- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
91Countdown to Zero makes old terrors radioactively new again.
-
90Inspired in part by the success of "An Inconvenient Truth," the makers of Countdown to Zero are determined to mobilize public opinion to zero out the world's nuclear arsenal. We all should be rooting for their success, because failure would leave no one left to mourn our mistakes.
-
As odd as it may sound, it's a remarkably beautiful movie.
-
88Like Charles Ferguson's excellent Iraq documentary "No End in Sight," "Countdown to Zero" has an agenda but has the cogent, reasoned rhetoric to support it.
-
83Made-up horror movies have nothing on Countdown to Zero, a documentary about nuclear security that won't make you sleep better at night.
-
80There are suggestions to help us sleep more easily, but the point is to wake us up.
-
80Walker integrates stranger-on-the-street testimony to further her general vibe of ignorance, thus pinpointing the true target of an agitated doc--our own blithe apathy.
-
80Some points are driven home over and over again and that repetition robs the doc of a bit of its power, but overall Countdown to Zero is effective and frightening.
-
80A terrifying and highly effective documentary.
-
80The movie takes as its mantra and organizing principle President Kennedy's observation, during his 1961 speech to the United Nations, that "every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness."
-
75In the film's most frightening sequence, Countdown to Zero imagines what would happen if someone detonated a bomb in the heart of a major city, such as New York City's Times Square.
-
75Illustrating the many ways nuclear weapons could kill you makes Countdown to Zero one of the most frightening documentaries you'll ever see, or endure.
-
75This is a sobering piece of advocacy cinema.
-
75Alternately edifying and alarming film about nuclear proliferation.
-
70Convincingly argued and extremely polished, it has theatrical potential for auds whose reservoir of worry about humanity's future hasn't already run dry.
-
70Paying to see Countdown to Zero is like tipping a fortuneteller to predict the manner of your death.
-
70A politically urgent picture, it will also literally scare the breath out of what will certainly be a worldwide audience.
-
67Recounting the history of nukes, mankind's seeming inability to render them obsolete, and the many nightmare scenarios that are cropping up with almost daily frequency in this grim new age of terror-on-demand,Countdown to Zero is less a documentary in the traditional sense than a scathing piece of advocacy journalism.
-
63Although the movie intends to incite viewers to social action, it is just as likely to paralyze them with fear.
-
63The best medium in which to view Countdown to Zero is on The History Channel, not in a theater.
-
60Walker was Oscar nominated for Waste Land this year, and while this occasionally unfocused doc doesn't hit those heights, it's still a valuable and scary film that should be seen.
-
60Oddly, Countdown to Zero ends by suggesting that viewers get those nukes abolished by texting their disapproval to a phone number listed in the credits -- as if the governments of China or North Korea (or the United States, for that matter) are just waiting for a gentle rebuke from civic-minded documentary viewers.
-
58Walker has something important to say with Countdown To Zero, but if this movie were standing on a doorstep with a petition, most reasonable people would sign it quickly and send it on its way, rather than inviting it in to chat.
-
50An earnest, alarmist new docu-plea for nuclear disarmament, concludes with an orgy of such destruction. Mushroom clouds. Infernal white light. Obliterating energy blasts. It's all here, and mostly beyond the pale.
-
50A mess of a movie – a sprawling PowerPoint argument that covers too much ground way too fast, dispensing Wikipedia-calibre essays on a variety of subjects, from a blurred bio of J. Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atom bomb, to an unsatisfying sidebar on A.Q. Khan, the world's first door-to-door nuke salesmen.
-
This is another well-intentioned but preaching-to-the-choir doc, and boring as well.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
Recommended Products
- Release Date: Jul 10, 2009
- View Trailers »
- Release Date: Jan 29, 2010
- View Trailers »
- Release Date: Feb 26, 2010
- View Trailers »
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 4 out of 6
-
Mixed: 0 out of 6
-
Negative: 2 out of 6
-
6
-
9