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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

67
$9.99
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24 City
66
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End of the Line, The
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Under Our Skin
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Valentino: The Last Emperor
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What Goes Up
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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.
|
Wordplay
IFC Films
MPAA RATING: PG for some language and mild thematic elements
Starring
Will Shortz,
Bill Clinton,
Jon Stewart,
Ken Burns,
Mike Mussina,
Bob Dole,
and
the Indigo Girls
Wordplay focuses on the man most associated with crossword puzzles, New York Times puzzle editor and NPR Puzzle Master Will Shortz. Director Patrick Creadon introduces us to this passionate hero, as well as to the inner workings of his brilliant and often hilarious contributors and many celebrity crossword puzzlers. (IFC Films)
| GENRE(S): |
Documentary
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Patrick Creadon
Christine O'Malley
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Patrick Creadon
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: November 7, 2006
Theatrical: June 16, 2006
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
94 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
Nominated, Grand Jury Prize (Documentary), 2006 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...
91
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Near letter-perfect.

88
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
When I first heard about Wordplay, I assumed I wouldn't have an ort of interest.

88
USA Today
Claudia Puig
If it's challenges you're after, forget cracking "The Da Vinci Code." Wordplay captures the exhilaration that comes from navigating the ins and outs of complex puzzles.

88
TV Guide
Ken Fox
It's also very cleverly edited - one scene will often branching off from another in much the same way a crossword puzzle works - and features a bang-up ending that will actually leave you cheering over a word game.

83
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
At times the film resembles a promo for Shortz and the Times, and the celebrity puzzlers, who include filmmaker Ken Burns, Bill Clinton, and the Indigo Girls, have an unfortunate tendency to bloviate. Not so Jon Stewart, who seems to regard each Times puzzle as an opportunity to go mano a mano with Shortz.

83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Gianni Truzzi
In Creadon's most effective and inspired sequence, he gets Reagle to create a puzzle using the film's title as its theme. It's during the sequence that we learn the lofty rules of creating crosswords, including lateral symmetry and a maximum ratio of black to white space.

80
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
What's an eight-letter word for a non-fiction feature that is witty, wise and wonderful? "Wordplay."
80
Time
Richard Corliss
This film is as smart and funny as its topic and its stars.

80
The New York Times
Phillip Lopate
Whatever the documentary's flaws, the filmmakers should be saluted for giving us a rare glimpse of life in these trenches.

78
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
The fact that Wordplay works as a film at all is a testament to its skill. The New York Times may never find a better marketing tool.

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
There's genuine suspense and a lot of humor.

75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The film is made with a lot of style and visual ingenuity.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
Opens up a world of words.

75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Manages to turn an internal, solitary activity into fodder for an engaging, even exciting movie.

75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
In breezy fashion, it introduces us to a handful of crossword savants, the history of crossword puzzles, a number of celebrity crossword addicts...

75
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Shortz's gentle manner and French-foreign-agent mustache go a long way toward making him a thinking girl's pinup nerd - and this despite the man's pitiless insistence on making the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle ''tough as a _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.''

75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
As someone who has never completed a crossword puzzle, I was surprised how engaged I was by Wordplay.

75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
It's light, it's bright and it succeeds precisely where the lesser doc fails -- by setting modest targets and hitting them square on.

75
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
The film's subjects are almost uniformly likable, self-deprecating, funny, and hyper-verbal, and their peculiar passion for crosswords and the sense of genial camaraderie among buffs proves surprisingly infectious.

75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
There's more palm-sweating suspense in one minute of this baby than in all of "The Omen."

75
Premiere
Ethan Alter
Ultimately, Wordplay is best enjoyed as an engaging look at a little-known subculture.

75
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
In this documentary, I learn there are people who can solve a Monday New York Times
puzzle in less than three minutes - without looking words up! I don't necessarily want to know these people, but they put on a good show at the annual crossword championship in Stamford, Ct., which is the centerpiece of
this affectionate, smartly-done promo for puzzling.

70
The Hollywood Reporter
Duane Byrge
While puzzles are not most peoples' lives, they are truly an essential part. Wordplay goes up/down and across on the varied reasons why more than 50 million Americans do a crossword puzzle every week.

70
Variety
Justin Chang
Punsters, linguists and crossword puzzle fanatics everywhere couldn't ask for a more bracing tribute than helmer Patrick Creadon's buoyant and exhilaratingly brainy documentary Wordplay.

70
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
Niceness also takes the edge off Patrick Creadon's otherwise revitalizing documentary.

70
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Another doc sharing some of its cultural DNA, the spelling-bee melodrama Spellbound, had children, families, social conventions--Creadon's film has only words and people with a little time to waste.

70
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
At its best when Creadon is burrowing deep into the world of the puzzles themselves, particularly when he sits down with puzzle constructor extraordinaire Merl Reagle.

70
Dallas Observer
Melissa Levine
Mostly it's just a sweet and lightly funny piece of highbrow piffle, as enjoyable as it is forgettable. There's no harm done, but there's not much else either.

70
LA Weekly
Chuck Wilson
Wordplay offers a running tutorial in how crosswords are created - lessons that are enhanced by the onscreen graphics of designer Brian Oakes, which, come tournament time, allow moviegoers to see the clues and grids the contestants are working on, theoretically allowing us to solve the puzzles along with them.

70
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Creadon and his editor, Douglas Blush, add verve to an otherwise talky exercise by cutting Wordplay as if it were a puzzle itself, with Across and Down camera moves and blocks of black space. A visual pun altogether worthy of those being filled in on screen.

70
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Crust
Delightful.

63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
In segments such as the Reagle and Clinton interviews, where character is revealed via puzzle style, Wordplay succeeds. The film is less successful when it travels to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

63
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Sweet, indulgent, and surprisingly soft in the center; the most minor entry in the brainiac-doc genre to date, it's nevertheless a perfectly entertaining hour and a half for crossword adepts.

60
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
This is mildly entertaining, though like the puzzles themselves, it favors diversion over wisdom.

60
Film Threat
Eric Campos
Wordplay is...well...just about as exciting as a feature length movie about people solving crossword puzzles can be. Not very.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
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