Dark Matter
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Metascore
49 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 16 Critics What's this?

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6.2 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 6 Ratings

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  • Summary: Liu Xing is a Chinese science student pursuing a PhD in the US in the early 1990s. Driven by ambition yet unable to navigate academic politics, Liu Xing is inexorably pushed to the margins of American life until he loses his way. Liu Xing arrives at a big Western university with plans to study the origins of the universe. In the beginning, everything is looking up. He finds other Chinese students to share a cheap apartment with him, and flirts with an attractive American girl who works in a local tea shop. When the head of the department, Jacob Reiser, welcomes Liu Xing into his select cosmology group, it seems that only hard work stands between him and a bright future in American science. At an orientation for foreigners sponsored by a local church, Joanna Silver, a wealthy patron of the university, notices the earnest student, and an unspoken bond forms between them. Liu Xing becomes Reiser's protege, accompanying him to a prestigious conference where he makes an impressive debut. He is drawn to the study of dark matter, an unseen substance that shapes the universe, but it soon becomes clear that his developing theories threaten the Reiser model. Excited by the possibility of a breakthrough, Liu Xing is deaf to warnings that he must first pay his dues. Soon he is eclipsed within the department by Laurence, a more dutiful Chinese student, and is forced to go behind Reiser's back to publish his discoveries. When his article draws ire instead of accolades, Liu Xing turns to Joanna, who naively encourages him on his collision course. Liu Xing clings to the idea of American science as a free market of ideas, and of American society as wide open to immigrants. But in the end, his dissertation is rejected, and the girl in the tea shop brushes him off. His roommates find jobs, leaving him behind. Too proud to accept help from Joanna and unwilling to return home to his parents, Liu Xing becomes a ghostlike presence at the university. Left alone with his shattered dreams, he explodes in a final act of violence. (First Independent Pictures)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 16
  3. Negative: 2 out of 16
  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Maureen M. Hart
    75
    The film does a fine job of displaying the contrasts between these tense, formalized Chinese students and the faux populist American academics.
  2. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Zack Haddad
    60
    This is a great film, to a point. Unfortunately the ending doesn't deliver, making the entire feature an exercise is wasted potential. But maybe that's the point.
  3. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    60
    Director Chen Shi-Zheng's film has a graceful energy, and three strong performances help make this serene drama - and its shocking conclusion - quietly moving.
  4. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Nick Pinkerton
    30
    First-time filmmaker Shi-Zheng Chen shows little aptitude for accurately transcribing the textures of human interaction; there's not a single credible performance here, not excluding Meryl Streep as a faculty Sinophile, doing that thing where she grinds every line through a gauntlet of tremulous inflections.

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