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34
10,000 B.C.
55
Baby Mama
62
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The
36
College Road Trip
xx
Dark Knight, The
31
Deception
41
Drillbit Taylor
57
Forbidden Kingdom, The
67
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
54
Get Smart
49
Hancock
34
Happening, The
57
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
xx
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
71
Horton Hears a Who!
61
Incredible Hulk, The
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
79
Iron Man
35
Jumper
73
Kung Fu Panda
24
Love Guru, The
37
Made of Honor
xx
Mamma Mia!
58
Mist, The
48
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
55
Nim's Island
22
Postal
69
Redbelt
44
Ruins, The
53
Sex and the City: The Movie
76
Shine a Light
37
Shutter
37
Speed Racer
61
Stop Loss
47
Strangers, The
55
Street Kings
33
Superhero Movie
93
WALL-E
64
Wanted
36
What Happens in Vegas...
54
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
93
WALL-E
79
Iron Man
76
Shine a Light
73
Kung Fu Panda
71
Horton Hears a Who!
69
Redbelt
67
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
64
Wanted
62
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The
61
Stop Loss
61
Incredible Hulk, The
58
Mist, The
57
Forbidden Kingdom, The
57
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
55
Street Kings
55
Nim's Island
55
Baby Mama
54
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
54
Get Smart
53
Sex and the City: The Movie
49
Hancock
48
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
47
Strangers, The
44
Ruins, The
41
Drillbit Taylor
37
Made of Honor
37
Shutter
37
Speed Racer
36
College Road Trip
36
What Happens in Vegas...
35
Jumper
34
Happening, The
34
10,000 B.C.
33
Superhero Movie
31
Deception
24
Love Guru, The
22
Postal
xx
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
xx
Mamma Mia!
xx
Dark Knight, The
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

