Utterly normal drama, in the sense that every episode has two or three functions at the same time(developing the story, depicting the social background,making the main characters understandable and sympathetic to the viewer,pushing the dramatic situation forward).There is no useless episode or detail. The shooting and editing is complete, not waisting time to be too artistic(because it is not a Art-House film). This is a professional cinema work with normally composed drama,but not only so.The story begins in 1958, soon after the short "thaw"(ottepeli) had come to Soviet society, when Soviet cinema was full of hope and energy. So it is natural that young girls go to the theater with the board announcing "Festival of French films" and they dream of better life,to marry "celebrity", to become rich. It was so that moment.Screenwriter and director are utterly right to jump 20 years and then to start telling about their own time(film was made in late 70s). Dreams of youth were betrayed by the reality, but not so cruelly for ordinary people(different form intelligentsia),as Western right conservatives may have imagined. In Soviet Union lived such ordinary people, as well as intelligentsia under political pressure and many other social types(it happened and happens in USA, Japan and any other countries).We don't know how Katya suffered from personal complex and from possible injustice, but such things will make no sense to drama. And professionals doesn't add meaningless details to their works.