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68
Honeydripper
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In Bruges
66
Darfur Now
66
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
65
Grace Is Gone
64
Chronicle of an Escape
63
City of Men
63
Signal, The
62
Spiderwick Chronicles, The
60
What Would Jesus Buy?
59
Under the Same Moon
59
Definitely, Maybe
57
Flawless
57
Hammer, The
55
Walker, The
54
Charlie Bartlett
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52
My Blueberry Nights
51
Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
50
Other Boleyn Girl, The
49
Cassandra's Dream
48
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
47
Boarding Gate
47
Semi-Pro
46
Finishing the Game
46
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
46
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46
Rambo
45
Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
44
Rails & Ties
44
Chaos Theory
42
Bucket List, The
41
Funny Games
41
Drillbit Taylor
40
Vantage Point
38
Flash Point
37
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37
War, Inc.
36
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36
Eye, The
35
Jumper
35
Flakes
34
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Fool's Gold
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xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Touching the Void
IFC Films
FILM:
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring
Nicholas Aaron,
Richard Hawking,
Brendan Mackey,
Joe Simpson,
and
Simon Yates
This documentary follows the climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates as they set out to climb the west face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes.
| GENRE(S): |
Documentary
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Joe Simpson (book)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Kevin Macdonald
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: June 15, 2004
Video: June 15, 2004
Theatrical: January 23, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
106 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
UK |

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
Newsweek
David Ansen
By the end of this white-knuckle movie, you stand in awe at the depth of man's will to survive. Touching the Void leaves you emotionally and physically spent, and grateful it was only a movie, not a mountain, you had to endure.

100
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The most harrowing movie about mountain climbing I have seen, or can imagine.

100
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
An absolutely thrilling recreation, in documentary style, of a now-legendary story.
100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
For audiences, two things keep the tension from becoming too excruciating: the presence of the survivors in front of us and the knowledge that in the grip of Macdonald's humane, lucid filmmaking, we're in the best of hands.

100
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Warms the heart while chilling the bones.

90
Dallas Observer
Bill Gallo
One of Void's great strengths is that it doesn't say much about "voids." It simply shows us, in incredibly vivid detail, heart-stopping danger and the raw will to survive.

90
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Something of a tour de force, this adaptation of Joe Simpson's nonfiction book about his climbing the 21,000-foot Siula Grande mountain in Peru, breaking a leg, and eventually making it back alive is remarkable simply because the story seems unfilmable.

90
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
As a piece of inspirationalism about human stamina, Touching the Void is peerless, but what it doesn't--perhaps can't--explain is why people place themselves in such peril.

90
LA Weekly
John Patterson
Breathtaking stuff that freezes the toes, harrows the soul and turns the viewer's seat into a foot-wide ledge over a yawning chasm.

90
The Hollywood Reporter
Michael Rechtshaffen
Factoring in Mike Eley's breathtakingly vivid photography and a virtuoso sound mix that completely envelops the viewer, it's enough to make you never again want to poke your head into the freezer.

90
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
Kevin Macdonald has a terrific tale on his hands, and his telling of it, very British in its matter-of-factness, can barely be faulted; yet the facts drop away, and it becomes impossible not to read the movie symbolically--as a journey to the center of the earth, or farther still.
90
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Uses first-person on-camera accounts of the adventure by Simpson and fellow climber Simon Yates to backdrop newly shot you-are-there footage that brings home the awesome and harrowing aspects of their feat.

90
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
Tells a tale of fortitude that comes not from muscle but from the ineffable, bungee-like sinew that is the human spirit.

88
Chicago Tribune
Robert K. Elder
So well cast and well captured is Touching the Void that it suspends disbelief, making us feel as if we're actually watching Simpson's own icy version of Dante's "Inferno."

88
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Truth, they say, is stranger than fiction
and also potentially more nail-biting and harder to believe. Touching the Void is an extreme example of this.

88
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
A stunning achievement, every bit the equal of the classic moun taineering book which inspired it.

88
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
As sagas of endurance in the face of ridiculous odds go, this story is up there with Shackleton and ''Into Thin Air.''

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Don Sapatkin
Touching the Void is, indeed, about living, but not the exhilarating kind. It's about survival -- raw, real, by force of will.

83
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
The story itself is so powerful and troubling, the moral geometry so vertiginous, and the photography so big that anything other than the natural sounds of snowfall and footfall is a Flat Earth Society intrusion.

83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
It's a gripping outdoor adventure and the movies' most inspiring epic survival story in years.

80
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
Unexpectedly bridges genres -- it's a buddy movie, a horror story, a boy's-own adventure, and a near metaphysical meditation on the limits of human endurance.

80
Film Threat
Rick Kisonak
Suffice it to say that MacDonald has made the finest mountain climbing movie you are likely ever to come across. The cinematography is awesome, the score by Alex Heffes terrific, the reenactments remarkably credible.

80
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
The film, directed almost with fierceness by Kevin Macdonald, is a wondrous recreation of that physical adventure. The most profound element, the moral crux, is skimped, but I kept wondering, not so much about the actors who were playing Simpson and Yates, as about the cameramen who were photographing them on that icy face, possibly suspended while they were doing it.

75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
It's also mysterious in fresh ways. Like Hillary, Yates and Simpson climbed the mountain because it was there -- but what strange deity sent down a Boney M song to help Joe Simpson get home?

75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Even for a sport already filled with horrific accidents and tales of unlikely survival, the mountain-climbing nightmare told in Touching the Void is astonishing.

75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Don't miss this harrowing movie if you're in the mood for adventure more thrilling than anything Hollywood has to offer these days.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Real acting replaces re-enacting, and amazing cinematography pits the limits of human will against the unruliness of nature.

70
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
At its heart, Touching The Void contends with the physical and spiritual dilemma of facing the unknown and overcoming paralyzing fear in order to emerge reborn on the other side. But the film's appeal is even more fundamental than that: It's just one of those stories that catches the breath, no matter how often it's told.

67
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Without really understanding what drove these two men to attempt the risky climb in the first place, its hard to extend the requisite sympathy for their plight. A void was definitely touched in this movie, and it was inside me.

63
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Simpson and Yates give a good idea why individuals are drawn to extreme sports.

60
TV Guide
Angel Cohn
Stunningly beautiful scenery and the nearly unbelievable true story of a mountain-climbing expedition gone awry to chilling effect.

60
The New York Times
Dave Kehr
This is compelling stuff, but there is something deeply distracting in the use of recreated material.

60
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
It's a nervy, quasi-documentary scheme that's often successful, perhaps more so than you'd expect for this kind of a hybrid endeavor. But Macdonald's technique eventually turns out to be as distancing as it is involving, paradoxically undercutting the reality as often as it enhances it.

60
Slate
David Edelstein
It's true that the movie, arrested between documentary and drama, doesn't quite do justice to either medium: The actors playing Joe and Simon don't have anything like "lines" to simulate "drama," or even just "conversation," while the real guys often fall back on bland English understatement.


The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 23 User Votes
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