83
Alexandra
80
Band's Visit, The
76
Beauty in Trouble
47
Bella
80
Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
59
Blind Mountain
55
Bra Boys
60
Brick Lane
70
Caramel
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
83
Chop Shop
83
Chris & Don. A Love Story
78
Counterfeiters, The
52
Diminished Capacity
64
Dreams with Sharp Teeth
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
84
Edge of Heaven, The
52
Elsa & Fred
79
Encounters at the End of the World
62
Expired
64
Fall, The
51
Finding Amanda
57
Flawless
86
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
63
Foot Fist Way, The
60
Fugitive Pieces
45
Full Grown Men
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
69
Go-Getter, The
74
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
63
Gunnin for that #1 Spot
68
Heartbeat Detector
34
Holding Trevor
68
Honeydripper
55
Irina Palm
69
Jellyfish
60
Jihad for Love, A
68
Kabluey
62
Kiss the Bride
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
82
Last Mistress, The
38
Life Before Her Eyes, The
70
Love Songs
64
Married Life
30
Meet Bill
33
Miss Conception
53
Mister Lonely
75
Mongol
52
Mother of Tears, The
52
My Blueberry Nights
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
84
My Winnipeg
61
On the Rumba River
69
Operation Filmmaker
61
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83
Paranoid Park
72
Priceless
51
Promotion, The
55
Quid Pro Quo
29
Red Roses and Petrol
79
Reprise
71
Roman de gare
56
Sangre de mi sangre
51
Savage Grace
76
Shotgun Stories
66
Son of Rambow
70
Standard Operating Procedure
62
Stuck
72
Surfwise
81
Tell No One
56
Then She Found Me
xx
Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
71
To the Limit
54
Tracey Fragments, The
70
Trumbo
72
Tuya's Marriage
83
U2 3D
56
Unknown Woman
86
Up the Yangtze
79
Visitor, The
62
Wackness, The
37
War, Inc.
64
Water Lilies
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
55
Without the King
72
Woman on the Beach
64
XXY
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75
Young@Heart
86
Up the Yangtze
86
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
84
My Winnipeg
84
Edge of Heaven, The
83
Chop Shop
83
Paranoid Park
83
Alexandra
83
U2 3D
83
Chris & Don. A Love Story
82
Last Mistress, The
81
Tell No One
80
Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
80
Band's Visit, The
79
Reprise
79
Encounters at the End of the World
79
Visitor, The
78
Counterfeiters, The
76
Beauty in Trouble
76
Shotgun Stories
75
Young@Heart
75
Mongol
74
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
72
Woman on the Beach
72
Priceless
72
Tuya's Marriage
72
Surfwise
71
To the Limit
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
71
Roman de gare
70
Standard Operating Procedure
70
Trumbo
70
Love Songs
70
Caramel
69
Go-Getter, The
69
Operation Filmmaker
69
Jellyfish
68
Kabluey
68
Heartbeat Detector
68
Honeydripper
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
66
Son of Rambow
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
64
Married Life
64
Dreams with Sharp Teeth
64
XXY
64
Water Lilies
64
Fall, The
63
Foot Fist Way, The
63
Gunnin for that #1 Spot
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
62
Wackness, The
62
Stuck
62
Expired
62
Kiss the Bride
61
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
61
On the Rumba River
60
Fugitive Pieces
60
Brick Lane
60
Jihad for Love, A
59
Blind Mountain
57
Flawless
56
Unknown Woman
56
Then She Found Me
56
Sangre de mi sangre
55
Quid Pro Quo
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
55
Irina Palm
55
Bra Boys
55
Without the King
54
Tracey Fragments, The
53
Mister Lonely
52
Diminished Capacity
52
Elsa & Fred
52
Mother of Tears, The
52
My Blueberry Nights
51
Finding Amanda
51
Promotion, The
51
Savage Grace
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
Bella
45
Full Grown Men
38
Life Before Her Eyes, The
37
War, Inc.
34
Holding Trevor
33
Miss Conception
30
Meet Bill
29
Red Roses and Petrol
xx
Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Dogville
Lions Gate Entertainment
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for violence and sexual content
Starring
Nicole Kidman,
Harriet Andersson,
Lauren Bacall,
Jean-Marc Barr,
Paul Bettany,
Blair Brown,
James Caan,
and
Patricia Clarkson
Lars von Trier explores the concept of goodness in this story of a fugitive hiding in a small town in the Rocky Mountains in the 1930s.
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Lars von Trier
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Lars von Trier
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: August 24, 2004
Video: August 24, 2004
Theatrical: March 26, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
173 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
Nominated, Golden Palm, 2003 Cannes 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
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
It really is a masterpiece--von Trier's first, as it happens.

100
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
For passion, originality, and sustained chutzpah, this austere allegory of failed Christian charity and Old Testament payback is von Trier's strongest movie--a masterpiece, in fact.

100
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Von Trier sets the action on a theatrical stage, spotlighting the existential isolation that weighs on people who don't seek larger visions of life, individuality, and community. Challenging, dramatic, provocative.

100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
If nothing else can be said of Dogville, it's a film that is like nothing else.

100
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Mischievous, singular and profound.

100
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Intentionally designed to rile as much as entertain.

91
Portland Oregonian
Marc Mohan
This unique cinematic experience is a parable of greed and revenge that could take place anywhere.

91
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
This galvanizing cinematic work is also gorgeous, experimental, alive with a Scandinavian strain of chutzpah, and artistically elegant.

90
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
No matter how you come down on this movie politically, Dogville is a compelling chamber piece with constant cinematic surprises. And you remember that von Trier is, above everything else, a consummate filmmaker.

90
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
It plays like a baldfaced, brazen insult, but it is a stunningly accomplished one.

88
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Despite its ultimate nuttiness, has a quiet, consuming power that sneaks up on you and doesn't go away. This is something new and ambitious for Von Trier: a work of compassion.

88
New York Post
Megan Lehmann
A stunning display of a filmmaker adventuring on the far side of what's possible.

88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Kidman gives the most emotionally bruising performance of her career in Dogville, a movie that never met a cliche it didn't stomp on.

80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
The incendiary Dogville confirms the director's sadistic knack for locating his characters' (and his audience's) soft spots and prodding them for a singular emotional experience.

