Critic Reviews
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Seeing it is a time-bending experience, a way of visiting the past and glimpsing the past's idea of the future. A masterpiece of art direction, the movie has influenced our vision of the future ever since, with its imposing white monoliths and starched facades.
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| 100 |
New York Magazine
You've seen the rest; now see the best.
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| 100 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
An awesome cinema spectacle.
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| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Does what many great films do, creating a time, place and characters so striking that they become part of our arsenal of images for imagining the world.
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| 100 |
Chicago Tribune
Trashy and glorious, the restored Metropolis is a pop epic for the ages.
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| 100 |
Christian Science Monitor
Metropolis has a place in world history as well as in the annals of fantasy. Adolf Hitler was said to have loved it, and Lang eventually fled Germany for Hollywood when the Third Reich wanted him to run its movie industry.
Few movies of any era offer so much varied food for thought, cinematically and politically. Its new restoration is a major motion-picture event.
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| 100 |
Miami Herald
What you come to see are the strokes of a visual master. You will not be disappointed.
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| 100 |
Baltimore Sun
It leaves you dazed and sated. Compared to the fast food "eye candy" surrounding it these days, Metropolis is a gourmet 20-course meal.
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| 100 |
New York Daily News
It took the German restorers four years to ready this print using dupe negatives and old prints found in archives around the world. Their work speaks for itself. Each frame of this classic is drop-dead stunning, the more so now that the movie no longer hiccups its way across the screen.
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| 90 |
Chicago Reader
Dave Kehr
Departing from a masterful manipulation of space, Lang transforms the futuristic city of the title into a field of dreams centered on death and sexuality.
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| 90 |
Village Voice
The greatest of all pulp fantasies.
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| 90 |
The New York Times
Metropolis retains its power to overwhelm, trouble and move because it is connected to the deep anxieties of modern life as if by a high-voltage cable.
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| 80 |
Film Threat
After half a century, does the story hold up? Eh, pretty much. In the end, the story doesn't really matter that much as this is really a vehicle for the amazing visuals.
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| 80 |
TV Guide
Dale Thomajan
What ultimately saves the film from both silliness and ponderousness is not its simplistic social message, not its now-stale theme, nor its disappointing characterizations, but rather the dazzling cinematic (and theatrical) bag of tricks which Lang and company employed to keep things moving.
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