New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search
Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums
xx
Alphabet Killer, The
20
American Carol, An
43
Anamorph
64
Appaloosa
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
60
Blind Mountain
64
Brideshead Revisited
63
Burn After Reading
61
Bustin' Down the Door
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
58
City of Ember
82
Dark Knight, The
43
Death Race
15
Disaster Movie
62
Duchess, The
43
Eagle Eye
xx
Eden Lake
58
Express, The
49
Family That Preys, The
67
Flow: For Love of Water
72
Ghost Town
54
Hamlet 2
71
Horton Hears a Who!
55
House Bunny, The
40
Igor
51
Mamma Mia!
89
Man on Wire
31
Max Payne
35
Mirrors
31
Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The
34
My Best Friend's Girl
66
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
64
Pineapple Express
55
Ping Pong Playa
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
36
Righteous Kill
51
Savage Grace
56
Save Me
19
Saw V
16
Surfer, Dude
47
Swing Vote
57
Towelhead
60
Traitor
61
Wackness, The
72
Woman on the Beach
27
Women, The
89
Man on Wire
82
Dark Knight, The
72
Woman on the Beach
72
Ghost Town
71
Horton Hears a Who!
67
Flow: For Love of Water
66
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
64
Brideshead Revisited
64
Pineapple Express
64
Appaloosa
63
Burn After Reading
62
Duchess, The
61
Bustin' Down the Door
61
Wackness, The
60
Traitor
60
Blind Mountain
58
Express, The
58
City of Ember
57
Towelhead
56
Save Me
55
House Bunny, The
55
Ping Pong Playa
54
Hamlet 2
51
Mamma Mia!
51
Savage Grace
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
49
Family That Preys, The
47
Swing Vote
43
Eagle Eye
43
Anamorph
43
Death Race
40
Igor
36
Righteous Kill
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Max Payne
31
Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The
27
Women, The
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
20
American Carol, An
19
Saw V
16
Surfer, Dude
15
Disaster Movie
xx
Eden Lake
xx
Alphabet Killer, The
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Savage Grace
IFC First Take
|
|
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring
Julianne Moore,
Stephen Dillane,
Eddie Redmayne,
Unax Ugalde,
and
Belen Rueda
Savage Grace, based on the award winning book, tells the incredible true story of Barbara Daly, who married above her class to Brooks Baekeland, the dashing heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune. Beautiful, red-headed and charismatic, Barbara is still no match for her well-bred husband. The birth of the couple's only child, Tony, rocks the uneasy balance in this marriage of extremes. Tony is a failure in his father's eyes. As he matures and becomes increasingly close to his lonely mother, the seeds for a tragedy of spectacular decadence are sown. Spanning 1946 to 1972, the film unfolds in six acts. The Baekelands' pursuit of social distinction and the glittering 'good life' propels them across the globe. We follow their heady rise and tragic fall against the backdrop of New York, Paris, Cadaques, Mallorca and London.
(IFC First Take)
GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
WRITTEN BY: |
Steven M.L. Aronson (book)
Natalie Robins (book)
Howard A. Rodman
|
DIRECTED BY: |
Tom Kalin
|
RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: December 23, 2008
Theatrical: May 30, 2008
|
RUNNING TIME: |
97 minutes, Color |
ORIGIN: |
Spain | USA | France |
LANGUAGE(S): |
English | French | Spanish |
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...
83
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
If you might wish the film got deeper under the skin of the characters, you also feel grateful for the fact that you'll never get closer to them than watching it.
75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Part of the film's failure to arouse real horror is the languid direction; not enough seems to be at stake emotionally.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
It's still primarily a showcase and offbeat star vehicle for Moore. It's a bravura role and she brings it off with a chilling malevolence and a strange, disjointed vulnerability that almost, but not quite, makes her sympathetic.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
The film walks the fine line between exploitation and empathy to cast a chilly, memorable spell.
75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Money, madness, incest and murder! Just the recipe for a twisted mesmerizer of a movie, if it doesn't creep you out.
70
The Hollywood Reporter
Bernard Besserglik
U.S. viewers may be put off by its tangled sexual motifs and find its implied social critique a little close to the bone. But even Stateside, Julianne Moore, in her most challenging role in years, will win plaudits and attract mature audiences to a thoroughly absorbing and polished piece of work.
70
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
Howard A. Rodman's script has a lot of juice, and the rhythms are so pregnant that the air vibrates with something, even if you're not sure what.
70
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
Julianne Moore proves game for anything in this pitch-black true-crime reconstruction.
67
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The director, Tom Kalin, stages acid duels, but he should have provided more psychological structure. Though Moore, a great actress, turns fury into verbal music, we're never quite sure what's driving her.
67
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Savage Grace should have the force of Greek tragedy, but Kalin's chamber drama feels curiously stifling and flat, and Moore's volatile turn isn't enough to quicken its pulse.
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Living these lives, for these people, must have been sad and tedious, and so, inevitably, is their story, and it must be said, the film about it.
63
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
A chilly inquest into very bad behavior, Savage Grace is presented to us like an entrée at a five-star French restaurant. It's decadence under glass.
60
Los Angeles Times
Mark Olsen
It's tough to think of another film in which sex between a mother and her son is not necessarily the worst thing that happens.
50
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Rarely has appalling, reckless behavior been so soporific as in Savage Grace.
50
Variety
Jay Weissberg
Scripter Howard A. Rodman's treatment of an enthralling book is more a series of vignettes rather than a fully connected work, and helmer Tom Kalin seems unable to decide how much Sirkian melodrama to introduce into the heady mix. Gone are the reasons to be fascinated with these people, merely replaced with maddeningly over-arch dialogue and struggles with characterization.
50
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Has everything one could ask of a true-crime expose.
50
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
The film includes graphic omnisexual and incestuous couplings and has an air of free-floating dread but, especially given its subject matter, it's oddly vacuous – it rarely takes hold emotionally even when its people hit bottom with a resounding thud.
50
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Savage Grace comes up bland and seems to go nowhere in particular.
50
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Savage Grace is a thoroughly disturbing story, told in a detached style rendering the overall experience an unsettling blend of lurid and vacuous.
40
Film Threat
Jamie Tipps
To be sure, it's a very pretty, well acted production; however, that doesn't make up for the fact that I hated every minute of it.
40
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
"Grace" may be based on a true story, but barely a moment in it feels real.
40
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
Proust might have known what to do with the Baekelands, but Mr. Kalin and Mr. Rodman don't make much more of them than the mess they apparently already were.
40
Austin Chronicle
Steve Davis
You can almost smell the desperation in the twisted psychosexuality of Savage Grace.
40
Empire
Staff (Not credited)
Savage Grace is simply hysterical: a film as harsh, brittle and unbalanced as its characters.
38
New York Post
Kyle Smith
For all its outré set pieces it never rises above the level of pretentious trash.
30
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
What Kalin fails to provide in the slightest degree is energy. The movie just sloshes along in a heavy, slightly overdone way.
30
Village Voice
Jim Ridley
A tawdry nighttime soap that marvels without insight at its characters' despicable behavior: It squanders a major performance by Moore.
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Walter Addiego
An unbroken flow of sad or nasty incidents.
The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|