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53
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xx
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43
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37
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35
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xx
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34
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64
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39
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54
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36
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53
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xx
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xx
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63
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36
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35
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47
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60
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71
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70
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93
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27
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47
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93
WALL-E
82
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73
Kung Fu Panda
72
Ghost Town
71
Tropic Thunder
70
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
63
Burn After Reading
60
Traitor
58
Express, The
58
City of Ember
58
Body of Lies
57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
57
Flash of Genius
55
House Bunny, The
54
Quarantine
54
Get Smart
53
Rocker, The
53
Lucky Ones, The
52
Longshots, The
51
Mamma Mia!
49
Family That Preys, The
47
Swing Vote
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
46
Lakeview Terrace
45
Blindness
43
Eagle Eye
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
41
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
39
Nights in Rodanthe
37
Miracle at St. Anna
36
Space Chimps
36
Righteous Kill
36
Fly Me to the Moon
35
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
27
Women, The
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
20
American Carol, An
15
Disaster Movie
15
College
xx
Secret Life of Bees, The
xx
Sex Drive
xx
Max Payne
xx
Morning Light
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

xx
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53
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57
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63
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68
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62
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81
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55
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xx
Beer for My Horses
xx
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63
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
56
Bottle Shock
50
Breakfast with Scot
61
Brick Lane
xx
Call and Response
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
Choke
43
Choose Connor
41
Cthulhu
62
Duchess, The
85
Edge of Heaven, The
66
Elegy
xx
Elephant King, The
80
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26
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64
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28
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65
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37
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xx
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82
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73
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73
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51
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31
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72
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71
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40
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76
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56
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56
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55
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72
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45
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82
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63
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57
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72
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83
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83
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84
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52
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79
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xx
W.
61
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51
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66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
89
Man on Wire
86
Momma's Man
85
Edge of Heaven, The
84
Up the Yangtze
83
U2 3D
83
Trouble the Water
82
Tell No One
82
Happy-Go-Lucky
82
Frozen River
82
Rachel Getting Married
81
Ballast
80
Encounters at the End of the World
80
Moving Midway
79
Visitor, The
78
Last Mistress, The
76
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Obscene
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
72
Secret, A
72
Transsiberian
72
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71
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68
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68
Ashes of Time Redux
66
Elegy
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
65
Flow: For Love of Water
64
Fall, The
64
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
63
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
63
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
63
Appaloosa
63
Man Named Pearl, A
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
62
Kabluey
62
Duchess, The
62
Mister Foe
62
Baghead
61
Wackness, The
61
Brick Lane
57
Towelhead
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
57
Sixty Six
56
Religulous
56
Bottle Shock
56
RocknRolla
55
Save Me
55
Battle in Seattle
55
Ping Pong Playa
53
Humboldt County
53
Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
53
Nights and Weekends
52
Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
51
Good Dick
51
What Just Happened?
50
Breakfast with Scot
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
Choke
45
Shoot on Sight
44
Henry Poole is Here
43
Choose Connor
41
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40
Igor
37
Forever Strong
31
Hounddog
28
Fireproof
26
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xx
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xx
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xx
Elephant King, The
xx
W.
xx
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xx
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xx
Beer for My Horses
xx
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xx
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xx
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xx
Frontrunners
xx
Mary
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Into the Wild
Paramount Vantage
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for language and some nudity
Starring
Emile Hirsch,
Vince Vaughn,
Marcia Gay Harden,
William Hurt,
and
Catherine Keener
Freshly graduated from college and with a promising future ahead, 22-year-old Christopher McCandless chose instead to walk out of his privileged life and into the wild in search of adventure. What happened to him on the way transformed this young wanderer into an enduring symbol for countless people. Was Christopher McCandless a heroic adventurer or a naïve idealist, a rebellious 1990s Thoreau or another lost American son, a fearless risk-taker or a tragic figure who wrestled with the precarious balance between man and nature? (Paramount Vantage)
| GENRE(S): |
Adventure
|
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Jon Krakauer (book)
Sean Penn
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Sean Penn
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: March 4, 2008
Theatrical: September 21, 2007
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
140 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
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Spellbinding.

100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Penn's direction is amazingly sharp and intuitive, full of masterful touches that give an epic dimension and scope to the parable.

100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
A genuine odyssey: a journey to self-knowledge.

91
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The beauty of Into the Wild, which Penn has written and directed with magnificent precision and imaginative grace, is that what Christopher is running from is never as important as what he's running TO.

91
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
There's a bittersweet quality to McCandless' story that Penn captures intuitively.

90
Village Voice
Scott Foundas
To these eyes, Into the Wild is an unusually soulful and poetic movie that crystallizes McCandless in all his glittering enigma, and allows us to decide for ourselves whether he was the spiritual son of Thoreau, Tolstoy, and John Muir, or the boy most likely to become Theodore Kaczynski.

90
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
If nothing else, Into the Wild is a beautiful film. Penn meticulously shot in the actual locations McCandless visited, and Eric Gautier's cinematography is breathtaking, many scenes are framed in such a way as to almost Hirsch entirely, further emphasizing how solitary his trek actually was.

