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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

67
$9.99
75
24 City
66
Adoration
74
Afghan Star
48
Alien Trespass
56
American Violet
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
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Away We Go
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Beaches of Agnes, The
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Big Man Japan
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Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
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Brothers Bloom, The
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Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
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Cheri
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Cherry Blossoms
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Dead Snow
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Departures
18
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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
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Girlfriend Experience, The
87
Gomorrah
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Great Buck Howard, The
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Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
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40
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Little Ashes
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Lymelife
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Merry Gentleman, The
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Moon
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New York
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Not Forgotten
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O'Horten
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Outrage
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Paris 36
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Pontypool
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Pressure Cooker
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Quiet Chaos
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Revanche
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Rudo y Cursi
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Seraphine
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Sex Positive
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Shall We Kiss?
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Sin Nombre
59
Sleep Dealer
74
Song of Sparrows, The
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Stoning of Soraya M., The
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Sugar
84
Summer Hours
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Tennessee
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Tetro
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Throw Down Your Heart
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Tokyo Sonata
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Tokyo!
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88
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60
Under Our Skin
69
Unmistaken Child
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
22
What Goes Up
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Whatever Works
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
91
Hurt Locker, The
89
Goodbye Solo
88
Tulpan
87
Gomorrah
86
Seraphine
84
Summer Hours
83
U2 3D
83
Revanche
83
Tyson
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
82
Sugar
82
Hunger
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
81
Il Divo
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
80
Food, Inc.
80
Tokyo Sonata
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
78
O'Horten
77
Every Little Step
77
Sin Nombre
75
24 City
74
Treeless Mountain
74
Afghan Star
74
Two Lovers
74
Song of Sparrows, The
74
Lemon Tree
71
Pressure Cooker
71
Jerichow
70
Shall We Kiss?
70
Tony Manero
70
End of the Line, The
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
69
Unmistaken Child
67
$9.99
67
Rudo y Cursi
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
66
Adoration
66
Moon
65
Sex Positive
65
Departures
64
Outrage
64
Examined Life
64
Throw Down Your Heart
64
Lymelife
63
Tokyo!
63
Cheri
63
Dead Snow
63
Tetro
63
Great Buck Howard, The
62
Cherry Blossoms
62
Big Man Japan
62
Not Forgotten
61
Sunshine Cleaning
60
Under Our Skin
59
Sleep Dealer
58
Julia
58
Easy Virtue
57
Away We Go
57
Merry Gentleman, The
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
56
Girl from Monaco, The
56
American Violet
55
Brothers Bloom, The
54
Is Anybody There?
54
Pontypool
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
52
Quiet Chaos
50
Management
48
Alien Trespass
45
Whatever Works
42
Little Ashes
42
Tennessee
40
Limits of Control, The
40
Paris 36
38
Gigantic
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
35
New York
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
28
Surveillance
22
What Goes Up
18
Downloading Nancy
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
xx
Call of the Wild
xx
Home
xx
Offshore
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Thumbsucker
Sony Pictures Classics
 |
|
MPAA RATING: R for drug/alcohol use and sexuality involving teens, language and a disturbing image
Starring
Lou Taylor Pucci,
Tilda Swinton,
Vincent D'Onofrio,
Kelli Garner,
Keanu Reeves,
Vince Vaughn,
Benjamin Bratt,
and
Chase Offerle
An honest and funny look at the struggles of people who feel deeply flawed, both those in youth and middle age. They yearn to be anything but their real selves with their real fears and doubts. Instead, they want to be "normal." They look for magic answers to fix themselves – only to realize that they can’t be someone else, that "normal" does not exist, and that their flaws are what make them human and loveable. (Sony Pictures Classics)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Mike Mills
Walter Kirn (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Mike Mills
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: January 24, 2006
Theatrical: September 16, 2005
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
96 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
Silver Berlin Bear, Best Actor (Pucci), 2005 Berlin International Film Festival; Special Jury Prize (Dramatic), Lou Taylor Pucci, 2005 Sundance Film Festival

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...
88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Quiet, quirky gem.

80
Dallas Observer
Melissa Levine
Supremely enjoyable.

80
Empire
Damon Wise
A refreshingly low-key treatment of teenage trauma, with a lovely star performance and an unforgettable approach to orthodontics.

