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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
64
Appaloosa
69
Ashes of Time Redux
68
August Evening
54
Battle in Seattle
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
67
Black Balloon, The
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
50
Breakfast with Scot
63
Changeling
47
Choke
84
Christmas Tale, A
41
Cthulhu
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
xx
Dostana
62
Duchess, The
46
Dukes, The
63
Eden
xx
Extreme Movie
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
26
Filth and Wisdom
28
Fireproof
73
Frost/Nixon
82
Frozen River
43
Gardens of the Night
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
54
Good Dick
30
Guitar, The
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
31
Hounddog
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
47
How About You
68
Hunger
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
40
Igor
78
I've Loved You So Long
63
JCVD
27
Lake City
82
Let the Right One In
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
89
Man on Wire
84
Momma's Man
51
Morning Light
34
My Name Is Bruce
xx
Nobel Son
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
75
Pool, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82
Rachel Getting Married
56
Religulous
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
53
RocknRolla
57
Sixty Six
85
Slumdog Millionaire
57
Special
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67
Synecdoche, New York
82
Tell No One
83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
59
We Are Wizards
55
What Just Happened?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Momma's Man
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Frozen River
82
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Frost/Nixon
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
68
Hunger
67
Black Balloon, The
67
Synecdoche, New York
64
Appaloosa
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Changeling
62
Duchess, The
59
We Are Wizards
57
Special
57
Sixty Six
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
Lake City
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Dostana
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
xx
Nobel Son
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Savage Grace
IFC First Take
 |
|
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring
Julianne Moore,
Stephen Dillane,
Eddie Redmayne,
Unax Ugalde,
and
Belen Rueda
Savage Grace, based on the award winning book, tells the incredible true story of Barbara Daly, who married above her class to Brooks Baekeland, the dashing heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune. Beautiful, red-headed and charismatic, Barbara is still no match for her well-bred husband. The birth of the couple's only child, Tony, rocks the uneasy balance in this marriage of extremes. Tony is a failure in his father's eyes. As he matures and becomes increasingly close to his lonely mother, the seeds for a tragedy of spectacular decadence are sown. Spanning 1946 to 1972, the film unfolds in six acts. The Baekelands' pursuit of social distinction and the glittering 'good life' propels them across the globe. We follow their heady rise and tragic fall against the backdrop of New York, Paris, Cadaques, Mallorca and London.
(IFC First Take)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Steven M.L. Aronson (book)
Natalie Robins (book)
Howard A. Rodman
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Tom Kalin
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
Theatrical: May 30, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
97 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
Spain | USA | France |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
English | French | Spanish |
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
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
If you might wish the film got deeper under the skin of the characters, you also feel grateful for the fact that you'll never get closer to them than watching it.
75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Part of the film's failure to arouse real horror is the languid direction; not enough seems to be at stake emotionally.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
It's still primarily a showcase and offbeat star vehicle for Moore. It's a bravura role and she brings it off with a chilling malevolence and a strange, disjointed vulnerability that almost, but not quite, makes her sympathetic.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
The film walks the fine line between exploitation and empathy to cast a chilly, memorable spell.
75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Money, madness, incest and murder! Just the recipe for a twisted mesmerizer of a movie, if it doesn't creep you out.
70
The Hollywood Reporter
Bernard Besserglik
U.S. viewers may be put off by its tangled sexual motifs and find its implied social critique a little close to the bone. But even Stateside, Julianne Moore, in her most challenging role in years, will win plaudits and attract mature audiences to a thoroughly absorbing and polished piece of work.
70
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
Howard A. Rodman's script has a lot of juice, and the rhythms are so pregnant that the air vibrates with something, even if you're not sure what.
70
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
Julianne Moore proves game for anything in this pitch-black true-crime reconstruction.
67
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The director, Tom Kalin, stages acid duels, but he should have provided more psychological structure. Though Moore, a great actress, turns fury into verbal music, we're never quite sure what's driving her.
67
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Savage Grace should have the force of Greek tragedy, but Kalin's chamber drama feels curiously stifling and flat, and Moore's volatile turn isn't enough to quicken its pulse.
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Living these lives, for these people, must have been sad and tedious, and so, inevitably, is their story, and it must be said, the film about it.
63
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
A chilly inquest into very bad behavior, Savage Grace is presented to us like an entrée at a five-star French restaurant. It's decadence under glass.
60
Los Angeles Times
Mark Olsen
It's tough to think of another film in which sex between a mother and her son is not necessarily the worst thing that happens.
50
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Rarely has appalling, reckless behavior been so soporific as in Savage Grace.
50
Variety
Jay Weissberg
Scripter Howard A. Rodman's treatment of an enthralling book is more a series of vignettes rather than a fully connected work, and helmer Tom Kalin seems unable to decide how much Sirkian melodrama to introduce into the heady mix. Gone are the reasons to be fascinated with these people, merely replaced with maddeningly over-arch dialogue and struggles with characterization.
50
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Has everything one could ask of a true-crime expose.
50
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
The film includes graphic omnisexual and incestuous couplings and has an air of free-floating dread but, especially given its subject matter, it's oddly vacuous – it rarely takes hold emotionally even when its people hit bottom with a resounding thud.
50
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Savage Grace comes up bland and seems to go nowhere in particular.
50
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Savage Grace is a thoroughly disturbing story, told in a detached style rendering the overall experience an unsettling blend of lurid and vacuous.
40
Film Threat
Jamie Tipps
To be sure, it's a very pretty, well acted production; however, that doesn't make up for the fact that I hated every minute of it.
40
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
"Grace" may be based on a true story, but barely a moment in it feels real.
40
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
Proust might have known what to do with the Baekelands, but Mr. Kalin and Mr. Rodman don't make much more of them than the mess they apparently already were.
40
Austin Chronicle
Steve Davis
You can almost smell the desperation in the twisted psychosexuality of Savage Grace.
40
Empire
Staff (Not credited)
Savage Grace is simply hysterical: a film as harsh, brittle and unbalanced as its characters.
38
New York Post
Kyle Smith
For all its outré set pieces it never rises above the level of pretentious trash.
30
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
What Kalin fails to provide in the slightest degree is energy. The movie just sloshes along in a heavy, slightly overdone way.
30
Village Voice
Jim Ridley
A tawdry nighttime soap that marvels without insight at its characters' despicable behavior: It squanders a major performance by Moore.
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Walter Addiego
An unbroken flow of sad or nasty incidents.
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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