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71
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93
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27
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47
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56
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93
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82
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73
Kung Fu Panda
72
Ghost Town
71
Tropic Thunder
70
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
67
Bolt
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
63
Burn After Reading
61
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
60
Traitor
59
Role Models
58
Express, The
58
Quantum of Solace
58
City of Ember
57
Secret Life of Bees, The
57
Body of Lies
57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
57
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
57
Flash of Genius
56
Twilight
56
W.
56
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
55
House Bunny, The
54
Get Smart
53
Quarantine
53
Rocker, The
53
Lucky Ones, The
52
Longshots, The
51
Mamma Mia!
49
Sex Drive
49
Family That Preys, The
49
Soul Men
47
Swing Vote
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
46
Lakeview Terrace
45
Blindness
45
Pride and Glory
43
Eagle Eye
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
41
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
39
Nights in Rodanthe
37
Miracle at St. Anna
36
Space Chimps
36
Righteous Kill
36
Fly Me to the Moon
35
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
31
Max Payne
28
Haunting of Molly Hartley. The
27
Women, The
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
20
American Carol, An
19
Saw V
15
Disaster Movie
15
College
xx
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xx
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64
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62
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84
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54
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75
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56
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55
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50
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61
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43
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84
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46
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69
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73
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55
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77
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56
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79
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67
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57
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83
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52
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79
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61
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59
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55
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66
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89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Up the Yangtze
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Ballast
84
Momma's Man
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Frozen River
82
Rachel Getting Married
81
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
80
Encounters at the End of the World
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
79
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79
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78
I've Loved You So Long
78
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77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
75
Pool, The
75
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
74
Secret, A
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Obscene
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
72
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72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Frontrunners
69
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68
August Evening
67
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67
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66
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
66
Elegy
66
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64
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
64
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64
Appaloosa
64
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63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Man Named Pearl, A
63
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62
Changeling
62
Kabluey
62
Duchess, The
62
Mister Foe
62
Baghead
61
Wackness, The
61
Brick Lane
61
Universe of Keith Haring
59
Nights and Weekends
59
We Are Wizards
58
Splinter
57
Towelhead
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
57
Sixty Six
56
Special
56
Save Me
56
Religulous
56
Bottle Shock
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
55
Ping Pong Playa
54
Humboldt County
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
53
Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
52
First Basket, The
52
Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Choose Connor
46
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46
Dukes, The
45
Shoot on Sight
44
Henry Poole is Here
43
Call and Response
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Johnny Got His Gun
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
40
Passengers
37
Forever Strong
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
33
My Name Is Bruce
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
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28
Fireproof
27
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Everybody Wants to Be Italian
26
Filth and Wisdom
25
Lake City
xx
Dostana
xx
Phoebe in Wonderland
xx
All of Us
xx
Matador, The
xx
Billy: The Early Years
xx
Roadside Romeo
xx
B.O.H.I.C.A.
xx
Eden Lake
xx
Just Buried
xx
Beer for My Horses
xx
Mary
xx
Lower Learning
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Very Long Engagement, A
Warner Independent Pictures
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for violence and sexuality
Starring
Audrey Tautou,
Gaspard Ulliel,
Dominique Pinon,
Clovis Cornillac,
Jérôme Kircher,
Chantal Neuwirth,
Albert Dupontel,
and
Denis Lavant
An extraordinary love story set against the background of World War I.
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Foreign
|
Mystery
|
Romance
|
War
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Guillaume Laurant
Sébastien Japrisot (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: July 12, 2005
Video: July 12, 2005
Theatrical: November 26, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
134 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
France |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
French (with English subtitles) |

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
Rapturously beautiful, startlingly audacious and often very funny, the film employs many of the techniques that were used so pleasingly in "Amélie."
100
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
It's a magical film which manages to transport and rivet us in the same highly-imaginitive, breezily playful way "Amelie" did.

100
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
Hauntingly tells a story older than the Odyssey and as timely as today's body count from Iraq.

100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Unfolds amid the mechanized carnage of World War I. Yet everything in it is personal. That's why it's a masterpiece.

91
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
A unique and masterful film, filled with surprises and felicities and moments of transporting visual power.