90
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Sean Penn sings a powerful and poetic hymn to America with Into the Wild, his sweeping, sensitive and deeply affecting adaptation of Jon Krakauer's best-selling book.

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
They are the only misstep in Penn's otherwise sure-footed journey to what he reveals as the heart of lightness.

88
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Into the Wild is a beautifully made motion picture and some of the segments (especially those with Hal Holbrook and those that transpire around "the magic bus" in Alaska) are powerful.

88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Penn, in tandem with the superb cinematographer Eric Gautier (The Motorcycle Diaries), captures the majesty and terror of the wilderness in ways that make you catch your breath.

88
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Captivating and multifaceted.

88
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Flawed but refreshingly intelligent.

88
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Penn, one of Hollywood's most famous iconoclasts, must have felt instinctive sympathy with someone who told the whole world in general to leave him alone.

83
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Feels like a lost film from the '60s in the very best way: unstructured and intrepid and free. As a result, it's sometimes a little indulgent and overlong. But, like its hero, it's never less than sincere in its search for truth and beauty, even as it stares death in the eye.

80
Empire
Dan Jolin
With the whole of America as his backdrop, Penn pulls off his most ambitious movie yet. The result is a beautiful and thought-provoking road movie.

80
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Though Penn's fierce identification with the protagonist is a key source for the film's accomplishments, Into the Wild succeeds on screen because Hirsch ("Alpha Dog," "The Lords of Dogtown") throws himself into the part without reservation, projecting an appealing openness and life force that brings a special poignancy to his fate.

80
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
Though the film’s structure may be tragic, its spirit is anything but.

80
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
From seductive start to shattering finish, the film is as stirring, entertaining and steadfastly thrilling as it is beautiful.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A big leap forward for Penn as a director and deserves to be one of the most talked about films of the season.

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
It’s half-crock and half-sublime, which seems about right for its subject.

75
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
One such paradox, which Into the Wild doesn't note, is that those who flee civilization more often than not bring it with them. The bus in which Christopher McCandless died is now a tourist destination.

75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
A gorgeously photographed and less intermittently fascinating 2 1/2-hour film.

75
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Penn has a real feeling for the stray moments in life that suddenly rush up and overwhelm us with emotion. He also has an eye for beauty in the wilds, of which this film has many. And he's very good with actors. What he lacks is a sharper eye for the wooziness of romanticism, and that wooziness, despite some truly breathtaking moments, infuses Into the Wild.

75
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
Penn has often said that he dislikes acting and would prefer to direct full time. Into the Wild is impressive enough to give him license to do just that.

70
Variety
Dennis Harvey
Sean Penn delivers a compelling, ambitious work that will satisfy most admirers of the book.

67
Austin Chronicle
Josh Rosenblatt
The character never really comes alive, and I walked away from Into the Wild feeling that Penn was too in love with the idea of Christopher McCandless the free-spirited hero to excavate the soul of Christopher McCandless the lost man.

63
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Penn is projecting heroic qualities onto a young guy who simply got in over his head.

63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
The result is a road movie with a lofty message that too frequently gets lost in its own thematic barrens.

63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
The movie tries its hardest to celebrate the impetuousness of its hero and the exhilaration of his accomplishments. Mostly, though, it just reminds you of the severity of his mistakes.

60
The Hollywood Reporter
Sura Wood
Penn opts for epic proportions and clutters his narrative with gimmicks. For the most part, it works. What's missing is the perspective and insight that would illuminated the inner dimensions of a driven young man who is preachy and downright irritating.

60
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
If nature -- if life -- is as wild and precious as the movie makes it out to be, Hirsch needs to give us something, someone, to watch on-screen. We need to feel a presence before we can take the measure of an absence.

50
Newsweek
David Ansen
Penn's eye for landscapes is stunning, and his affection for outsider lifestyles is tangible. Hirsch, who carries the film on his increasingly emaciated shoulders, performs heroically, but there's an edge missing. The ideal casting would have been the young Sean Penn.

50
Time
Richard Schickel
I think the central mistake of this film derives from its lack of irony, a sense it refuses to impart that the world may not be exactly as the zealous Christopher perceives it to be. The film needs at least to entertain the possibility that its protagonist was driven less by high principle than by lamentable screwiness. And we need to leave it carrying some sense of tragic consequence with us. Instead, we're simply glad to be finished, at last, with this annoying man-child.

50
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
With all the narration and fits of slow motion, the movie seems like the work of a nervous chain-smoker. It lacks concentration--and with it, the potential for rapture.

50
The New Yorker
David Denby
Sean Penn’s Into the Wild is certainly visual--it’s entirely too visual, to the point of being cheaply lyrical.

50
Slate
Dana Stevens
It's hard not to feel that Penn is stacking the deck heavily in his favor and losing out on the chance for a more sober meditation on the ambiguity of McCandless' quest.

50
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
A murky screenplay leaves most of the humans ciphers, save for Hal Holbrook in an exquisitely calibrated performance as the avuncular desert retiree whose advice McCandless should have heeded.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 133 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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