Critic Reviews
68
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
9(82%)
mixed
2(18%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 11 Critic Reviews
89
This quiet, contemplative gem of a film paints a painfully accurate portrait of familial love, loss, and healing-by-degrees among the migrant communities bordering San Antonio.
83
The filmmaker of August Evening creates a succession of quiet, elliptical scenes that accrue into an affecting big picture of family ties and immigrant experience.
80
The heart of the movie is not in its plot but in its characters and atmosphere. Castaneda, a nonprofessional actor who runs a towing company in San Antonio, gives a towering, Robert Duvall-style performance as a granitic man in late middle age whose internal world of pain and love and knowledge occasionally flickers to the surface.
75
Pedro Castaneda, a nonprofessional appearing in his first film, and Veronica Loren tug at your heartstrings with their portrayals of the lead characters.
75
August Evening is rambling, diffuse, and at times so "sensitive" it makes your teeth hurt. And yet it's also intermittently quite affecting.
70
Eska seems to be attempting an ambitious Mexican-American variation on "King Lear," another tale of an aging patriarch seeking refuge but ultimately rejected by ungrateful children.
70
Perhaps Eska didn't have to write all of his characters into overlapping crossroads of crisis, but he's more nuanced than overt, and his cast (especially Loren and the nonprofessional Castaneda) sells it.
70
Though this artful film inches toward its not-unpredictable conclusion and could logically have ended several times before its final fadeout, I was sorry when it was over. How rare is that?
67
The unforced ease of the performances make August Evening an intermittent pleasure, but its images aren't strong enough to sustain its undisciplined length.
50
A film of noble intentions that eventually wears out its welcome.
