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82
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73
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72
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71
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70
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65
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64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
62
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
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
43
Eagle Eye
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
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86
Momma's Man
85
Edge of Heaven, The
84
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83
U2 3D
83
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82
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82
Tell No One
82
Frozen River
82
Rachel Getting Married
81
Ballast
80
Encounters at the End of the World
80
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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
I Served the King of England
71
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68
August Evening
68
Ashes of Time Redux
66
Elegy
66
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65
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64
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64
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
63
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63
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63
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63
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63
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62
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62
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62
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62
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61
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61
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57
Towelhead
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
57
Sixty Six
57
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56
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55
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55
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53
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53
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52
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51
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50
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49
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47
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45
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41
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37
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28
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26
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xx
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Lower Learning
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Memoirs of a Geisha
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for mature subject matter and some sexual content
Starring
Ziyi Zhang,
Ken Watanabe,
Michelle Yeoh,
Kôji Yakusho,
Kaori Momoi,
Youki Kudoh,
Li Gong,
and
Kenneth Tsang
Set in a mysterious and exotic world which still casts a potent spell today, the story begins in the years before World War II, when a Japanese child is torn from her penniless family to work as a servant in a geisha house. Despite a treacherous rival who nearly breaks her spirit, the girl blossoms into the legendary geisha Saguri. Beautiful and accomplished, Saguri captivates the most powerful men of her day, but is haunted by her secret love for the one man beyond her reach. (Sony Pictures)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Robin Swicord
Doug Wright
Arthur Golden (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Rob Marshall
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: March 28, 2006
Theatrical: December 9, 2005
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
144 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...
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
The story is so compelling and the movie is such a pleasure to the eyes and ears.

80
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Here is a film about Japan made by Americans, shot mostly in the U.S. and, of course, in English. Once you accept these compromises in the name of international filmmaking, none is a real deterrent to enjoying this lush period film.

80
Variety
Todd McCarthy
From a filmmaking point of view, this is a work that the old Hollywood moguls themselves would have been proud to present.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
There's no doubting that Memoirs of a Geisha is a lush motion picture, and it has much to recommend it, but this will not go down as one of the great screen romances of the 2000s.

75
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
The movie may be set in prewar Japan, but it's pure 1940s Hollywood. There's costume, pageantry, melodrama, the feeling of a sweeping epic without the bother of too much accuracy, equal doses of heartbreak and uplift.

75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Any doubts about three Chinese actresses speaking English with Japanese accents vanish in the face of their deeply felt performances and the world Marshall conjures with magical finesse.

75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Don't be misled by the chopsticks and cherry blossoms: Memoirs of a Geisha, for all its exotic casting and locale, is our friend "Cinderella" in a kimono.

75
Premiere
Peter Debruge
Marshall's Memoirs achieves something few other high-profile literary adaptations do: Rather than simply inspiring us to hunt down the source material, it actually stands alone as a film, rich in drama and star-crossed romance.

70
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
Spanning two decades and a momentous war, Memoirs of a Geisha displays all the pomp and grandeur of an epic, but you wouldn't call it sweeping.

70
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
It's not a great movie, or even a particularly good one, but it's spectacular. No expense has been spared. The technical crew reads like a roll call of Oscar-night regulars.

67
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Indeed, the film is altogether too much like Sayuri: trying to overwhelm with surface beauty and unspoken emotion, it never hits deeper than the skin.

63
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
The film version of Memoirs of a Geisha is very like a geisha itself: a thing of exquisitely refined surfaces beneath which beats an ordinary heart.

63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
I object to the movie not on sociological grounds but because I suspect a real geisha house floated on currents deeper and more subtle than the broad melodrama on display here.

63
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Memoirs of a Geisha is like a sumptuous piece of silk: stunning yet ultimately flimsy. You wish it were more like a kimono, richly woven, multilayered and more substantial.

63
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Simultaneously gorgeous and forgettable, sentimental and prurient.

63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Full of falling rain, fluttering silk, John Williams's music and whispery voiceover, Memoirs of a Geisha is one long oxymoronic exercise in attempting to show delicacy through overkill.