80
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
A postmodern morality play stripped nearly bare by its precocious creator, until only its boldness, cutting insight, intermittent hilarity and bracing violence remain.

80
Empire
Alan Morrison
Argue that von Triers latest is theatre and not cinema. But at least acknowledge that Dogville, in a didactic and politicised stage tradition, is a great play that shows a deep understanding of human beings as they really are.

80
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
While you watch the movie, it can seem ridiculously long-winded. But once it's over, its characters' miserable faces remain etched in your memory, and its cynical message lingers.

75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Not for everyone. It is darkly funny, intellectually challenging and obliquely didactic. It also grows bleaker over the course of its nearly three-hour running time.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Dogville isn't for everyone, but there's some intellectually stimulating conversation fodder for those with the patience to navigate the film's rough terrain.

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
May be the most fascinating, richly accomplished screw-up you'll see all year. Von Trier, who has always had a talent for provocation, nails another heroine to the cross while playing his role to the hilt - a moviemaking rebel in his own dog days.

75
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Surprises, repulses and provokes. It's also brilliant and infuriating, wise and naïve, outrageous yet unforgettable.

70
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Only the heavy stylization mitigates some highly artificial plot contrivances, and the final photo montage of America's poor, while no doubt exciting to Von Trier the provocateur, is maddeningly oblique.

67
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Von Triers vision is amazingly thorough and exquisitely executed, but the audience may feel executed as well.

50
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Lars von Trier exhibits the imagination of an artist and the pedantry of a crank in Dogville, a film that works as a demonstration of how a good idea can go wrong.

50
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
The film centers almost entirely on the faces of the townspeople, which Von Trier frames vividly. Theres nothing static about his technique, but everything else about the movie is dreary and closed off.

50
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Either an airless allegory about opportunistic Americans or another one of the director's parables of female persecution. OK, maybe it's both. But life is too short for three hours of misanthropy and misogyny.

40
Newsweek
David Ansen
Von Trier, however, undercuts the universality of his own message with his meretricious closing credits, set to David Bowie's "Young Americans," which explicitly turns Dogville into an anti-American screed.

40
Variety
Todd McCarthy
An artistically experimental, ideologically apocalyptic blast at American values that is as obvious in intent as it is murky in aesthetic achievement.

40
Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis
A provocation, a coup de théâtre and three hours of tedious experimentation.

30
Film Threat
Phil Hall
If Dogville has a reason for importance, it is the astonishing all-star ensemble who try very hard to put life into their cardboard characters and make this silly film work.

30
Time
Richard Corliss
It's a brilliant idea, for about 10 minutes. Then the bare set is elbowed out of a viewer's mind by the threadbare plot and characterizations.

30
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Bored me for most of its 178 minutes and then infuriated me with its cheap cynicism once it belatedly became interesting--which may be a tribute to writer-director Lars von Trier's gifts as a provocateur.

30
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
Lars von Trier's latest thingamabob is a large, pretentious blob of coulda-been. As in, it coulda been deep and insightful. It coulda been sociologically challenging. It coulda been formalistically thrilling. But it isn't.

25
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
But as an artist, von Trier's contempt for humanity is becoming harder to hide with stylistic flourish. He doesn't even try here, and his arrogance is topped only by his misanthropy.

20
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
Anti-Americanism is a small matter when a movie is anti-human. Dogville is as total a misanthropic vision as anything control freak Stanley Kubrick ever turned out.

20
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
Disembodied, patchy, pointless work, which isn't even successfully pretentious.

10
Slate
David Edelstein
The politics of Dogville are on par with a third-rate gangster picture: cheap, opportunistic nihilism, with no enlivening sense of humor.

10
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
A symphony for tin ears, a sniggering assessment of human nature delivered with the faux-lofty tone of a Lexus commercial.
10
The New Yorker
David Denby
What Lars von Trier has achieved is avant-gardism for idiots. From beginning to end, Dogville is obtuse and dislikable, a whimsical joke wearing cement shoes. [29 March 2004, p. 103]

The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 72 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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