Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
49
2012
41
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
84
Avatar![]()
69
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
53
Blind Side
53
Book of Eli, The
55
Christmas Carol, A
57
Daybreakers
43
Dear John
27
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
55
Edge of Darkness
45
Extraordinary Measures
83
Fantastic Mr. Fox![]()
42
From Paris with Love
65
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The
74
Invictus
57
It's Complicated
34
Law Abiding Citizen
33
Leap Year
33
Legion
42
Lovely Bones, The
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
34
Ninja Assassin
19
Old Dogs
xx
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief
39
Planet 51
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Princess & the Frog, The
64
Road, The
57
Sherlock Holmes
27
Spy Next Door, The
36
Tooth Fairy
44
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
83
Up in the Air![]()
xx
Valentine's Day
25
When in Rome
71
Where the Wild Things Are
xx
WolfMan, The
63
Youth in Revolt
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
46
44 Inch Chest
83
Ajami![]()
73
Amreeka
xx
Barefoot to Timbuktu
19
Bitch Slap
24
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
76
Broken Embraces
64
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
84
Cove, The![]()
84
Crazy Heart![]()
21
Crazy on the Outside
48
Creation
xx
Daddy Long Legs
81
Damned United, The![]()
68
Departures
62
District 13: Ultimatum
85
Education, An![]()
71
Eyes Wide Open
24
Falling Awake
81
Fish Tank![]()
56
For My Father
xx
From Mexico with Love
43
Frozen
68
Girl on the Train, The
52
Killing Kasztner
74
Last Station, The
43
Little Traitor, The
51
Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, The
73
Me and Orson Welles
76
Messenger, The
57
Missing Person, The
67
Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
xx
My Name is Khan
49
Nine
63
North Face
xx
October Country
67
Off and Running
52
Paranoids, The
49
Pop Star on Ice
49
Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The
xx
Promised Lands (Re-release)
69
Red Riding Trilogy, The
29
Saint John of Las Vegas
69
September Issue, The
36
Serious Moonlight
63
Shinjuku Incident, The
77
Single Man, A
xx
Still Bill
76
Terribly Happy
74
That Evening Sun
19
To Save a Life
68
Town Called Panic, A
59
Until the Light Takes Us
xx
Videocracy
65
Waiting for Armageddon
82
White Ribbon![]()
43
Women in Trouble
xx
Word is Out
64
Young Victoria, The
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
35 Shots of Rum

Universal acclaim
Based on 16 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 21 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
Claire Denis
Jean-Pol Fargeau
Directed by: Claire Denis
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 16, 2009
Running Time: 100 minutes, Color
Origin: France | Germany
Language(s): French | German
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Gregoire Colin, Ingrid Caven, Mati Diop, and Nicole Dogue
A widowed conductor, looking forward to retirement, lives with his grown daughter in a Paris suburb. When a neighbor starts to show interest in his "little girl", the conductor tries to adjust.
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database
What The Critics Said
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...
The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young
Claire Denis, not always an easy director, is in top form here directing an almost all-black cast with grace and delicacy. For the happy few, this is French art house cinema at its unpretentious best.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
In its modest scope and mellow tone, 35 Shots of Rum resembles Olivier Assayas’s "Summer Hours," another recent film by a French director who has sometimes trafficked in provocation and extremity. Both movies embed extraordinary thematic richness within a simple, almost anecdotal narrative framework, and both achieve a rare eloquence about the state of the world by means of tact and reticence.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York David Fear
To fall in love with it, viewers only have to be receptive to a movie that examines the ties that bind with grace, wit and depth.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
The film evolves into a simple, intimate, acutely emotional portrait of a family reaching a painful crossroads.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
For 20 years, Claire Denis has been among France's foremost filmmakers with her acute yet subtle observations of the ebbs and flows within relationships. Her perception and understanding seem to grow only richer over the years, and her newest film, 35 Shots of Rum, is surely one of her finest -- and thereby one of the best films of the year.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
35 Shots of Rum is visual poetry, but poetry that examines the human condition with insight and illumination.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Cliff Doerksen
It's a beautiful picture but very quietly so, and definitely not for the ADHD set.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Melissa Anderson
35 Shots is Denis's warmest, most radiant work, honoring a family of two's extreme closeness while suggesting its potential for suffocation.
Read Full Review >Variety Jay Weissberg
Claire Denis’ latest may appear whisper-thin on the surface, yet it’s marvelously profound, illuminating the love between a father and daughter but also highlighting the difficulty of relinquishing what most people spend a lifetime putting into place.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Denis -- who has called the film a tribute to the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu -- keeps dialogue to a minimum as she delicately examines how immigration is changing the face of France.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
I liked these characters, and suddenly not having them in my life anymore, simply because Denis has decided to start the closing credits, devastated me.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
There is never a shortage of options if you're looking for an intimate foreign drama about family bonds. But the eloquent insights of director Claire Denis stand alone.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
The French actor Alex Descas is mesmerizing in 35 Shots of Rum, where he plays a metro conductor.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli
Hushed minimalism is a rare and appealing quality in the cinema these days, but so little happens in 35 Shots of Rum that I'm hard-pressed to describe the plot. It doesn't exactly have one.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.1 (out of 10) based on 21 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
N K gave it a5:
Beautifully filmed, strong main characters and one particular scene (in the bar) that might be one of the best scenes in 2009. Still, it is excruciatingly boring. 1h30 that look like three hours. nothing truly happens. one ridiculously silly scene (in germany - completely and utterly unnecessary to the plot) most absurd, anti-climatic movie ending in quite a long time.
Tom G gave it a5:
Overrated: a highly stylized and almost prim vision of Black Paris. The people, like the apartments, are unconvincingly grand and silent amidst their working class neighborhoods and jobs. The coincidences that lend pathos to the story are forced. Claire Denis overreaches here and doesn't bring it off--though there's no denying that the critics have loved it.
Pyr H gave it a5:
Lovely scenes of working class Paris, though the living spaces seem much too bourgeois 'intello' with books everywhere for the train workers depicted. The nearly all Black cast is excellent and worth watching whatever they say or do. But this film suffers from Claire Denis' pretentious, mannered take on the emotional lives of its subjects: there is much too much silence--too much quiet--in their lives and the highly symbolic coincidences are unconvincing. Is it a white intellectual's overly reverent appreciation of Black Paris that's at fault? Or is it that Denis tells every story with a formality and 'respect' that leaves out the noise and stir of real life--and real feelings. Perhaps both. In any case, this is a classic of the succès de critique. The critics love it for its demure, understated silences.
Charles S. gave it a10:
Saw this at a festival...its a beautiful, simple film. True gem and very moving. That bar scene is one of the best scenes in cinema.
