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24
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xx
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72
Woman on the Beach
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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.
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Vicky Cristina Barcelona
The Weinstein Company
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MPAA RATING: PG-13 for mature thematic material involving sexuality, and smoking
Starring
Scarlett Johansson,
Penelope Cruz,
Rebecca Hall,
Javier Bardem,
Chris Messina,
Patricia Clarkson,
and
Kevin Dunn
Two young American women, Vicky and Cristina come to Barcelona for a summer holiday. Vicky is sensible and engaged to be married; Cristina is emotionally and sexually adventurous. In Barcelona, they’re drawn into a series of unconventional romantic entanglements with Juan Antonio, a charismatic painter, who is still involved with his tempestuous ex-wife Maria Elena. Set against the luscious Mediterranean sensuality of Barcelona, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is Woody Allen’s funny and open-minded celebration of love in all its configurations. (The Weinstein Company)
GENRE(S): |
Comedy
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Drama
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Romance
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WRITTEN BY: |
Woody Allen
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DIRECTED BY: |
Woody Allen
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RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: January 27, 2009
Theatrical: August 15, 2008
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RUNNING TIME: |
96 minutes, Color |
ORIGIN: |
USA | Spain |
LANGUAGE(S): |
Catalan | English | 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...
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
The film's freedom and control, its inspiration and focus, announce it as the work of a confident and mature artist.
91
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
It's a summery idyll: his most entertaining picture since "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994) or maybe "Sweet and Lowdown" (1999).
90
Village Voice
Scott Foundas
Allen has crafted a wry and thoughtful film about the peculiar stirrings of the heart that is certainly his most accomplished piece of work since 2005's "Match Point" and arguably his funniest in the eight years since "Small Time Crooks."
88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Smoking, shouting, practically shooting off sparks, Cruz spreads a wildfire sexuality across Allen's sunny tableau of Catalan country picnics and scenic Barcelona ramblings.
88
USA Today
Claudia Puig
As exhilarating, captivating and enjoyable as a summer romance in an exotic city.
88
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
After years of diminishing returns, Woody Allen spectacularly returns to form with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, his funniest movie in years and arguably his sexiest.
83
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Through it all, Vicky Cristina Barcelona remains unaccountably romantic, a confirmation that love, elusive and painful as it can be, is still worth pursuing.
80
The New Yorker
David Denby
Allen can be literal-minded about his thematic polarities, but, in this movie, he has put actors with first-class temperament on the screen, and his writing is both crisp and ambivalent: he works everything out with a stringent thoroughness that still allows room for surprise.
80
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Offers potent romantic fantasy elements for men and women and a cast that should produce the best commercial returns for a Woody Allen film since "Match Point."
80
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
Ought to have been an eye-roller. What a surprise that it's so seductive. The Woodman lives!
80
Washington Post
Dan Zak
Vicky Cristina Barcelona is beautiful because Allen is now decidedly in control of this phase of his career, which blends the sharpness of his older dramas with a newly acquired expatriate hipness.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
The movie goes down very easily.
75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The actors are attractive, the city is magnificent, the love scenes don't get all sweaty, and everybody finishes the summer a little wiser and with a lifetime of memories. What more could you ask?
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Gotham gives way to Gaudi and the Met to Miro, but the sensibility is the same, the city as a precious treasure, and so is the message: Life may be hard and short, love may be flawed or doomed, but, my, aren't we blessed with lovely distractions.
75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Sincere, delicately funny, a little staid, a little precious, and more interested in the ebb and flow of the heart than in the dubious rewards of sensational narrative twists.
75
Premiere
Eric Kohn
Allen does craft a fairly observant account of human behavior, so that the solemn aspects don't put a damper on the humor, or vice versa.
75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Woody Allen's sexiest movie ever.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
I enjoyed it as much as any Allen film of the last 20 years.
75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Cruz, who has never been able to fully show what she's capable of as an actress in an English-language film, takes to the role of the dark-haired hellcat with a sexy, bewitching fury.
75
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
With all this going for it, Vicky Cristina Barcelona should be better than it is. But there's something intriguing going on here. It's a movie about the sacrifices that people make to be happy.
70
Wall Street Journal
Joanne Kaufman
The narration, aided by a terrific score, does streamline the storytelling, and adds to it a faintly sardonic top note.
70
Time
Richard Corliss
It's just fine. Not great; just fine.
70
Film Threat
Matthew Sorrento
Let's not kid ourselves: There's something about Javi.
70
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
Although Vicky Cristina trips along winningly, carried by the beauty of its locations and stars -- and all the gauzy romanticism those enchanted places and people imply -- it reverberates with implacable melancholy, a sense of loss.
67
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The writing is zippy, the story spins like a top, and Bardem turns out to be the wittiest of leading men.
63
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Fitfully good.
63
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
There's a terrific movie buried in Woody Allen's tale of two American girls broadening their horizons in Barcelona, and every once in a while tantalizing glimpses penetrate the twee narration and mannered performances.
63
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
An atypical Allen film. Some of his usual themes are present - in particular, his neuroses about sex and love - but this movie does not bear enough Allen hallmarks to single it out as his work.
60
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Bardem's performance is so good it tends to mask how lacking much of what surrounds it is.
60
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
It's literally difficult to believe that the person who made this picturesque, clueless, oddly misanthropic picture also made "Annie Hall" and "Crimes and Misdemeanors."
60
New York Daily News
Joe Neumaier
There are two stormy performances from Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz that elevate Allen's melancholy thoughts on love and relationships.
50
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
Something is terribly amiss when the American actors sound like English is their second language.
38
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Allen's laziness is startling, even in so mechanical a filmmaker. He uses a monotonous narrator to tell us what the characters think and do, though he then shows them performing the actions that have just been described.
30
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Watching Allen fart out a story when he has no characters is always painful, as people are defined through clumsy expository dialogue and ranked according to their cultural accomplishments. But the script here is lazy even by his standards.
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 72 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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