Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

67 3 Idiots
47 44 Inch Chest
82 Ajami
71 American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
73 Amreeka
75 Art of the Steal, The
43 Barefoot to Timbuktu
19 Bitch Slap
49 Blood Done Sign My Name
24 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
76 Broken Embraces
52 Celine: Through the Eyes of the World
67 Children of Invention
65 City Island
64 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
84 Cove, The
83 Crazy Heart
21 Crazy on the Outside
51 Creation
xx Daddy Long Legs
81 Damned United, The
57 Defendor
61 Delta
68 Departures
64 District 13: Ultimatum
72 Easier with Practice
85 Education, An
61 Exploding Girl, The
70 Eyes Wide Open
24 Falling Awake
81 Fish Tank
56 For My Father
52 Formosa Betrayed
xx From Mexico with Love
43 Frozen
xx Ghost Town
77 Ghost Writer, The
69 Girl on the Train, The
73 Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The
47 Good Guy, The
78 Greenberg
35 Happy Tears
68 Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess
20 Harlem Aria
xx Killing Jar, The
52 Killing Kasztner
xx Kimjongilia
41 Last New Yorker, The
76 Last Station, The
47 Little Traitor, The
51 Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, The
71 Lourdes
73 Me and Orson Welles
77 Messenger, The
80 Mid-August Lunch
57 Missing Person, The
76 Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
79 Mother
50 My Name is Khan
88 Neil Young Trunk Show
49 Nine
67 North Face
64 October Country
67 Off and Running
52 Paranoids, The
40 Phyllis and Harold
49 Pop Star on Ice
49 Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The
74 Prodigal Sons
xx Promised Lands (Re-release)
89 Prophet, A
76 Red Riding Trilogy, The
63 Runaways, The
32 Saint John of Las Vegas
83 Secret of Kells, The
69 September Issue, The
36 Serious Moonlight
57 Severe Clear
63 Shinjuku Incident, The
xx Shutterbug
77 Single Man, A
76 Still Bill
34 Stolen
xx Suicide Girls Must Die!
52 Tales from the Script
74 Terribly Happy
74 That Evening Sun
47 To Die for Tano
19 To Save a Life
63 Toe to Toe
69 Town Called Panic, A
54 Until the Light Takes Us
60 Videocracy
84 Vincere
66 Waiting for Armageddon
45 White on Rice
82 White Ribbon
xx White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights, The
43 Women in Trouble
xx Word is Out
64 Yellow Handkerchief, The
64 Young Victoria, The

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Starting Out in the Evening

EMAILPRINTRoadside Attractions

Starting Out in the Evening reviews
78
8.0 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 17 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama

Written by: Fred Parness
Andrew Wagner

Directed by: Andrew Wagner

Release Date:
Theatrical: November 23, 2007
DVD: April 22, 2008

Running Time: 111 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: PG-13 for sexual content, language and brief nudity

Starring Frank Langella, Lauren Ambrose, Lili Taylor, Karl Bury, Anitha Gandhi, Sean T. Krishnan, Jessica Hecht, and Adrian Lester

All that remains for Leonard Schiller is his work. His one enduring goal in life is to finish the novel whose completion has eluded him for ten years. With his earlier books out of print, he has learned to starve himself of the desire for the success he was once so close to, though beneath this practice lies a pull for his work to be rediscovered. Schiller’s main contact to the world is through his daughter, Ariel, with whom he has settled into an amiable relationship, though he must hide his disappointment that at 39 she remains befuddled by life, still looking for love and a father for a longed-for child. Schiller’s world is shaken when Heather Wolfe, a smart, ambitious graduate student, convinces him that she can use her thesis on his work to bring him back into the literary world spotlight. (Roadside Attractions)

What The Critics Said

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

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Above all is Langella, achingly vulnerable under layers of flesh. In one scene, alone, he eats peanut butter intensely, thoughtfully, and nothing he could do as Hamlet would seem deeper or more poetic.

Read Full Review >
100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Intelligent, involving and conspicuously adult, Starting Out in the Evening is almost shocking in its distinctiveness, its ability to create high drama from an unlikely source.

Read Full Review >
100

The Hollywood Reporter James Greenberg

Succeeds so beautifully because of a compelling story, great acting, intelligent writing and sensitive direction.

