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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
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
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.
|
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
Picturehouse
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for language and sexual content
Starring
Ronni Ancona,
Steve Coogan,
Rob Brydon,
Keeley Hawes,
Shirley Henderson,
Dylan Moran,
and
David Walliams
A zesty celebration of storytelling and the life that spills out of it, this film tells two stories: that of an 18th Century Englishman Tristram Shandy (Coogan), and that of the hapless 21st Century filmmakers who are adapting the notoriously unfilmable work "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," with "Steve Coogan" (COogan) in the title role. (Picturehouse)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
Foreign
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Michael Winterbottom
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Laurence Sterne (novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Esq.)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Michael Winterbottom
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: July 11, 2006
Theatrical: January 27, 2006
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
94 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
UK |
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
Lisa Schwarzbaum
The first great, mind-tickling treat of the new movie year.
100
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Rather than adapt the novel per se, Winterbottom has adapted Sterne's hilarious attempts to make the mess of life fit the neat contours of the novel by making a movie about an attempt to make Sterne's chaotic and confusing novel fit the contours of a film.
100
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Because their work is so varied, the director Winterbottom and Boyce, his frequent writer, are only now coming into focus as perhaps the most creative team in British film.
100
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
If that sounds highbrow and pretentious, it's not. The neat trick of Tristram Shandy is that the whole thing comes off as a lark.
91
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Coogan makes tremendous sport of himself, taking on a role as an adulterous, vain, anxiety-riddled, alcoholic and truly comic creep. Brydon is exquisitely droll as the straight man to this ugly comedian act.
90
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
By not even attempting to follow Sterne to the letter, Winterbottom and Boyce have triumphantly captured his impish creative spirit.
90
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
This is not just a movie-within-a-movie, but a movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie, something that sounds unbearably arch but that is swift, funny and surprisingly unpretentious.
88
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
More fun than a company picnic - and a lot more fun than the classic 18th century novel that inspired it - Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story is the first good comedy of 2006.
88
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
The movie biz inside jokes eventually yield to fairly merciless plumbings about the construction of the self, resulting in a kind of philosophical discomfort that's much different from the run-of-the-mill humiliations this sort of thing usually trucks in.
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Can a little-read 18th-century literary masterpiece be food-spittingly funny? Can it also include contemporary English actors riffing about their bad teeth, getting drunk and kissing their personal assistants? The answer is yes, as long as you agree that the best way to adapt an original book is with a correspondingly original film.
88
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
The movie's still a wickedly droll put-on. Better yet, beneath the fun lurks a dry and weary sigh at life's refusal to match the tidiness of art.
88
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
It's a little bit "Tom Jones," a little bit "Adaptation," a smidge of Monty Python and a dash of Fellini's "861/2," right down to Winterbottom's use of music by the brilliant Fellini composer, Nino Rota.
80
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
The result is a movie more concerned with movie-making than with the stuff of Sterne's great book, but a movie that's good for lots of laughs if you share its fondness for actors and for fatuous actors' banter, which I do.
80
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
The trouble with describing a story this complex and digressive is that it's hard to keep it from sounding complicated and hard-to-follow. But for a movie about movies, it's surprisingly humanistic, cheerful and true to life.
80
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
Sitting in front of Tristram Shandy for an hour and a half lets us enjoy the fact that, smooth though its making is, the picture is winking at us.
80
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
It's pretty funny. You don't actually watch it so much as indulge it and admire its cleverness.
80
Dallas Observer
Luke Y. Thompson
Christopher Guest only wishes he could nail a parody/homage as smart and deadpan as this, but while his ensemble improvisation movies are increasingly full of mighty wind, Winterbottom's is consistently smart and silly without becoming caricature.
80
Slate
Dana Stevens
Never loses sight of its mission to be as silly, bawdy, and entertaining as possible.
80
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
The actors are in a nice place--poking fun at themselves without spilling into travesty. Fogged by self-absorption, Coogan makes you like him most when he's most dislikable; he has a fool's vulnerability.
80
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
A comedy embedded with secret tips for better, more enjoyable living.
80
Empire
Kim Newman
A successful mix of literary adaptation, meta-fictional discourse and inside-showbiz comedy. Both funny and clever.
80
Time
Richard Corliss
This may seem too inside-cricket for a U.S. audience. And it's true that Cock and Bull is so postpostmodern, it's very nearly postmovie. But it's no less diverting for all that. It would be a shame if the great novel no one has read becomes the terrific film nobody bothers to see.
78
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
Quite astonishingly, amidst all the chaos – and there's no better word for Tristram Shandy's inspired, breakneck madness – what emerges is a featherlight, moving meditation on new fatherhood.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
A highly amusing combination period film and mockumentary.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Winterbottom carves his own intimate tale out of the sprawling material, a modest miniature with witty flair and moments of humility.
75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
It's really inventive and bizarre and marvelously entertaining.
75
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
It's all a bit precious and preening, but Coogan is marvelous, almost as good as he was in Winterbottom's "24 Hour Party People."
75
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Noel Murray
Has about a dozen layers of in-joke, and up to the eighth or ninth layer, they mostly work.
75
New York Post
Kyle Smith
This movie is a proudly esoteric piece of comedy jazz: Freewheeling and low-key at the same time, it'll thrill audiences that know the meaning of the word esoteric but bore others. For a small cult, it seems likely to get funnier the more times you see it.
70
Variety
Leslie Felperin
Cheating flagrantly, helmer Michael Winterbottom has pulled off the trick -- sort of -- with the wickedly playful Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.
70
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
For all the on-set antics, appropriated Fellini music, and throwaway gags, the movie is most successful when Coogan is pulling faces for the mirror, aimlessly trading Pacino imitations with his sidekick Brydon, or riffing on the color of the latter's teeth.
70
The Hollywood Reporter
Sheri Linden
Long deemed unfilmable, the 18th century novel finds the perfect interpreters in director Michael Winterbottom and actor Steve Coogan.
70
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
This farce eventually runs out of steam, devolving into a protracted docudrama about actor Steve Coogan (who plays the title hero as well as his father), but until then this is a pretty clever piece of jive.
63
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
The tone is lighthearted and the performances are effective but, in the end, the feature is so inconsequential as to leave no lasting impression.
40
The New Yorker
David Denby
Unfortunately, it's also maddeningly repetitive, and dependent on the kind of strained English whimsy that leaves your throat sore from laughter that dies in the glottal region.
 The average user rating for this movie is 5.9 (out of 10) based on 54 User Votes
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