60
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
The film comes to life whenever the cartoonishly vindictive Gong throws a tantrum, but she played virtually the same role in Zhang Yimou's "Shanghai Triad," which presented a far more compelling rationale for her star fits. Without her, this expensive piece of backlot pageantry turns vivid history into an ossified tchotchke.

60
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Memoirs of a Geisha is everything you'd expect it to be: beautiful, mesmerizing, tasteful, Japanese. It's just not very hot.

60
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
The international Asian stars gamely tackle their English-language roles, aided by superior costumes, makeup, and set design. But despite all the hothouse intrigue, the film lacks passion.

60
Empire
Angie Errigo
A beautiful, exotic and well-acted cultural hybrid, but it’s never as moving as it ought to be.

58
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Memoirs of a Geisha was never primed to be a film that burns down the house.

58
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Not since "Snow Falling on Cedars" have I seen so pedigreed a lit-pic sit there like such an inert teapot, available only to be admired for its mysterious, ineffable Asian teapotness.

58
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Beautiful geishas flit and whoosh through the equally beautiful scenery. Their kimonos are artworks-in-motion. So why is the film so boring? It could be because director Rob Marshall is so transfixed by all the ritualistic hoo-ha that he never brings the story down to earth.

50
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
Mr. Marshall can't rescue the film from its embarrassing screenplay or its awkward Chinese-Japanese-Hollywood culture klatch, but Memoirs of a Geisha is one of those bad Hollywood films that by virtue of their production values nonetheless afford a few dividends, in this case, fabulous clothes and three eminently watchable female leads.

50
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
There's no life, no juice, in the picture. Instead of tempting you into submission, it merely drugs you. It's surprising that a filmmaker who gave us such a lively debut, "Chicago," could slap us with a picture as dull and worthy as this one.

50
New York Post
Kyle Smith
It's based on a novel, but you'd guess it came from a coffee-table book. Marvelous design, photography and costuming mark this period piece.

50
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Too labored and cliched to incite passion in an audience.

50
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Oh, what awful voices -- clumsy words as well as cheesy accents -- come out of the actors' mouths! Though I wanted to appreciate the human story, and the lavish spectacle, I couldn't get past the clangorous echoes of Charlie Chan.
50
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
A lush, lovely snooze-fest.

50
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
Well, we're not in "Chicago" anymore, or even its soundstage approximation, but that hasn't stopped Oscar-nominated director Rob Marshall from fashioning another epic spectacle out of two squabbling women in (a sort-of) show business.

50
Dallas Observer
Luke Y. Thompson
Director Rob Marshall, as he did in "Chicago," plays the movie as though it's all an embellished memory inside the head of geisha Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), but why would she remember everyone speaking in choppy English?

50
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Colleen Atwood's costumes are the best a film adaptation of a popular book can buy. They rustle like nobody's business. The film itself is equal parts silk and polyester.

50
The New Yorker
David Denby
Somehow the movie that Rob Marshall has made from Golden's novel is a snooze. How did he and the screenwriter, Robin Swicord, let their subject get away from them?

40
Newsweek
Staff (Not credited)
Trying too hard to grab our attention, he (Marshall) loses it. The art of the geisha prizes subtlety, stillness, grace. Why doesn't this movie?

40
Slate
David Edelstein
It skips lightly over the surface of its rich material, more preoccupied with making pretty pictures than dipping below the surface so that you can experience the world through the eyes of its traumatized, yet increasingly savvy, heroine.

30
Village Voice
Dennis Lim
Swaddled in the posh vulgarity that passes for awards-season elegance, Memoirs is deluxe orientalist kitsch, a would-be cross between "Showgirls" and "Raise the Red Lantern," too dumb to cause offense though falling short of the oblivious abandon that could have vaulted it into high camp.

25
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
It is a grand-looking, grandly empty pageant.

20
Film Threat
Phil Hall
To its credit, the film's costume design is stunning. But unless you have a kimono fetish, there's no reason to pay a good dollar (or a yen, for that matter) on this junk.


The average user rating for this movie is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 109 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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