91
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
This is a movie that considers graphic violence with a refined taste for the sensuous: Guts spill, blood spurts, corpses stink, but there is a handsome, absurdist humanity to the way Jeunet (who wrote the script with Guillaume Laurant) maps out the crossroads of human carnage and human caring.

90
Time
Richard Corliss
Can a movie have too much good stuff? Not when it's stuffed like this one.

90
Variety
Lisa Nesselson
Told with a blend of visual mastery and emotional intimacy, ambitious venture sustains a special melding of romance and pragmatism that should engage discerning audiences.

90
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
The holiday season's best movie so far.

90
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
In its insistence on the centrality of the war to the collective consciousness of mankind, it's of a piece with "The English Patient," rather than "Saving Private Ryan."

90
Film Threat
Michael Ferraro
The film is near perfect in its attempt to properly mix the irrationality of war in with an interesting love story.

90
New York Magazine
Ken Tucker
When this long movie is over, all you want to do is clap and weep and watch it all over again immediately.

88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Jeunet brings everything together -- his joyously poetic style, the lovable Tautou, a good story worth the telling -- into a film that is a series of pleasures stumbling over one another in their haste to delight us.

88
USA Today
Mike Clark
A long movie that almost wears out its 21/4-hour welcome, yet it's full of surprises.

88
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
An epic treatment of epic themes that doesn't soft-soap its audience, but at the same time provides a terrifically satisfying entertainment.

88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
An emotional powerhouse.

88
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Flattens you with concussive detail and the awfulness of war; it plays like "Saving Private Ryan" as remade by a Continental mathematician flipping out on Ecstasy.

80
The Hollywood Reporter
Bernard Besserglik
Jeunet provides numerous pleasures, particularly visual, along the way.

80
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
A resolutely odd, occasionally absurd movie, but it's as charming and stylish as one could expect from this pair - if you like that sort of thing.

80
Slate
David Edelstein
The downside to all this stylishness: that A Very Long Engagement is Amélie Goes to War.

80
Empire
Ian Nathan
Inventive and lyrical, A Very Long Engagement is a joyous contradiction in terms: a war-torn romantic comedy.

75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
A Very Long Engagement is "Cold Mountain" with French people.

75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Certainly long and not always engaging and comes with a predictably basic ending, yet there are unexpected pleasures, moments of beauty and tiny pockets of joy to sustain you through the journey.

75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
It's an odd, initially jarring mixture of style and subject matter that works better as the film goes along.

75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
The movie works amazingly well as a historical epic.

75
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
There are many ways to say that war is hell, but few filmmakers have said it with as much imagination, humor, intrigue and humanity as Jean-Pierre Jeunet in A Very Long Engagement.

75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Longer than necessary, that is, for the story it has to tell. This flaw aside, the drama is well crafted and sometimes touching, with especially forceful opening scenes.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Starts slowly, but builds to a satisfying conclusion.

70
TV Guide
Ken Fox
The film is a trifle long too long for its rather slim mystery, but in face of so much beauty and invention that's a small quibble.

70
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
Mathilde's story is well enough handled by Jeunet to be endurable, and the rest of the film is a reward.

63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
It's just exhausting. For all of the movie's sumptuous, eyepopping craft, you'll feel more than a little relief when Mathilde finally reaches the end of her quest.

60
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Sacrifices compelling drama for gratuitous whimsy and big-budget spectacle.

60
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Engagement simply disappears inside its own enormous, intricate and ambitious design.

60
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
Only when Jodie Foster materializes midstory, delivering a beautiful, pocket-size performance as the mistress of one of the condemned men, does the film spring to life.

60
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
Boldly aspirational. It's Jeunet's stab at "Paths of Glory," dipped in a sepia bath and halfway wrenched into a women's picture.

60
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
For all of Audrey Tautou's considerable charm in the title role, Jeunet's need for a well-ordered universe proved as suffocating and exhausting as being trapped on an amusement-park ride.

50
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
Shuttles between schoolboy humor, calculated savagery and, at the end, a rank sentimentalism in which love all too easily conquers all.

50
Dallas Observer
Melissa Levine
The result is nothing but allusive and memorial. And boring. This film is boring, at least partly because it is trying desperately to be big.

50
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
The elements are all here for something spectacular and in brilliant bursts, Jeunet really gets it but in the end, all that potential is sunk by a terminally confused tone and milquetoast pairing of lovers. Pity that.


The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 36 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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