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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

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OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
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Up the Yangtze
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Persepolis
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Flight of the Red Balloon, The
85
Savages, The
83
Paranoid Park
83
Alexandra
83
U2 3D
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Chop Shop
82
Taxi to the Dark Side
80
Band's Visit, The
79
Visitor, The
78
Counterfeiters, The
76
Unforeseen, The
76
Stuff and Dough
75
Young@Heart
75
Shotgun Stories
74
Witnesses, The
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
72
Roman de gare
72
Priceless
72
Tuya's Marriage
72
Life of Reilly, The
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
71
Blindsight
71
Standard Operating Procedure
70
Caramel
69
Redbelt
69
Chicago 10
68
Honeydripper
67
Snow Angels
67
Praying with Lior
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
67
Jellyfish
66
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
66
Shelter
65
Married Life
64
Surfwise
64
Son of Rambow
64
Water Lilies
63
XXY
63
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
63
Body of War
63
Blind Mountain
62
Planet B-Boy
62
Battle for Haditha
61
Dhamma Brothers, The
61
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
61
Girls Rock!
59
Under the Same Moon
59
Fugitive Pieces
58
First Saturday in May, The
58
Fall, The
58
Hats Off
58
Bra Boys
57
Flawless
57
Teeth
57
Without the King
57
Grand, The
56
Turn the River
56
Then She Found Me
55
Vice
55
Tracey Fragments, The
55
Pathology
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
54
Cashback
54
Mister Lonely
52
Noise
52
My Blueberry Nights
50
Look
48
Run, Fat Boy, Run
48
Dark Matter
48
Penelope
47
Bella
47
Boarding Gate
46
CJ7
46
Previous Engagement, A
45
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
45
Zombie Strippers
44
Frontier(s)
44
Chaos Theory
43
Anamorph
43
Favor, The
41
Funny Games
40
Sleepwalking
37
Life Before Her Eyes, The
35
Meet Bill
35
Babysitters, The
35
Deal
32
Backseat
32
Chapter 27
30
Cover
24
Sex and Death 101
20
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
17
Prom Night
xx
Tashan
xx
Unsettled
xx
Plumm Summer, A
xx
Kiss the Bride
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
xx
From Within
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Last Castle, The
DreamWorks Distribution L.L.C.
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for language and violence
Starring
Robert Redford,
James Gandolfini,
Mark Ruffalo,
Steve Burton,
George Scott,
Addison Pate,
and
Nick Kokich
The Castle -- the unlikely last stop in the brilliant career of three-star General Irwin (Redford). Court-martialed and stripped of his rank, Irwin has been sentenced to the maximum-security military prison, which is run with an iron fist by its warden, Colonel Winter (Gandolfini).
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
David Scarpa (also story)
Graham Yost
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Rod Lurie
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: March 5, 2002
Video: March 5, 2002
Theatrical: October 19, 2001
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
131 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...
88
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
It's an even rarer pleasure to see a film that combines exciting action with a smart, well-informed script and vivid yet restrained performances.

75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
It could have been more, could have been a triumph and a classic, instead of simply an effective entertainment.

75
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
The kind of movie you can enjoy easily enough, as long as you don't think about it much.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Not as simple as it looks, though its appeal is simple: Robert Redford goes to prison, and James Gandolfini ("The Sopranos") is the warden. That's a movie worth seeing right there.

75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Like Lurie's previous two films, it's also simplistic and somewhat muddled.

70
Chicago Reader
J. R. Jones
Engrossing if standard-issue prison drama.

70
LA Weekly
F. X. Feeney
Lurie manages, despite these obstacles, to inspire Redford to give one of the most layered and interesting performances of his career.

63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
If this melodrama has that haven't-we-met-before look, it's because it combines elements of "The Caine Mutiny" (Gandolfini's Winter is Queeg-like) with those of "Stalag 17."

63
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
An outrageously unlikely prison action movie made with lots of eye-catching pizzazz and undeserved expertise.
60
Mr. Showbiz
Cody Clark
It's good enough, smart enough, and people will like it. It's also a high-concept cop-out, a convention-strangled genre movie that never zigs when your every instinct is screaming that it's about to zag.
60
Variety
Todd McCarthy
A disappointingly pedestrian prison meller that falls between stools artistically and politically.

58
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
This is, after all, not just Robert Redford. It's Redford in the nobly burnished self-mythologic perfection of his late-middle-aged golden god-ness.

50
USA Today
Claudia Puig
They may call it The Last Castle, but moviegoers will ultimately feel rooked.

50
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
The movie is exuberant, strapping and obvious -- a problem drama suffering from a steroid overdose.

50
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Often feels choppy, as if chunks of connecting narrative had been lopped off in the editing room.

50
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
While the film is shot in shades of gray, the drama is played out in black and white.

40
Film Threat
Michael Dequina
All crass in its empty bluster and bogus uplift.

40
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Ruffalo, actually, who was so perfect in the little-seen "You Can Count On Me," is the only real reason to sit through The Last Castle.

40
Washington Post
Rita Kempley
Robert Redford does everything but wear a crown of thorns as the selfless war hero of The Last Castle, a heavy-handed military prison melodrama.

40
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
This is an odd and ultimately dispiriting film, despite some intriguing ideas about brute force vs. moral authority, the elaborately staged uprising -- and impressive actors in the cast. That is to say, they've been impressive elsewhere.
40
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
It's not objectionable (which is saying something these days) but neither does it have any compelling reason to be seen.

40
The New Yorker
David Denby
(Lurie's) a shameless, if skilled, manipulator of easy emotions. (29 Oct 2001, p. 93)
40
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Although the movie has a few interesting twists and turns, its mind-versus-mind conceit devolves into a mundane warden-versus-inmate conclusion.

38
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
It's a mishmash of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "From Here to Eternity" and "The Great Escape," with everything complex and entertaining siphoned off.

38
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
I don't know why Redford and the white-hot Gandolfini signed on for this fiasco, but the give-and-take between them is the film's sole pleasure.

33
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Miscast, clumsily staged and ideologically wobbly.

30
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Deadly dull.

30
New Times (L.A.)
Luke Y. Thompson
Lurie's politics aside, it's astonishing that a man who once reviewed films keeps churning out movies full of cinema's most hollow clichés; indeed, he turns out stuff that's even more disjointed and improbable than the most mediocre fare.

30
Slate
David Edelstein
A melodrama in which the clichés prove more lethal than the bullets.

30
Time
Richard Schickel
Redford underacts, Gandolfini overacts, and this movie is directed with the same air of unreality, the same grim passion for cliches, both cinematic and emotional, that Lurie brought to his first film, "The Contender."

20
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Bizarre, confused, sanctimonious manure that makes Lurie's own "The Contender" look responsible by comparison.

20
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
Plays out like "Cool Hand Luke" meets "Attica," and it's quite the silliest thing.


The average user rating for this movie is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 23 User Votes
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