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100This is such a rare movie. Its characters are uncompromisingly themselves, flawed, stubborn, vulnerable.
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90Mr. Malkovich is one of the few actors capable of conveying genuine intellectual depth.
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83As fiercely unsentimental as Disgrace is, it offers by the end a measure of hope, and because that hope is so hard-won, it has the ring of truth.
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80John Malkovich has played some odd ducks in his career, but for sheer unsavoriness, few can match the blandly monstrous Cape Town poetry professor he brings to off-putting life in Disgrace.
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80Surprisingly successful adaptation of J. M. Coetzee's superb novel.
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The austere economy of Coetzee's writing, crisply adapted for the screen by Anna Maria Monticelli, plays out the melodrama with quietly brooding menace.
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75I cannot tell a lie. I derive great satisfaction watching John Malkovich act.
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75It’s a harsh experience, at times engrossing, at other times stiff and unconvincing, but it asks a necessary question: What happens to the country’s whites after white rule is gone?
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75Newcomer Jessica Haines is transparent and heartbreaking as the prof's unorthodox daughter, a victim of violence as the old ways crumble.
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Absorbing but often bloodless and, frankly, depressing.
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70Anchored by another marvelously quirky yet deadly serious performance from John Malkovich, and likely to be relished by the fan base of J.M. Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel, this is a strong, perceptive, old-school arthouse picture.
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70Nothing is simple in this film, which ramifies into parallel meditations on race, the transformation of racial politics and lessons to be learned from the lives of dogs.
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70The movie eventually begins to wilt under the sober, plodding direction of Steve Jacobs, but the thoughtful screenplay gives Malkovich a complex, increasingly reflective character arc that he plays with great feeling, making the professor’s redemption seem honestly won.
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67After a compelling opening act and some shocking late-film developments, the film feels disengaged from the action at hand and the issues raised.
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The story often appears a little unreal.
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60Is it a great movie? John Malkovich's portrayal of an aging and sexually aggressive professor of poetry is enough to make the film worth anyone's while.
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40The film, unfortunately, hasn't the depth Malkovich brings to his performance.
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A frustrating film full of overplayed men-as-dogs metaphors, it’s only watchable for Malkovich, who could probably read a social studies exam and still be commanding.