80
New York Magazine
Ken Tucker
One of the wonderful things about Thumbsucker is that, unlike so many movies in which a character changes in order to propel the plot forward, this one stops to follow up on the consequences of those changes.

80
Film Threat
Bob Westal
Benefits from a goofy yet incisive sense of humor and some extremely strong performances.

80
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Mr. Pucci, emerging slowly from behind a stray lock of brown hair, plays Justin's ambiguous transformation with deft understatement. And Mike Mills, who wrote and directed, keeps the film from slipping either into melodrama or facile satire, the two traps into which this genre is most apt to fall.

80
The New Yorker
David Denby
It feels fresh, almost improvised, mainly because Mills doesn’t drive his scenes toward an obvious resolution.

78
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
It's the kind of movie that lives and dies by a viewer's own idiosyncrasies.

75
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
Pucci pulls off Justin's transformation without resorting to histrionics; it's like a radio-station signal finally coming in clearly.

75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
A perfectly cast Keanu Reeves pokes deadpan fun at himself in the role of Justin's New Age dentist, who hypnotizes the kid and encourages him to find his inner ''power animal.'' And Vince Vaughn, in a rare straight turn, is excellent as Justin's high school teacher.

75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
As it stands, the film is perhaps a tad low-key to catch the eye, but it's carefully enough made and, especially, acted, to keep a hold on the brain and heart long after it's over.

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
It's not a great movie, or one that should preoccupy you much afterwards, but it's certainly a good one. It's a fine debut for first-timer Mills.

75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The movie contains many of the usual ingredients of teenage suburban angst tragicomedies, but writer-director Mike Mills, who began with a novel by Walter Kirn, uses actors who can riff.

75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Bill White
Most disappointing is the ending, which, in projecting the possibility of a saner and more hopeful world, is a bit of a cop-out.

75
New York Daily News
Robert Dominguez
It's Pucci - who's already won a couple of acting prizes on the festival circuit, including Sundance - who steals the film with a wonderful performance blending the awkward innocence, vulnerability and pain of being a teen.

75
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
The movie has a lot of good bits and terrific performances, including a too-perfect Keanu Reeves as a mystic orthodontist.

75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Pucci is an actor to watch: He rides this spellbinder without softening the truths that plague the thumbsucker in all of us.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Thumbsucker is true to its nature, and that makes Justin's eventual transformation all the more rewarding.

70
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
Endearing and well-acted.

70
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
It's a familiar story, but Mills and Pucci treat it as if it were the first time anyone had thought to tell it.

70
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Thumbsucker is a head-scratcher. It's well directed and acted. Yet the story has little emotional pull.

70
Variety
Dennis Harvey
Thumbsucker (like "Donnie Darko") is more likely to prosper in the long haul as a home-format cult fave than in its initial arthouse tour. Both offer eccentric humor within a fairly somber overall tone, support-cast surprises, and (to a lesser degree in Thumbsucker) fable-like, hyperreal elements.

70
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
American independent movies about awkward adolescence are never in short supply, but this highly assured first feature by commercials and music video director Mike Mills is the first since "Donnie Darko" to view the latter stages of teenagerdom as fodder for a phantasmagorical odyssey of Lewis Carroll–like distortions.

70
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
A gently stirring symphony about emotional transition filled with lovely musical passages and softly nuanced performances.

70
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Vince Vaughn in a wonderfully low-key performance.

63
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
The film's underlying notion, that imperfection is the essence of humanity and the pursuit of bland flawlessness a kind of soul-killing drug, is far more compelling than its story of clichéd teen angst.

63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
So no one would argue that Thumbsucker sucks. But the thing does seem just so indie-movie familiar.

63
USA Today
Claudia Puig
The movie and its theme of self-acceptance has an honesty, undercut by occasional preciousness, that makes it worth seeing.

60
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
Thumbsucker aims high but swerves too frequently between the engaging and the credibility-defying to be satisfying.

58
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Pucci proves to be one of the most charismatic male ingenues since Johnny Depp.

50
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
The actors can't escape the confines of the warmed-over, coming-of-age-in-suburbia script by Mills, from a novel by Walter Kirn.

50
Slate
David Edelstein
The parents are the casualties of Mills' misplaced sincerity, which makes Thumbsucker the quintessential misadapted head-scratcher.

50
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
Often amusing but lacks the necessary bite.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 26 User Votes
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