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90A work of astonishing delicacy and force, a tone poem about the Frankenstein jolts that all of us, at one time or another, have to live through.
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90Ramsay reaches out boldly with a film that is as unsettling as it is minimalist.
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90(Morton's) character here is emotionally mute -- though Morvern speaks, she can't or won't reveal what's in her heart -- and her performance is brilliant from start to finish.
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90As Morvern, Morton is disconcertingly enigmatic, often bordering on catatonic. But she carries the movie effortlessly. And even though we're on the outside looking in, she carries us along, too.
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88I think the answer is right there in the film, but less visible to American viewers because we are less class-conscious than the filmmakers.
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88Morton deserves an Oscar nomination, but she is unlikely to get one. The movie is too dark and out of the mainstream to impress the conservative fogies who vote for the prizes.
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88A gossamer tale about a heavy subject -- a passive creature who slowly emerges as the active author of her own life.
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83There are two reasons Ramsay succeeds with a story that might at best be called morbid: She visually transforms the dreary expanse of dead-end distaste the characters inhabit into a poem of art, music and metaphor -- and she has the perfect actress to embody Morvern.
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80Ramsay's second feature is an extraordinary adaptation of fellow-Scot Alan Warner's acclaimed novel.
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80A strange and beautiful film.
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80Morvern Callar not only attempts to reveal an interior life, usually the province of novels, but also focuses on the interior life of a woman who refuses to open up to anyone.
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80One of the glories of the film is that Ramsay keeps us rigorously to Morvern's point of view without ever being explicit about what's going on in her head.
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80This minimalist film is slightly hobbled by its minimal plot; it's the crucial difference between a movie with moments of greatness and a great movie.
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78Ramsay is experimental, unconventional, and forever reaching at the gorgeousness in grief and despair. Her film moves slow as molasses, slow as paint drying -– and all the better to see the colors and the complexities.
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75Despite grim doings involving sexual hysteria and chopped-up body parts (don't ask), Ramsay and Morton fill this character study with poetic force and buoyant feeling.
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75What gives the movie real flesh and fantasy is the actress playing this part, the incandescent Morton.
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75Morton acts up a storm, and Ramsay continues her rise as England's hottest young female filmmaker.
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75It's a smartly surreal little movie, and again shows why, whenever there's a role that calls for an actress who can speak volumes without much dialogue (as in "Minority Report" and "Sweet and Lowdown"), the call goes out to Morton.
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75Strange, moody film.
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75With little dialogue to assist her -- just the strains of that wonderfully organic music -- she still manages to suggest the internal struggle, and to slowly reveal a fierce toughness that flies in the face of conventional morality.
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75In Morvern Callar, the subject matter may be morbid and unappealing, but the director handles it with a visual poetry and an eye for hidden beauty that marks a filmmaker of the first order.
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70More engrossing than convincing.
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67A movie's refusal to judge bad behavior can be a subtle way of trumping the audience -- a passive-aggressive form of one-upmanship.
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Fans of director Lynne Ramsay's first movie, the bleak “Ratcatcher,” won't be surprised that this little existential exercise makes “The Strangef” look like a funwagon.
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Positive: 10 out of 13
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Mixed: 0 out of 13
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Negative: 3 out of 13
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