GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs MUSIC: Last.fm | MP3.com MOVIES: Metacritic | Movietome TV: TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Stephanie Daley
Regent Releasing

Stephanie Daley reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 77 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.8 out of 10
based on 20 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for disturbing material involving teen pregnancy, sexual content and language

Starring Tilda Swinton, Amber Tamblyn, Timothy Hutton, Denis O'Hare, Melissa Leo, Jim Gaffigan, Halley Feiffer, and Kel O'Neill

This film weaves two parallel journeys into a sublime masterpiece about the absolute nature of truth. (Regent Releasing)


GENRE(S): Drama  
WRITTEN BY: Hilary Brougher  
DIRECTED BY: Hilary Brougher  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: September 4, 2007 
Theatrical: April 20, 2007 
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

Nominated, Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic), 2006 Sundance Film Festival

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
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
With a calmness that bespeaks confidence, this small, spellbinding second feature by Hilary Brougher brings together two women, trapped in separate states of denial and distress, who manage to end each other's entrapment.
Read Full Review
91
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The scary culminating flashback, in which Stephanie gives birth -- in a public restroom, on a high school ski trip -- is a marvel of authentic disturbance.
Read Full Review
90
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Brougher has taken material that sounds contrived and potentially exploitative and used her gift for careful observation and restrained emotionality to give it surprising authenticity.
Read Full Review
88
Boston Globe Janice Page
Tamblyn's surprisingly measured performance commands attention.
Read Full Review
88
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Some cases should never come to trial, because no verdict would be adequate. You are likely to be discussing this film long into the night.
Read Full Review
80
LA Weekly Ella Taylor
There is so much to admire and empathize with in Stephanie Daley that it feels almost boorish to quibble about whether the film needs to come packaged as a murder mystery.
Read Full Review
80
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Without standing on a soapbox Stephanie Daley suggests a tragic gender gap between men who judge and women who feel.
Read Full Review
75
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
This is first-rate stuff.
Read Full Review
75
TV Guide Ken Fox
However you feel about her character and what she may or may not have done, Tamblyn's portrayal of Stephanie Daley is softly devastating.
Read Full Review
75
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Braugher perhaps overvalues the parallels between Stephanie and Lydie. The scenario is too schematic and diminishes the power of each woman's story. She frames the drama as a cross between a whodunit and a whydunit, and neither strategy is entirely successful.
Read Full Review
75
USA Today Claudia Puig
The film itself is dark and chilling, if occasionally plodding, but worth seeing for the absorbing potency of its main performances.
Read Full Review
75
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A stark, painful drama about pregnancy--a subject rarely treated this fully, candidly or tragically.
Read Full Review
75
San Francisco Examiner Walter Addiego
This is grim material, but director Hilary Brougher -- working from her own script that won a Sundance award -- examines the lives of these two suffering women without sensationalism or preaching.
Read Full Review
75
Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
It is provocative, smartly made and truly independent.
Read Full Review
70
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Apart from Swinton's fine performance, what largely distinguishes this is Brougher's sharp narrative focus.
Read Full Review
70
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Despite an overly abrupt and oblique conclusion, this is a major American film, announcing the arrival of an independent director who deserves all the hype.
Read Full Review
70
Variety Scott Foundas
A taut, provocative, sometimes overreaching but always absorbing thriller.
Read Full Review
60
Village Voice Ed Gonzalez
Writer-director Hilary Brougher knows how to rub it in, but Tamblyn is fearless in her attempt to save the narrative from falling into clichéd sermonizing.
Read Full Review
60
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
A muted psychological mystery where filmmaker Hilary Brougher's interest in "solving" a possible crime is superseded by her investigation into matters involving denial, free will and the physical and emotional burdens of pregnancy.
Read Full Review
50
New York Post Kyle Smith
The movie amounts to an extended short story that progresses slowly and fades away with key questions unanswered. Ambiguity isn't necessarily interesting.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 6.8 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Michael L. gave it a4:
I really wanted to like this film. It started out promisingly, but quickly devolved into a big bore. That said, I'm male, and will never experience pregnancy first-hand; I hate to say it, but maybe it IS a "female thing"... 2 hrs. of pregnancy angst is a bit much for this guy. Great performances, timely and important plot--but a lackluster script. Maybe less footage of Lydie peeing and more principle character interaction? And God, zero development of secondary characters. I have no idea who Lydie's husband was, or who Stephanie's parents were. Sadly, "Satin", to me, was the most interesting character in the film, and who knows her story? She was tossed in, then discarded like a bay leaf in chicken soup.

Marc K. gave it an8:
It's rarely a disappointment if a movie has Tilda Swinton, but Amber Tamblyn shows off surprisingly great acting chops. Her performance deserves a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination at the very least, but since the film has been so little-seen, I won't be holding my breath.

Ken G gave it a4:
Slow, flat dispassionate movie, that is relying much to much on its explosive premise to carry it. Considering that premise, there is a real lack of edge, tension, and electricity here. Plus, both actresses seem to be sleep-walking through their roles.

David O gave it a0:
I kept looking at my watch at least every five minutes during this movie. It was so boring. I would have left if I'd had a ride. The characters were all so passive and cowlike that there was no one to care about. [***SPOILER***]The big climax is that the girl is drinking a glass of water and it breaks and cuts her hand. And the climax of the other plotline is that somebody else admits throwing something out of a car window. BFD. This was basically an NPR narrative, not a movie. All the characters were constantly fondling cats. Or looking in the cat box. This should have been a documentary about toxoplasmosis.

Kevin gave it a7:
This is the kind of movie that makes you appreciate really good filmmaking. I can see how women might live wallowing in the rich emotional mess of this movie, but as a man, the plot holes, cliches, and tugging at the heartstrings kept taking me out of the movie. It was also shot in such extreme closeup all the time that I thought I was watching a pan-and-scan version on TV instead of a film on a big screen. It could have been so much better.

Lei L. gave it a10:
I don't think I breathed for 90 minutes. Hardcore and thought-provoking, with phenomenal acting.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use