Read Full Review >
100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie is carefully modulated to draw us deeper and deeper into the situation, and uses no contrived plot devices to superimpose plot jolts on what is, after all, a story involving four civilized people who are only trying, each in a different way, to find happiness.

Read Full Review >
100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A rapturous, ruefully funny flight of sympathetic imagination. Featuring the first movie role for Frank Langella that ranks with his best stage parts, it's a rare kind of American movie.

Read Full Review >
91

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Andrew Wagner has made a lovely comedy of death and rebirth.

Read Full Review >
90

The New York Times A.O. Scott

What is so remarkable about Mr. Langella is that he seems to hold Leonard’s intellectual cosmos inside him, to make it implicit in the man’s every gesture and pause.

Read Full Review >
90

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It's rare to see a movie adaptation in which a filmmaker has taken so much care in translating the odd little qualities that make a particular novel special, to preserve the complex and fragile threads of feeling between characters that are often much easier to grasp on the page.

Read Full Review >
88

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Whether this reserved, hypercautious widower can deal with the arousal she creates in him - let alone be physically able to act on it - is one of the many layers of tension that drive this unusual and absolutely riveting dance.

Read Full Review >
88

USA Today Claudia Puig

We are slowly and mightily drawn into this intimate story, which is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving.

Read Full Review >
83

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Director Andrew Wagner, adapting a novel by Brian Morton, is sometimes understated to a fault, but his work with the actors, who also include Lili Taylor as Leonard's daughter, is impeccable.

Read Full Review >
80

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Movies about writers are almost always romanticized affairs but Starting Out in the Evening is the rare exception. It is at once an elegy for the vanishing generation of Bellow, Cheever, Mailer and Updike and a dead on indictment of our culture’s current state.

Read Full Review >
80

The New Yorker David Denby

Langella is superb, and Starting Out in the Evening is a classy film.

Read Full Review >
80

Newsweek David Ansen

Like most of this refreshingly subtle film, it's not what you expect, and it's not something you've seen before.

Read Full Review >
80

Variety Scott Foundas

Director Andrew Wagner draws topnotch work from a pro cast in Starting Out in the Evening, a wise, carefully observed chamber drama.

Read Full Review >
80

Village Voice Ella Taylor

This wise, observant, and exquisitely tacit chamber piece complicates every May-December, academic-novel cliché in the book.

Read Full Review >
75

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Langella delivers a master class in acting. He's playing Leonard Schiller, an aging author aching from the loss of his wife, a weak heart and literary neglect.

Read Full Review >
75

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It's a gentle, unhurried drama about how people can connect with each other through conversation, nonverbal gestures, and writing.

Read Full Review >
75

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Taylor also makes an impressive comeback as the conflicted daughter who instinctively distrusts Heather, but Starting Out in the Evening is first and foremost a triumph by Frank Langella.

Read Full Review >
75

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

Because the characters are richly realized and their dialogue rings true, we stick around, rooting for something like a happy ending.

Read Full Review >
75

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

If the film has a weakness, it's an ending that's so vague and open to interpretation that it's not at all clear how director Andrew Wagner ultimately wants us to feel about these self-absorbed characters and their precious literary concerns. But the performances carry the day.

Read Full Review >
75

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It never commits the sin of sentimentalizing old age, as Hollywood usually does when it deigns to admit that people over 55 exist.

Read Full Review >
75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This is a human-sized drama about people with contradictory motives, trying to help or use each other.

Read Full Review >
75

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Fact is, Starting Out is pretty dry stuff as a movie, even as it's enlivened by vivid acting.

Read Full Review >
75

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A "small" movie. But in its keenly observed examination of strangers who become intimates - and of family members who remain, in part, strangers - it has big things to say.

Read Full Review >
70

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Part of Morton's achievement is to present all four people through the viewpoints of the other three; Wagner can't do that, but the performances are so nuanced that the characters remain multilayered, and they're not the sort of people we're accustomed to finding in commercial films.

Read Full Review >
67

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's also and most interestingly about the writing process itself, a difficult feat to pull off on film, which Wagner and co-screenwriter Fred Parnes manage to display with unvarnished realism.

Read Full Review >
63

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Taylor is effective as a woman struggling to take control of her life, but Ambrose's work feels shallow in comparison.

