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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
67
$9.99
75
24 City
66
Adoration
74
Afghan Star
48
Alien Trespass
56
American Violet
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
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Away We Go
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
62
Big Man Japan
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55
Brothers Bloom, The
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx
Call of the Wild
63
Cheri
62
Cherry Blossoms
63
Dead Snow
65
Departures
18
Downloading Nancy
58
Easy Virtue
70
End of the Line, The
77
Every Little Step
64
Examined Life
80
Food, Inc.
38
Gigantic
56
Girl from Monaco, The
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
87
Gomorrah
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Great Buck Howard, The
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx
Home
82
Hunger
91
Hurt Locker, The
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
81
Il Divo
54
Is Anybody There?
71
Jerichow
58
Julia
74
Lemon Tree
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
40
Limits of Control, The
42
Little Ashes
64
Lymelife
50
Management
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Merry Gentleman, The
66
Moon
35
New York
62
Not Forgotten
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Offshore
78
O'Horten
64
Outrage
40
Paris 36
54
Pontypool
71
Pressure Cooker
52
Quiet Chaos
83
Revanche
67
Rudo y Cursi
86
Seraphine
65
Sex Positive
70
Shall We Kiss?
77
Sin Nombre
59
Sleep Dealer
74
Song of Sparrows, The
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
82
Sugar
84
Summer Hours
61
Sunshine Cleaning
28
Surveillance
42
Tennessee
63
Tetro
64
Throw Down Your Heart
80
Tokyo Sonata
63
Tokyo!
70
Tony Manero
74
Treeless Mountain
88
Tulpan
74
Two Lovers
83
Tyson
83
U2 3D
60
Under Our Skin
69
Unmistaken Child
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
22
What Goes Up
45
Whatever Works
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
91
Hurt Locker, The
89
Goodbye Solo
88
Tulpan
87
Gomorrah
86
Seraphine
84
Summer Hours
83
U2 3D
83
Revanche
83
Tyson
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
82
Sugar
82
Hunger
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
81
Il Divo
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
80
Food, Inc.
80
Tokyo Sonata
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
78
O'Horten
77
Every Little Step
77
Sin Nombre
75
24 City
74
Treeless Mountain
74
Afghan Star
74
Two Lovers
74
Song of Sparrows, The
74
Lemon Tree
71
Pressure Cooker
71
Jerichow
70
Shall We Kiss?
70
Tony Manero
70
End of the Line, The
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
69
Unmistaken Child
67
$9.99
67
Rudo y Cursi
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
66
Adoration
66
Moon
65
Sex Positive
65
Departures
64
Outrage
64
Examined Life
64
Throw Down Your Heart
64
Lymelife
63
Tokyo!
63
Cheri
63
Dead Snow
63
Tetro
63
Great Buck Howard, The
62
Cherry Blossoms
62
Big Man Japan
62
Not Forgotten
61
Sunshine Cleaning
60
Under Our Skin
59
Sleep Dealer
58
Julia
58
Easy Virtue
57
Away We Go
57
Merry Gentleman, The
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
56
Girl from Monaco, The
56
American Violet
55
Brothers Bloom, The
54
Is Anybody There?
54
Pontypool
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
52
Quiet Chaos
50
Management
48
Alien Trespass
45
Whatever Works
42
Little Ashes
42
Tennessee
40
Limits of Control, The
40
Paris 36
38
Gigantic
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
35
New York
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
28
Surveillance
22
What Goes Up
18
Downloading Nancy
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
xx
Call of the Wild
xx
Home
xx
Offshore
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Elegy
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
MPAA RATING: R for sexuality, nudity and language
Starring
Patricia Clarkson,
Penélope Cruz,
Deborah Harry,
Dennis Hopper,
Ben Kingsley,
and
Peter Sarsgaard
Elegy charts the passionate relationship between a celebrated college professor and a young woman whose beauty both ravishes and destabilizes the professor. As their intimate connection transforms them--more than either could imagine--a charged sexual contest evolves into an indelible love story. With humanistic warmth, wry wit, and erotic intensity, Elegy explores the power of beauty to blind, reveal, and transform. (Samuel Goldwyn Films)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Philip Roth (novel)
Nicholas Meyer
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Isabel Coixet
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: March 17, 2009
Theatrical: August 8, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
113 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
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
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
A richly textured and compelling film.
