GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer 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

xx All of Us
53 Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
57 Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
64 Appaloosa
69 Ashes of Time Redux
68 August Evening
xx B.O.H.I.C.A.
62 Baghead
84 Ballast
54 Battle in Seattle
xx Beer for My Horses
75 Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
xx Billy: The Early Years
66 Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
56 Bottle Shock
55 Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
50 Breakfast with Scot
61 Brick Lane
43 Call and Response
62 Changeling
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
47 Choke
46 Choose Connor
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 Eden Lake
66 Elegy
46 Elephant King, The
80 Encounters at the End of the World
26 Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64 Fall, The
69 Fear(s) of the Dark
26 Filth and Wisdom
28 Fireproof
52 First Basket, The
67 Flow: For Love of Water
37 Forever Strong
69 Frontrunners
82 Frozen River
43 Gardens of the Night
73 Girl Cut in Two, A
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
54 Good Dick
30 Guitar, The
84 Happy-Go-Lucky
44 Henry Poole is Here
31 Hounddog
27 House of the Sleeping Beauties
47 How About You
54 Humboldt County
72 I Served the King of England
70 I.O.U.S. A
40 Igor
64 In Search of a Midnight Kiss
78 I've Loved You So Long
63 JCVD
41 Johnny Got His Gun
xx Just Buried
62 Kabluey
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
25 Lake City
78 Last Mistress, The
81 Let the Right One In
xx Lower Learning
63 Man Named Pearl, A
89 Man on Wire
xx Mary
xx Matador, The
62 Mister Foe
84 Momma's Man
51 Morning Light
79 Moving Midway
33 My Name Is Bruce
59 Nights and Weekends
73 Obscene
40 Other End of the Line, The
34 Otto; or Up with Dead People
40 Passengers
xx Phoebe in Wonderland
55 Ping Pong Playa
75 Pool, The
77 Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82 Rachel Getting Married
56 Religulous
32 Repo! The Genetic Opera
xx Roadside Romeo
53 RocknRolla
56 Save Me
74 Secret, A
45 Shoot on Sight
57 Sixty Six
85 Slumdog Millionaire
56 Special
58 Splinter
79 Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67 Synecdoche, New York
82 Tell No One
64 Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
57 Towelhead
72 Transsiberian
83 Trouble the Water
43 Tru Loved
83 U2 3D
61 Universe of Keith Haring
84 Up the Yangtze
52 Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
79 Visitor, The
61 Wackness, The
59 We Are Wizards
55 What Just Happened?
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Twentynine Palms
Wellspring Media

Twentynine Palms reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 43 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.5 out of 10
based on 16 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 7 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Yekaterina Golubeva, and David Wissak

Twentynine Palms is a small, remote American town deep in the desert of central California. It provides the unique setting for this darkly comedic chronicle of the romantic and sexual life of a young couple in love. (Wellspring Media)


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Foreign  
WRITTEN BY: Bruno Dumont  
DIRECTED BY: Bruno Dumont  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: September 21, 2004 
Video: September 21, 2004 
Theatrical: April 9, 2004 
RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: France / Germany / USA 
LANGUAGE(S): English / French (with English subtitles) 

Nominated, Golden Lion, 2003 Venice 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
New York Post V.A. Musetto
At turns sexy, ultra-violent and sweet, it will infiltrate your brain long after you've seen it.
Read Full Review
75
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Dumont's methods are radical, but there's a fascinating method to his seeming cinematic madness.
Read Full Review
70
TV Guide Ken Fox
Even adventurous moviegoers who are familiar with Bruno Dumont's previous features...may be taken aback by the intensity of this shocker.
Read Full Review
70
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
For most of the way, the film is perceptive about the hot-and-cold volatility of wounded relationships, when couples are struggling to communicate yet familiar enough to exploit each other's weaknesses.
Read Full Review
63
New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Slams us with an absurdly repugnant ending, for absolutely no reason other than to shock viewers and generate cheap controversy.
Read Full Review
60
The New York Times Stephen Holden
The sustained force of Mr. Dumont's vision of existence as a swirl of brute instincts may not be easy to absorb, but it marks him as a major filmmaker.
Read Full Review
58
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
This is one of those films in which the Act of Driving becomes a 10-minute statement of high emptiness; Dumont even manages to make sex in the desert boring.
Read Full Review
50
The New Yorker David Denby
The latest minimalist provocation from the infuriating but talented French director Bruno Dumont. [12 April 2004, p. 89]
50
Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
It's alternately monotonous, hot and dramatic, which makes for a peculiar, not entirely unsatisfying atmosphere of neo -- or is that post? -- noir. What it all means, of course, I have no idea.
Read Full Review
38
Boston Globe Ty Burr
A textbook example of how a director can strip away plot, motivation, character, and meaning and still leave arrant pretension standing tall.
Read Full Review
30
Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
Embedded between all the sex and sunlight are some woefully underdeveloped ideas about American militarism and masculinity. Dumont doesn't bother to develop these ideas, principally because he seems to think it's enough to arrange his characters like puppets and tear off their heads.
Read Full Review
30
The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck
Ultimately a hollow and pointless exercise.
Read Full Review
25
San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Muddled, to put it kindly.
Read Full Review
20
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Alas, the plot eventually takes over, and it's exceptionally ugly and unpleasant.
Read Full Review
10
Village Voice Dennis Lim
The "Humanite" director's Death Valley void is the real "Lost in Translation."
Read Full Review
10
Variety Lisa Nesselson
Fails to captivate or intrigue at the most basic level.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Anton C. gave it a9:
The only simile that suits all the attributes to this film is "as hell".

Chad S. gave it a7:
The central question surrounding "29 Palms" for me is if the final violent act would've occured independently of the nod to "Deliverance". After all, why else would you be driving around the California desert? [***SPOILERS***] Maybe, just maybe, David was double-crossed by those men in the white truck. If you believe he was, the scene in which David boots Katerina out of the motel room, post-b.j., gains a noir-ish edge. Maybe her paranoia about that passing car is an unconscious premonition. Unlike Catherine Breillart's "Fat Girl", filmmaker Bruno Dumont might be planting clues under our noses.

pa pa gave it a9:
Human just being animal being human unusual violent.

Dave Van H. gave it an8:
Not as good as Dumont's Humanite, but a fascinating film nonetheless. most people will be put off by it's deliberately slow pace, but those who go along will not be disappointed.

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: MLB | Spore | iPhone 3G | Paris Hilton | Antivirus Software | GPS | Recipes | Shwayze | NFL

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use