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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

97
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
83
Alexandra
43
Anamorph
35
Babysitters, The
32
Backseat
80
Band's Visit, The
65
Battle for Haditha
47
Bella
63
Blind Mountain
71
Blindsight
47
Boarding Gate
60
Body of War
58
Bra Boys
70
Caramel
54
Cashback
44
Chaos Theory
32
Chapter 27
69
Chicago 10
82
Chop Shop
46
CJ7
78
Counterfeiters, The
30
Cover
49
Dark Matter
35
Deal
62
Dhamma Brothers, The
92
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
20
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
58
Fall, The
43
Favor, The
58
First Saturday in May, The
57
Flawless
87
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
xx
From Within
44
Frontier(s)
57
Fugitive Pieces
41
Funny Games
66
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
61
Girls Rock!
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
57
Grand, The
58
Hats Off
68
Honeydripper
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
67
Jellyfish
xx
Kiss the Bride
37
Life Before Her Eyes, The
72
Life of Reilly, The
50
Look
65
Married Life
35
Meet Bill
63
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
55
Mister Lonely
52
My Blueberry Nights
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
55
Noise
63
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83
Paranoid Park
55
Pathology
48
Penelope
90
Persepolis
62
Planet B-Boy
xx
Plumm Summer, A
67
Praying with Lior
46
Previous Engagement, A
72
Priceless
17
Prom Night
69
Redbelt
80
Reprise
71
Roman de gare
48
Run, Fat Boy, Run
50
Sangre de mi sangre
85
Savages, The
24
Sex and Death 101
66
Shelter
75
Shotgun Stories
40
Sleepwalking
67
Snow Angels
67
Son of Rambow
71
Standard Operating Procedure
76
Stuff and Dough
68
Surfwise
xx
Tashan
82
Taxi to the Dark Side
57
Teeth
56
Then She Found Me
55
Tracey Fragments, The
55
Turn the River
72
Tuya's Marriage
83
U2 3D
59
Under the Same Moon
76
Unforeseen, The
66
Unsettled
90
Up the Yangtze
55
Vice
79
Visitor, The
64
Water Lilies
45
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
57
Without the King
75
Witnesses, The
63
XXY
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75
Young@Heart
45
Zombie Strippers
97
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
92
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
90
Up the Yangtze
90
Persepolis
87
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
85
Savages, The
83
Paranoid Park
83
Alexandra
83
U2 3D
82
Chop Shop
82
Taxi to the Dark Side
80
Reprise
80
Band's Visit, The
79
Visitor, The
78
Counterfeiters, The
76
Unforeseen, The
76
Stuff and Dough
75
Young@Heart
75
Shotgun Stories
75
Witnesses, The
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
72
Priceless
72
Tuya's Marriage
72
Life of Reilly, The
71
Standard Operating Procedure
71
Roman de gare
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
71
Blindsight
70
Caramel
69
Redbelt
69
Chicago 10
68
Surfwise
68
Honeydripper
67
Snow Angels
67
Praying with Lior
67
Jellyfish
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
67
Son of Rambow
66
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
66
Unsettled
66
Shelter
65
Battle for Haditha
65
Married Life
64
Water Lilies
63
XXY
63
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
63
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
63
Blind Mountain
62
Planet B-Boy
62
Dhamma Brothers, The
61
Girls Rock!
60
Body of War
59
Under the Same Moon
58
First Saturday in May, The
58
Fall, The
58
Hats Off
58
Bra Boys
57
Flawless
57
Teeth
57
Fugitive Pieces
57
Without the King
57
Grand, The
56
Then She Found Me
55
Vice
55
Turn the River
55
Tracey Fragments, The
55
Mister Lonely
55
Noise
55
Pathology
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
54
Cashback
52
My Blueberry Nights
50
Sangre de mi sangre
50
Look
49
Dark Matter
48
Run, Fat Boy, Run
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
Plumm Summer, A
xx
Kiss the Bride
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
xx
From Within
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Michael Clayton
Warner Bros. Pictures
 |
|
MPAA RATING: R for language including some sexual dialogue
Starring
George Clooney,
Tom Wilkinson,
Tilda Swinton,
Sean Cullen,
Michael O'Keefe,
and
Sydney Pollack
Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is an in-house "fixer" at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. At the behest of the firm’s co-founder Marty Bach, Clayton, a former prosecutor from a family of cops, takes care of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen’s dirtiest work. Clayton cleans up clients’ messes, handling anything from hit-and-runs and damaging stories in the press to shoplifting wives and crooked politicians. Burned out and discontented in his job, Clayton is inextricably tied to the firm. At the agrochemical company U/North, the career of in-house chief counsel Karen Crowder rests on the settlement of the suit that Kenner, Bach & Ledeen is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. When the firms top litigator, the brilliant Arthur Edens, has an apparent breakdown and tries to sabotage the entire case, Marty Back sends Michael Clayton to tackle this unprecedented disaster and in doing so, Clayton comes face to face with the reality of what he has become. (Warner Bros.)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Tony Gilroy
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Tony Gilroy
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 19, 2008
Theatrical: October 5, 2007
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
119 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
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
It's better than good; it's such a crackling and mature and accomplished movie that it just about restores your faith.

100
USA Today
Claudia Puig
It's a rare film that can challenge our minds and rattle our nerves so profoundly. This is unequivocally a thriller for adults. A deftly written, tautly suspenseful and intellectually demanding morality tale.

100
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
I don't know what vast significance Michael Clayton has (it involves deadly pollution but isn't a message movie). But I know it is just about perfect as an exercise in the genre.

