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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
64
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81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
xx
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84
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Sixty Six
85
Slumdog Millionaire
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Special
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67
Synecdoche, New York
82
Tell No One
83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
59
We Are Wizards
55
What Just Happened?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Momma's Man
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Frozen River
82
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
67
Synecdoche, New York
64
Appaloosa
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Changeling
62
Duchess, The
59
We Are Wizards
57
Special
57
Sixty Six
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
Lake City
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Dostana
xx
Nobel Son
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Beauty Academy of Kabul, The
Shadow Distribution Inc.
FILM:
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
A group of American hairdressers head to Afghanistan to open the country's first post-Taliban beauty school.
| GENRE(S): |
Documentary
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Liz Mermin
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: December 19, 2006
Theatrical: March 24, 2006
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
74 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
English / Farsi (with English subtitles) |
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
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
The teachers have moxie. The students have courage. Mermin's warm, funny, beautiful and deeply humane documentary certainly honors the latter.
88
TV Guide
Ken Fox
So laugh all you want at the proud haircutters of Beauty Without Borders - but don't underestimate what a basic cut and color can mean for a country's future.
83
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Tasha Robinson
Mermin presents all this without editorial comment, and her film would be worth watching if only for its look at a profound culture-clash. But it goes one better, and delves into one of those clashing cultures, capturing it in a moment of change that goes far beyond one beauty academy's superficial concerns.
80
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
Ultimately, Mermin's film is a profound reminder of the things that make us human. Things that don't matter much, in the scheme of things, but loom large when taken away. Things we all have in common.
80
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
A spiny, puzzling and highly entertaining film, and whatever you go into it thinking, you're likely to come out thinking something else.
80
The New York Times
Jeannette Catsoulis
Liz Mermin documents the hilarious, moving and sometimes fractious meeting of diametrically different cultures, one that has suffered unimaginable horrors and one that believes a good perm is the answer to everything.
75
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
The documentary takes on its own engaging shape - one of edgy editorial and political ambivalence.
75
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
As they talk between classes about oppressive husbands, abusive brothers and arranged marriages, it becomes clear that the frivolities Americans take for granted can be their lifeline. In this tentatively hopeful setting, a single lipstick becomes leverage.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Winda Benedetti
An often touching and always intriguing look at the fall and rebirth of a nation and the resilient spirit of its women.
75
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Queen Latifah, the star of Barbershop 2 and Beauty Shop, and thus our reigning monarch of big-screen beauty stylists, should fund and narrate a sequel. Because The Beauty Academy of Kabul is good enough to make you want to know how they do.
75
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
It's that gulf between earnest idealism and beaten-down realism that's the unexpected drama of Beauty Academy.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Without editorializing, Mermin raises fascinating questions about the cultural impact of globalization, the allure of the West, and the troubled history of an ancient land.
70
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
There's great charm, and also discomfort, in watching these highly motivated, excited women learn the tricks of a trade practiced very differently from their own, and casually swap horror stories of life under the Taliban.
67
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
The questionably good news put forth in this documentary is that vanity apparently survives everything.
63
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Democracy might not really come from a bottle of shampoo, but "Beauty Academy" teaches us that, sometimes, mascara really matters.
60
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
The film's unforgettable stars are the beauty academy's students, women who have survived tribal warfare, Soviet invasion, Muslim tyranny, American bombs, patriarchal families and even Western good intentions with extraordinary grace and fortitude.
60
Variety
Ronnie Scheib
In an act of "selfless service," a group of American women, backed by industry giants like Clairol and Vogue, open a beauty school in war-ravaged Afghanistan. The anomalies are manifold: Gun-toting soldiers patrolling the streets are visible through the windows as rookie beauticians busily snip, perm and tweeze.
60
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
The idea isn't as odd as it might first appear, since running a salon is one of the few socially acceptable means for a woman in Afghanistan to earn an income. The execution, however, evokes a particularly outlandish Christopher Guest mockumentary.
60
The Hollywood Reporter
Richard James Havis
This quirky documentary about a group of American hairdressers who establish exactly that shows that the power of hair salons should never be underestimated.
50
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
Debbie, for better or for worse, is the high point of the entertaining but lightweight film, which is better suited to public TV than the big screen. Oh, yes. If anybody should decide to open another beauty school in Kabul, be sure to leave Debbie in Indiana.
50
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
How ironic that one form of beauty would be returned to battle-scarred Afghanistan by ugly Americans, but that's just what director Liz Mermin caught in her slim 2004 documentary for the BBC.
50
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
At its best, Mermin -- who used an all-female crew -- conveys the sense of an entirely feminine world being created under the beauty school roof, and it's refreshing.
 The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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