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64
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63
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61
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60
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57
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55
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54
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54
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53
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53
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52
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51
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51
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49
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47
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47
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43
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42
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36
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35
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35
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34
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31
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78
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73
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72
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72
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71
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71
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70
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|
Killer of Sheep
Milestone Film & Video
FILM:
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring
Henry G. Sanders,
Kaycee Moore,
Charles Bracy,
Angela Burnett,
Eugene Cherry,
and
Jack Drummond
Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life -- sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor. (Milestone Film & Video)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Charles Burnett
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Charles Burnett
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
Theatrical: March 30, 2007
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
87 minutes, B/W |
| 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
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Killer of Sheep is an urban pastoral--an episodic series of scenes that are sweet, sardonic, deeply sad, and very funny.

100
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Way ahead of its time 30 years ago, and just as stunning today, Killer of Sheep is one of those marvels of original moviemaking that keeps hope of artistic independence alive.

100
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
Burnett creates an insistently poetic, devastatingly ironic world and work.

100
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
A lyrical, yet intensely rooted, tragic vision.

100
TV Guide
Staff (Not Credited)
Brilliantly conceived, imaginatively structured, superbly written, stylishly composed and photographed, and very often wryly funny, Killer of Sheep lives up to its official designation as a national treasure.

100
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
The result is an American masterpiece, independent to the bone.

100
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Shot on a year's worth of weekends on a minuscule budget (less than $20,000), this remarkable work--conceivably the best single feature about ghetto life that we have--was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry as one of the key works of the American cinema, an ironic and belated form of recognition for a film that has had virtually no distribution. It shouldn't be missed.

100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Killer of Sheep is a miracle movie because it's receiving its first theatrical release 30 years after it was made and because, as a movie, it's miraculous.

100
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
It is the most influential movie you've never seen, deeply affecting many artists and experimental directors who saw it on the museum circuit in 1977 and 1978.

100
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
See Killer of Sheep, and see it again and again. It's one of those truly rare movies that just get better and better.

100
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
A milestone of eloquent understatement that captures the daily life of have-nots as few American movies have.

100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Bill White
Free of the ghetto clichés that fill the movies made by people who have never lived in one, Killer of Sheep is a strongly individual portrait of black, working-class America.

100
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Burnett's documentarian empathy, coupled with his easygoing skill as a dramatic essayist, result in a film that doesn't look, feel or breathe like any American work of its generation.

90
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
A delicately poetic, essentially plotless vision, unblinking but not unhopeful, of life in Watts, where little but the ghetto's name recognition had changed a decade after the riots.
90
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
One of the strengths of Killer of Sheep, one of the reasons it has not dated, is that the naturalness and simplicity with which it unfolds give it the texture of a story told from the inside.

90
Slate
Dana Stevens
Seeing Killer of Sheep is an experience as simple and indelible as watching Bresson's "Pickpocket" or De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves" for the first time. Despite its aesthetic debt to European art cinema, Burnett's film is quintessentially American in its tone and subject matter. If there's any modern-day equivalent for the movie's matter-of-fact gaze on the ravages of urban poverty, it's the HBO series "The Wire."

83
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Having heard tell of its wonders for decades, I found the actual movie less transporting than I'd been led to expect. It's clearly a brilliant debut.

80
The New Yorker
David Denby
Burnett used many kinds of African-American music on the soundtrack, and the movie itself has the bedraggled eloquence of an old blues record. The amateur actors, who occasionally burst into fury, combined with the black-and-white cinematography, bring the poverty of Watts closer to us emotionally.

80
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
In all honesty, Burnett's writing can be stiff and the acting in Killer of Sheep is indifferent. But the reason to see this film does not lie in the dialogue.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A worthy, fascinating film..

70
Film Threat
Felix Vasquez, Jr.
There isn't really an overall arc present in Killer of Sheep, and that's the point. There's really nothing meant to be expressed in Killer of Sheep but the experience of poverty, and the inevitability of crime in the face of poverty.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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