100
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
There's a poetic irony to the idea that it took a female filmmaker to finally do justice to Philip Roth on screen.
89
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Smart and self-deprecating story about love and mortality: It’s merely a winter's tale told with a summer's palette.
88
USA Today
Claudia Puig
True to its title, Elegy is a spare, meditative and melancholy film. It is a deeply affecting and profoundly observed saga about love, art, beauty and, especially, mortality.
88
TV Guide
Ken Fox
This melancholy mediation on aging and desire hangs on an exquisite performance from Penelope Cruz.
88
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
This is an offering for mature viewers thrown out amidst a sea of summer flotsam. The title, Elegy, is perfect for the material. There is much tragedy and truth in what the makers of this movie have brought to the screen.
83
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
While this may seem like an apologia for randy older men, it doesn't come off that way, and Cruz gives her best performance to date.
83
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
The film is exquisite on every level, full of sadness and emotional surprise.
80
Time
Richard Schickel
This is a good, serious and absorbing movie -- especially, perhaps, for a reviewer who is roughly Kepesh's age and, of course, eagerly evading the issues his story forces up.
80
The New Yorker
David Denby
The Spanish director Isabel Coixet works with candor, directness, and simplicity. She isn't afraid of lengthy scenes of the two actors just talking to each other, mixed with lavish but respectful attention to Cruz's body, especially her bare chest, which is treated as one of the wonders of all creation.
75
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
As an acting showcase that builds to some unexpectedly moving moments, Elegy has much to recommend it. Had Coixet found better ways to connect those moments, she might have REALLY had something to rival what Roth does on the page.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
An absorbing but somber drama.
75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
As formidable as Kingsley is, Elegy wouldn't work if his object of obsession wasn't worthy of him.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
The result, Elegy, isn't a great film but it is a good one, and better for Coixet's perspective, her ability to interpret Roth's world from the other side of the gender fence.
75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
By the time it's over, Penelope Cruz has slipped away with it, and transformed Kingsley's character in the process. It's nicely done.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
If Coixet's film is substantially more restrained than its explicit source material (Nicholas Meyer, himself a fine novelist and director of the second and best Star Trek film, adapted), it is no less provocative as a poetic meditation on love, sex and death.
75
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Kingsley dims divine Elegy.
70
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
Extraordinary.
70
Variety
Leslie Felperin
Sparse, low-budget drama, helmed by Spaniard Isabel Coixet, intelligently translates Roth's meditation on lust and mortality without soft-pedaling its narrator's brutally honest, unabashedly sexist views.
70
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
While excellent in many technical respects, is a muted, pretty, anesthetic concoction that's never fully satisfying.
63
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Elegy is a curious example of misplaced good taste.
63
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Elegy drifts helplessly into melodrama, and it loses its bearings and its head in a ridiculous final act.
50
Film Threat
Rick Kisonak
Elegy's last act is a mournful smorgasbord of bathos in which major and supporting characters alike drop like flies. The body count is practically Shakespearean. The same, regrettably, can't be said for Coixet's touch when it comes to tragedy.
50
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
What line is thinner than the one between confession and narcissism? Upon that line, exactly, does Elegy dwell, before tumbling off on the bad side.
50
The Hollywood Reporter
Ray Bennett
Cruz's performance deserves to be seen widely, and it should place her again in line for prizes, but the story's pretensions and downbeat mood will not endear the film to audiences.
50
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
A spare, melancholy film that is so far in spirit from its source, Philip Roth's "The Dying Animal."
50
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
The problem with Elegy has nothing to do with faithfulness and everything to do with interpretation. The film is an overly polite take on a spiky, claustrophobic, insistently impolite novel.
40
Empire
Angie Errigo
While the supporting actors are engaging, the turgid screenplay lets the whole thing down.
40
Village Voice
Ella Taylor
Spanish director Isabel Coixet's hushed and understated Elegy is a flat, joyless affair.
40
Los Angeles Times
Mark Olsen
Elegy seems determined to make real every ageist dig that could be thrown its way -- out of touch, balefully slow and, for a film at least partly about the zesty enterprise of sex, awfully lifeless.
40
New York Daily News
Joe Neumaier
Roth's works are particularly hard to do justice to onscreen, perhaps because the celebrated author's personality is really in his words
38
New York Post
Linda Stasi
A windbaggy film of Phillip Roth's novella "The Dying Animal."
 The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 35 User Votes
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