GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs MUSIC: Last.fm | MP3.com MOVIES: Metacritic | Movietome TV: TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 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
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx 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

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Factotum
IFC Films

Factotum reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 71 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
5.7 out of 10
based on 25 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 15 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for language and sexual content

Starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Fisher Stevens, Marisa Tomei, Didier Flamand, Adrienne Shelly, Karen Young, and Tony Lyons

Based on the novel by Charles Bukowski, Factotum is the story of a man living on the edge; a writer who risks everything, tries anything, and finds poetry in life's pleasure and pain. (IFC Films)


GENRE(S): Drama  
WRITTEN BY: Bent Hamer
Jim Stark
Charles Bukowski (novel)
 
DIRECTED BY: Bent Hamer  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: December 26, 2006 
Theatrical: August 18, 2006 
RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA / Norway 

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...

91
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Factotum is so sly and low-key hilarious that anybody can be in on the joke.
Read Full Review
89
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Factotum, for all its grim grind, is funny-serious, and smart-stupid. Just like you after four beers, and me after eight.
Read Full Review
80
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Like the film itself, Mr. Dillon’s performance works through understatement.
Read Full Review
80
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
The result is a surprisingly satisfying film, true to Bukowski and itself, a work that manages to make the man and his profane world more palatable without compromising on who he was and what he stood for.
Read Full Review
80
Film Threat Eric Campos
Bukowski had a bunch of none too kind things to say about “Barfly" upon its release in the 80s, but, with Factotum, he'd do plenty of bitching and moaning as well, but deep down, Hank would approve.
Read Full Review
80
LA Weekly Scott Foundas
This is also an acidly funny work, even if the humor is that of a man who drinks to stave off the pain and madness of sobriety. In his finest performance since "Drugstore Cowboy," Dillon plays Chinanski with funereal grandiosity.
Read Full Review
80
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
The beautiful joke of Factotum is that Dillon is nobility itself.
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
The film looks great on the screen, and Hamer has commissioned a terrific musical score from Kristin Asbjornsen, who has set a few of Bukowski's poems to haunting, jazzy music.
Read Full Review
75
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
A grim and sometimes funny examination of life on the margins and of a singular artist's world.
Read Full Review
75
The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
In a medium generally about action and momentum, Factotum is largely concerned with inaction and inertia.
Read Full Review
75
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Factotum, starring Matt Dillon and Lili Taylor in two of their best film performances, is a good movie about the L.A. underbelly, as recalled by an expert: Charles Bukowski.
Read Full Review
75
New York Post Kyle Smith
Each scene stumbles onto a detail of inspired absurdity or a crunchy bite of dialogue that encapsulates Chinaski's weird flavor of self-destruction.
Read Full Review
75
Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
The American writer and poet Charles Bukowski is certainly an acquired taste, and Factotum may be just the film for determining whether one wants to acquire it.
Read Full Review
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Wry and dry.
Read Full Review
75
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Warts and all, Factotum feels very close to the real thing.
Read Full Review
70
The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Matt Dillon is pitch-perfect as Bukowski's alter ego Hank Chinaski.
Read Full Review
70
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Despite some fine black comedy, this hovers uncertainly between the novel's tragic precision and "Barfly's" existential burlesque.
Read Full Review
63
Boston Globe Ty Burr
Looks steam-cleaned, and that can't be right.
Read Full Review
63
ReelViews James Berardinelli
After a while, Factotum surrenders to monotony and only the performances are likely to retain the viewer's interest.
Read Full Review
63
New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Bukowski fans - and they are legion - may fill in the blanks from their own knowledge of the writer and find Factotum a more complete character study than it really is. For the rest of us, there are a few laughs - and a corking hangover.
63
TV Guide Ken Fox
It is fragmented and episodic, and many of Bukowski's best bits are oddly truncated.
Read Full Review
60
Variety Leslie Felperin
Arguably one of the best adaptations of Bukowski's work, even compared with Bukowski's own script for 1997's "Barfly," deadpan timing and ace perfs bring out the morose humor and surprising warmth in the often miserabilist scribe's voice.
Read Full Review
50
Village Voice Melissa Levine
None of it goes anywhere. It's just stylized alcoholism with a tired wink.
Read Full Review
50
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
It's too bad that the film was directed by the Norwegian minimalist Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories), who makes a fetish of building scenes around silence.
Read Full Review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Embracing such depths, Bukowski somehow made his art. Simulating them, Factotum just makes us queasy.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chris M. gave it a0:
Very rarely do I turn something off before the end but was extremely tempted. The whole thing tries so hard it is painful. Bukowski's writing has got some merit, this film has none.

Chad S. gave it a7:
When a man hits a woman, there's usually a second time. In "Factotum", it's one punch thrown by Henry(Matt Dillon), one thud on the floor by Jan the thud-maker(Lili Taylor). Unlike "Walk the Line"(the whitewashed biopic of country legend Johnny Cash), the filmmaker doesn't want to portray their iconoclastic subject(Charles Bukowski) as a saint; this is an indie, after all, "Factotum" needs street(or at least, Sundance street) cred. But surely Henry Chinaski is prone to more than one violent outburst if he's some unrelenting drunk who can't hold onto a job. No drunk just hits the bottle; he'll hit jukeboxes, glass windows, and the corporeal flesh of bar patrons and fifty-cent whores alike, especially the fifty-cent whores. "Factotum" is episodic; it's nothing more than a meandering anthology of the women Henry happens to be shacked up with as he lurches from bar to crappy job to bar. Lucid or not, Bukowski/Chinaski had enough clarity to write "Factotum", the memoir that is the basis for this agreeable depiction of the infamous poet laureate of the streets. Dillon is good, but not great as Chinaski; or maybe, the filmmaker is at fault; maybe, he fell into temptation to myth-make. In place of genuine angst and other degrees of implosive behavior, he chose to uphold the romantic notion of a writer victimized by stampeding pink elephants; the pachyderms of proof. The elephants need thicker hides. Chinaski needs to be more tortured; more "Bukowski-in-a-china-shop"-like.

Trapper gave it a0:
Absolutely the dullest/ monotone/ smoke/ booze/ ****ing movie of all time. Please--this movie was Grade E-.

Jacobsen T gave it a2:
Awful Awful Awful movie. Don't pay money to see this, or even rent it. It is in no way inspirational like so many people are saying, it has no plot, and it is not funny at all. Nothing happens, and nothing is done in the film to make the nothingness unique.

Cathy L. gave it a0:
This is the second worst movie I've ever seen.

Thomas M. gave it a5:
The acting is all top-notch, but this is a film that goes absolutely nowhere. Maybe that's the point, but if we are to be expected to remain awake throughout the films 94 minutes, some further revelations about this character might be in order. After 10 minutes, I knew everything about him that I was going to know. The rest was simply wallowing in the fetid path of this nearly moribund character.

Kurt L. gave it a9:
Matt Dillon is brilliant if not a little too pretty for the role. I like the different techniques used by the director to affect meaning. It’s definitely a more literary approach to film which is so refreshing these days. Funny and sad simultaneously.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use