91
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
At once spare and dense, chilly and thrilling, literate and visceral, it feeds in gray areas, teasing ambiguities and conundrums out of shadows and making strengths of inconclusiveness and uncertainty.

90
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
This uncommonly intelligent thriller evokes the great films of the 1970s ("All the President's Men," "Klute," "Three Days of the Condor") that managed to elicit gritty urban realism while maintaining a suave sense of style and moral complexity.

90
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
This loving throwback to the paranoid thrillers of the ’70s is a beauty.

89
Austin Chronicle
Steve Davis
Like Spencer Tracy, Gene Hackman, and others who have made acting on the big screen seem so easy while taking us on a journey that is far from simple, Clooney is the real thing.

88
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Careful casting adds to verisimilitude. Nobody carries off a chilly authority figure like Tilda Swinton, who represents the chemical company; Pollack, who has more or less stopped directing, now embodies urbane amorality as an actor; Wilkinson, whose career has mostly been devoted to repressed or depressed characters, enjoys his turn as a bright-eyed fanatic.

88
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Michael Clayton is about the gap between predatory professionalism and the sins of real life - about how those sins can corrode the hardest business suit of armor.

88
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
An excellent legal thriller elevated to superb drama by the actor's (Clooney) central performance.

88
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Tony Gilroy, co-author of the superb Jason Bourne film trilogy, makes a stunning directorial debut with Michael Clayton, an out-of-courtroom drama that helps solidify George Clooney's acting bona fides.

88
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
There are more than ample rewards for discerning adults: Some of the best dialogue in a recent movie and a gallery of unforgettable performances.

88
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Michael Clayton is a here’s-how-it-happened drama, cleverly but not over-elaborately structured.

88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Deliberate, demanding and character-driven, Michael Clayton flies in the face of what sells at the multiplex. I couldn't have liked it more.

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
After Clooney, who gives a sterling performance as a tarnished figure, the standout performance belongs to Wilkinson, a geyser of manic eloquence. Also quite fine are Swinton and Sydney Pollack.

83
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
In a heartbreaking, scene-stealing performance, Wilkinson plays his bipolar character's manic delirium as a heightened form of awareness, a life-affirming source of moral clarity in a cloudy and corrupt world.

83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
A spellbinding action-drama, skillfully built upon a scary corporate conspiracy, chock-full of enjoyable downbeat performances.

80
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
A smart and suspenseful legal thriller that comes completely alive on-screen.

80
Village Voice
Robert Wilonsky
Gilroy's up to the challenge, as is his uniformly astounding cast--Clooney, especially, as the charmed and charming man stripped of his superpowers, but also Wilkinson and Swinton as the mirror images of each other.

80
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
As with the Bourne films, Gilroy has a knack for creating strong characters and situations that resonate with tension. It may be formula, but the guy is a solid chemist as he crafts excellent set-ups and payoffs.

80
The New Yorker
David Denby
It’s all fascinating. Gilroy is an entertainer.

80
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
Mr. Gilroy hasn’t reinvented the legal thriller here, but I doubt that was his intention; at its best and most ambitious, the film plays less like a variation on a Hollywood standard than a reappraisal. It’s a modest reappraisal, adult, sincere, intelligent, absorbing; it entertains without shame.

80
Slate
Dana Stevens
The great strength of Michael Clayton is that it's no "Erin Brockovich." Rather than a populist tale of class-action triumph, the movie is a grim vision of legal and ethical compromise at the top.

80
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Instead of taking control of the movie in any overt way, Clooney commands our attention by swimming just beneath its surface. He's a disappearing act with staying power.

80
Time
Richard Schickel
Michael Clayton is not an exercise in high-tension energy; you'll never confuse its eponymous protagonist with Jason Bourne. But it does have enough of a melodramatic pulse to keep you engaged in its story and, better than that, it is full of plausible characters who are capable of surprising -- and surpassing -- your expectations.

80
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
Quite possibly Clooney’s best effort to date.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Has a slow build and a strong payoff, but George Clooney is the element that holds it together.

75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Instead of the typical John Grisham-style connect-the-dots legal thriller, we get a film that's idiosyncratic, with a time-shifting structure, a surfeit of subplots and characters.

75
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
While Gilroy deploys the occasional exploding car, the film's climax is all words -- angry, carefully sharpened words -- with the stopping power of large-caliber bullets.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
There is an audience out there for slower, more intellectual thrillers. This is a motion picture for them to discover.

75
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
Michal Clayton shares a number of affinities with Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet's "Network." Wilkinson's got the so-mad-he's-sane Peter Finch position; while Swinton embodies a sexless, neurotic, overstressed variant of Faye Dunaway's character. Which leaves Clooney as the (considerably younger) William Holden of the piece. And, yes, he makes the most of it.

70
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
Clooney is as good as he has ever been.

70
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
George Clooney's film noir sensibility in the title role feels authentic, and admirably solid.

70
Variety
Brian Lowry
Features strong performances and a solid story, drawn from the familiar well of faceless corporations grinding ordinary people through their profit-making machinery. Yet Gilroy's fidelity to his script comes at the expense of the pacing.

70
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Like "The Verdict," this is a big, crowd-pleasing Hollywood redemption drama in which the lonely hero not only thwarts the corporate villains in the end but silences them with a killer riposte.

67
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Without the steadfast intelligence of Clooney's performance, Michael Clayton wouldn't work half as well as it does.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 176 User Votes
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