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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

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OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
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Up the Yangtze
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Persepolis
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Flight of the Red Balloon, The
85
Savages, The
83
Paranoid Park
83
Alexandra
83
U2 3D
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Chop Shop
82
Taxi to the Dark Side
80
Band's Visit, The
79
Visitor, The
78
Counterfeiters, The
76
Unforeseen, The
76
Stuff and Dough
75
Young@Heart
75
Shotgun Stories
74
Witnesses, The
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
72
Roman de gare
72
Priceless
72
Tuya's Marriage
72
Life of Reilly, The
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
71
Blindsight
71
Standard Operating Procedure
70
Caramel
69
Redbelt
69
Chicago 10
68
Honeydripper
67
Snow Angels
67
Praying with Lior
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
67
Jellyfish
66
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
66
Shelter
65
Married Life
64
Surfwise
64
Son of Rambow
64
Water Lilies
63
XXY
63
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
63
Body of War
63
Blind Mountain
62
Planet B-Boy
62
Battle for Haditha
61
Dhamma Brothers, The
61
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
61
Girls Rock!
59
Under the Same Moon
59
Fugitive Pieces
58
First Saturday in May, The
58
Fall, The
58
Hats Off
58
Bra Boys
57
Flawless
57
Teeth
57
Without the King
57
Grand, The
56
Turn the River
56
Then She Found Me
55
Vice
55
Tracey Fragments, The
55
Pathology
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
54
Cashback
54
Mister Lonely
52
Noise
52
My Blueberry Nights
50
Look
48
Run, Fat Boy, Run
48
Dark Matter
48
Penelope
47
Bella
47
Boarding Gate
46
CJ7
46
Previous Engagement, A
45
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
45
Zombie Strippers
44
Frontier(s)
44
Chaos Theory
43
Anamorph
43
Favor, The
41
Funny Games
40
Sleepwalking
37
Life Before Her Eyes, The
35
Meet Bill
35
Babysitters, The
35
Deal
32
Backseat
32
Chapter 27
30
Cover
24
Sex and Death 101
20
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
17
Prom Night
xx
Tashan
xx
Unsettled
xx
Plumm Summer, A
xx
Kiss the Bride
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
xx
From Within
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Alias Betty
Wellspring Cinema
FILM:
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring
Sandrine Kiberlain,
Nicole Garcia,
Mathilde Seigner,
Luck Mervil,
Edouard Baer,
Stéphane Freiss,
and
Yves Jacques
As novelist Betty Fisher (Kiberlain) starts becoming darkly depressed after the death of her young son, her plotting mother arranges to have another little boy kidnapped to take his place.
| GENRE(S): |
Foreign
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Claude Miller
Ruth Rendell (novel The Tree of Hands)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Claude Miller
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: March 11, 2003
Video: March 11, 2003
Theatrical: September 13, 2002
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
103 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
France / Canada |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
French (with English subtitles) |
Original French title "Betty Fisher et Autres Histoires"; Best Actress (Garcia, Kiberlain, Seigner; three-way tie) and FIPRESCI Award, 2001 Montreal World Film Festival; Best Actress (Garcia and Kiberlain), 2001 Chicago International Film Festival

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...
100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
In today's cynical cinematic climate, there's something beautiful in Miller's simple poetic justice.

90
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Such an accomplished piece of filmmaking that it interweaves enough characters and themes to fill three movies.

90
LA Weekly
Chuck Wilson
The last-minute details of plot can't compete with the frightening intensity of Kiberlain's and Garcia's performances, which trace, with brilliant precision, the exhausting mix of brutality and grace inherent in the mother-daughter relationship.

90
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
A confidently adroit thriller that captures a comprehensive sense of life in an edgy, multicultural and economically diverse Paris. The large cast couldn't be better, but the film belongs to Kiberlain.

88
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
What really makes Alias Betty stand out, even from good recent French ensemble films like "Eight Women" and "Venus Beauty Institute," is that ingenious, Rendell-derived story. To kidnap an old phrase, it's a corker.

83
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
A nifty, entwined, ultimately gripping adaptation of British crime writer Ruth Rendell's novel ''The Tree of Hands'' by French director Claude Miller.

80
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Mr. Miller tells several interlocking stories with such daring and intensity that you sense he could go on indefinitely, spinning one terrific yarn off another.
80
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
What's wonderful about director Claude Miller's adaptation of Ruth Rendell's novel "The Tree of Hands" is its grand capacity for compassion and complexity.

80
Village Voice
Leslie Camhi
Infusing Rendell's intrigue with warmth and humor, Miller makes the film's sometimes mechanical and giddy narrative into something grander -- a meditation on maternity as a form of inspired madness.

80
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
This quiet French thriller gets to the heart of motherhood, and then pays off with comfort and calm.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Jonathan Curiel
Somehow, it all works -- even if Miller relies on a plot that meanders a bit and loses some of its luster.

75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
It's one of the season's most original and energetic movies.

75
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
Despite a contrived ending that brings together all the film's characters, Alias Betty is inventive filmmaking.

70
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
A lot goes on, and it doesn't always make sense. But the cast embodies Rendell's ability to incorporate shrewd observations on human behavior into the framework of a crime story, and Miller has a great eye for the places on the Paris outskirts where the lives of haves and have-nots intersect.

70
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
As long as Miller simply crosscuts between the machinations of the three mothers, the sociological and psychological parallels are intriguing, but when they're forced to share the same story line, the contrivances and coincidences begin to seem fussily elaborate.

70
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
Complicated thriller that gets more interesting as its complications pile up.

70
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
If the ending isn't conventionally happy, it's certainly deeply satisfying.

67
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Makes it pretty difficult to tell the difference between good mothers and bad.

63
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Of the several threads interwoven here, only one is riveting, thanks to the performance of Sandrine Kiberlain as Betty.

63
Boston Globe
Janice Page
Miller is certainly faithful to the spirit of Rendell's psychologically probing, class-dissecting novels, even if his probing doesn't go nearly as deep and his storytelling isn't as compelling.

60
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Makes for interesting, rather than emotionally compelling viewing.

20
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
The good news might be that Huppert wasn't available for Alias Betty, but the bad news is that it didn't stop France from exporting yet one more cold, pretentious, thoroughly dislikable study in sociopathy.


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