Read Full Review >
63

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A gentle collection of scenes that work and scenes that don't.

Read Full Review >
63

TV Guide Ken Fox

Intelligently acted but oddly stagnant adaptation of Brian Morton's acclaimed novel.

Read Full Review >
63

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Starting Out never builds to the explosive climax it seems to be heading for, which I suppose is a good thing for its overall integrity, but maybe not so good for its motion-picture value.

Read Full Review >
50

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Wagner and company fail to follow Langella's primary rule of storytelling: "Follow the characters around until they do something interesting."

Read Full Review >
50

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Wallows in bleakness and settles for sentimental gestures.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 17 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chad S. gave it an8:
In Noam Bambauch's "The Squid and the Whale", Walt Berkman(Jesse Eisenberg) corrects his younger brother on a New York sidewalk, when Frank(Owen Kline) talks about the "magazine" that published their mother's short story. As if the smaller Berkman gives a flying f***, the bigger Berkman with the bigger brain, informs his tennis buff bro that their mother's short story came out in a "literary journal". Owen is a philistine. And later in the film, a self-proclaimed one. Ariel Schiller(Lili Taylor) is a philistine, too. Much to her father's silent chagrin, she doesn't speak his language. Heather(Lauren Ambrose) is working on a thesis, not a "book", that examines the out-of-print novels of a forgotten writer, novelist Leonard Schiller(Frank Langella). Ariel might be a yoga instructor, but she's older and wiser than Owen. Knowing full-well what was expected of a writer's daughter(named after Sylvia Plath's first book of poems), maybe Ariel purposely misspoke, to underscore Leonard's lost invitation to the pantheon of literary greats. Books are written about his contemporaries. But he's no Saul Bellow("The Adventures of Augie March"). Apparently, he wasn't much of a father either, at one time. Vestiges from this rocky past can be gleaned by the omission of an "I", when both father and daughter say they love each other("Love you," not "I love you."). In "The Squid and the Whale", we're witnesses to the storm. How children can drown in the vortex of their writer/father's megalomania. In "Starting Out in the Evening", we see the calm that comes after. More or less, Ariel survived. She's single and motherless, but far from being human wreckage. When Leonard finally relents, and admits to Heather, that his own life experiences do indeed inform his novels, its from a viewpoint of objectivity. "Starting Out in the Evening" is objective, too. Since there are no flashbacks to the earlier incarnation of this absentee dad, Leonard survives our scrutiny, our close reading, and doesn't come off as a tyrant.

Jay H. gave it a6:
I am surprised the ratings on this are so high. It's not a bad film but it sure is not an exciting one and I was bored with it at times. Finely acted though and it's a good quality film.

Mason P. gave it a1:
Awful, awful movie. Bad writing, bad editing, bad score, bad casting (at least in the female roles). The characters (other than Frank Langella) simply aren't believable as literary intellectuals--especially Lauren Ambrose. The writing certainly doesn't help. The same awkward scenes played over and over--reminded me of an episode of General Hospital (with a young, handsome doctor replaced by a 70 year-old writer) on repeat.

Harry L. gave it a10:
Jane S., I've been waiting years to say this but "Jane, you ignorant slut" you have no idea what the difference is between romance, sex and attraction. This was a marvelous work where, by the way, English and English majors, are treated with dignity, integrity and respect.

Joan gave it a10:
If Frank Langella isn't nominated for an Oscar for his performance in this film, then no one should be nominated. A beautifully cast and directed film...full of "real" NYC location shots and a sensitively portrayed character study of relationships. I loved it.

Nancy O. gave it an8:
Excellent and nuanced performance by Frank Langella. Lauren Ambrose was also great as the mainpulative, would-be seductress. Lili Taylor as the conflicted and weaker character of the daughter displayed the intelligence and ambiguity one would expect. Really interesting film.

Jane S. gave it a0:
I saw this because Ebert said it was for anyone who loved writing and literature. i didn't sign up to see a 25 year old Alice in wonderland kid have sex with a 65 year old dotard. disgusting from a young woman's point of view if you ask me. i nearly died. Ii hated this film, and it doesn't portray English majors favorably at all, or writers for that matter.

Read more user comments >

Popular on CBS sites: College Signing Day | March Madness | TV | iPhone | Cell Phones | Video Game Reviews | Free Music

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2010 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use