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85
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84
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
83
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81
Juno
81
Bamako
78
Starting Out in the Evening
77
Nanking
74
Orphanage, The
71
Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
71
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
70
Lars and the Real Girl
69
Charlie Wilson's War
68
Business of Being Born, The
68
Delirious
68
War Dance
65
Great Debaters, The
64
Cloverfield
63
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
63
11th Hour, The
63
Hannah Takes the Stairs
60
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
57
Romulus, My Father
57
Teeth
55
Resurrecting the Champ
53
Music Within
52
Hollywood Dreams
51
Golden Compass, The
49
Good Night, The
47
Bella
47
Lions for Lambs
47
27 Dresses
46
Reservation Road
44
Nina's Heavenly Delights
43
Youth Without Youth
43
Final Season, The
41
Mad Money
41
First Sunday
39
Alvin and the Chipmunks
39
P.S. I Love You
38
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
37
P2
32
Untraceable
30
Over Her Dead Body
30
Cover
29
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
24
One Missed Call
15
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
7
Hottie and the Nottie, The
xx
Moondance Alexander
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Silk
Picturehouse
 |
|
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for sexuality and nudity
Starring
Michael Pitt,
Kôji Yakusho,
Keira Knightley,
Alfred Molina,
Mark Rendall,
and
Sei Ashina
Based on the number one international bestselling novel by Alessandro Baricco, Silk is a sweeping romantic drama woven around a material of ethereal fragility: silkworm eggs. When the pébrine epidemic--the spotted silkworm disease that ravaged eggs from European hatcheries in the 1860s--spread overseas, eggs from as far away as Africa and India became infected; thus, the entire European silk trade seemed doomed. To continue his lucrative trade, Baldabiou--a roguish French trader--decides to send young military officer Herve Joncour on a perilous mission to Japan, separating Herve for months on end from Helene, his lovely and devoted schoolteacher wife. Prior to the opening of the Suez Canal, Japan produced the finest silk in the world for thousands of years and was considered a dominion forbidden to foreigners--quite literally the opposite end of the world. It is here that Herve encounters the powerful and feared local baron, Hara Jubei, with whom he will trade for the precious silkworm eggs. And it is here, in a world unlike anything that Herve has experienced before, that he becomes entranced by the baron's concubine, a deeply mysterious girl of intoxicating beauty. Without speaking one another's language, they share a doomed, obsessive love. A film of painterly beauty and ravishing romance, Silk is a historically rapturous epic romance of east meets west. (Picturehouse)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Michael Golding
François Girard
Alessandro Baricco (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
François Girard
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 26, 2008
Theatrical: September 14, 2007
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
110 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
Canada / France / Italy / UK / Japan |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
English / Japanese |

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...
75
New York Post
Kyle Smith
As sensuous as its title, Silk is an exquisitely felt love story that unfolds as delicately as a blooming flower. And as slowly.

58
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
Sensual but profoundly silly, Silk is ultimately little more than softcore porn with arthouse trappings, a moony, dopily romantic "Red Shoe Diaries" variation for the NPR set.

50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Stephen Cole
Though elegantly staged, Silk is badly written and indifferently cast.

50
San Francisco Chronicle
Joshua Kosman
Beautiful but flimsy film.

50
Chicago Reader
Joshua Katzman
A visually arresting period piece.

50
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Cinematographer Alain Dostie's stunning, painterly cinematography is the best -- and perhaps only -- reason to endure this stunted epic.

50
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Everything is brought together at the end in a flash of revelation that is spectacularly underwhelming.

50
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Bill White
Failing to make a lick of rational sense, Silk grasps at poetic straws.

50
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Crust
Though the film aspires to the epic with pretensions of deeper philosophical meaning, it ultimately settles for being the "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" of historical romances.

42
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Wan, generically pretty adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's 1996 novel.

40
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Mr. Pitt is a reasonably photogenic specimen. But this actor, whose typical screen character is a broken, androgynous man-child, is disastrously miscast.

38
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
By the end of Francois Gerard's plodding, uninvolving melodrama, his boredom will have nothing on yours.

38
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
By any standards, Silk is a bad movie: pretentious, stillborn, devoid of emotion.

20
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Silk is a snooze. Vacuous, arid and terminally dull, this adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's freak bestseller hasn't a trace of real life or energy to it, and is hamstrung by a lethargic lead performance by Michael Pitt.

10
Village Voice
Julia Wallace
Silk isn?t just bad. It?s utterly mad. It stutters and hiccups from scene to scene, from country to country, but never once does it make narrative or emotional sense.


The average user rating for this movie is 5.0 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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