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Moondance Alexander
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
O
Lions Gate Films Inc.
MPAA RATING: R for violence, a scene of strong sexuality, language and drug use
Starring
Mekhi Phifer,
Josh Hartnett,
Julia Stiles,
Elden Henson,
Andrew Keegan,
Rain Phoenix,
John Heard,
and
Martin Sheen
A contemporary retelling of "Othello," Shakespeare's timeless tale of treachery and jealousy, set in an elite private school located deep in the American South. (Lions Gate Films)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Brad Kaaya
William Shakespeare (play Othello)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Tim Blake Nelson
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 19, 2002
Video: February 19, 2002
Theatrical: August 31, 2001
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
91 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Sensitive and vivid response to the tangled issues of teen violence, race and self-esteem.
88
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
A sign of O's effectiveness is that it works regardless of whether you know Shakespeare's play.
88
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Exceptionally intelligent and powerful contemporary adaptation.
83
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
To an astonishing degree, O gets the tragic Shakespeare mood, that somber stentorian passion born of hidden slivers of ambition and betrayal.
75
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
This is a serious and well-acted drama, not a jokey ripoff, whose relevance (however distant) to Columbine is a plus.
75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
A good film for most of the way, and then a powerful film at the end, when, in the traditional Shakespearean manner, all of the plot threads come together, the victims are killed, the survivors mourn, and life goes on.
75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Artful and emotionally compelling.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
O has one advantage over "Othello" -- since it's a new movie, not a classic, it has the power to surprise.
75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
The filmmakers have a vision of the way Shakespeare can be made vibrant and vital to modern viewers, with or without the lofty original dialogue.
70
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Essential to the success it manages is Hartnett's low-key, charismatic performance -- cool, withholding, compelling. The triumph of his insinuating Hugo/Iago is how plausible he is, how he manages to convincingly inject poison in so many minds without seeming to be trying.
63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Stripped of its poetry, some of the devices of the tragedy of the Moor come off here as woefully contrived.
63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
What O lacks is a sense of spontaneity: Despite its contemporary dialogue and manner, the movie can't overcome a nagging aura of artifice.
63
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
The film collapses under the weight of the effort to shoehorn Shakespeare's story into a context that ultimately doesn't accommodate it.
60
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Every character fated to die in Othello meets his or her maker by the time the curtain falls on Blake's adaptation, which means the manicured campus of Palmetto Grove is left littered with slain coeds.
60
Mr. Showbiz
Kevin Maynard
Too much of a locker-room melodrama to make for great tragedy.
50
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
A fairly ordinary drama about young love, basketball, petty jealousy and high school politics. The movie also has one of the goofiest, over-the-top finales in recent memory.
50
New Times (L.A.)
Luke Y. Thompson
The film generally looks like a TV special, with low production values and lots of closeups.
50
Washington Post
Rita Kempley
Everything has been modernized except for the characters, and that's this movie's tragic flaw.
50
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
This turgid melodrama fast-breaks away from the heart of its own subject.
40
Time
Richard Schickel
On your already groaning Shakespeare for Teens video shelf, stack this one above "10 Things I Hate About You" (a.k.a. "The Taming of the Shrew") and quite a bit below "Romeo + Juliet."
40
Newsweek
David Ansen
The actors attack their roles with commitment (Hartnett’s understatement is impressive), but their fervor can’t hide the movie’s implausible, often confusing storytelling.
40
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
In trying to make "Othello" more lifelike and bring it down to a younger audience -- in effect, to make it more democratic -- the adaptation has rendered the material artless.
40
Village Voice
Amy Taubin
Had Nelson and Kaaya been less concerned with following Othello to the letter and rather had pursued this love affair into uncharted cinematic waters, O might have been more than an unresolved mixture of gimmickry and good intentions.
30
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
The film is a plodding, earnest adaptation that strips the source of its richness and ambiguity.
30
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
It's a doomy dirge of a movie, in which the protagonists, or at least the actors who play them, aren't equipped to handle their outsize passions.
20
LA Weekly
Manohla Dargis
The makers of this malnourished teen drama haven't just dropped six letters from the title of Shakespeare's Othello, they have excised everything that gives the original its troubling power -- principally a point but also furious passion.
 The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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