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Movies / On DVD / Manderlay
Manderlay

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Manderlay (2006)

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Reviews Counted:95

Fresh:48

Rotten:47

Average Rating:5.6/10

Consensus: Manderlay may work better as a political statement than as a film, making its points at the expense of telling a compelling story.

Runtime: 2 hrs 19 mins

Genre: Dramas

Synopsis: This is the strange, disturbing story of the Manderlay plantation. Manderlay lay on a lonely plain somewhere in the deep south of the USA. It was in the year of 1933 that Grace and her father... This is the strange, disturbing story of the Manderlay plantation. Manderlay lay on a lonely plain somewhere in the deep south of the USA. It was in the year of 1933 that Grace and her father had left the township of Dogville behind them. Grace's father and his army of villains had spent the entire winter seeking out new hunting grounds in vain, and now they were heading south in one last attempt to find a favourable location in which to take up residence. By chance their cars stop in the state of Alabama in front of a large iron gate bearing a thick chain and a padlock. Beside the gate, a dead oak tree towers over a heavy boulder with Manderlay hewn in monumental letters into the granite. Just as Grace, her father and his men are about to leave after a short break and a quick lunch, a young black woman runs up to the car. She knocks on Grace's window. She hammers at the glass in despair. Ignoring her father’s advice to leave others to their own affairs, Grace follows the girl through the gates of Manderlay and there, she finds a group of people living as if slavery had not been abolished seventy years earlier, with white masters and black slaves... Grace believes that she has a duty to make it up to the slaves for injustices they have suffered at the hands of her kind: 'we brought them here, we abused them and made them what they are', as she argues to her father; and she decides that having liberated Manderlay, she will remain at the plantation until she has seen them through their first harvest. Her father grudgingly leaves her with four henchmen and a lawyer, warning Grace that he won't be there to pick up the pieces when her plans for the resurrection of Manderlay fall apart... --© IFC Films [More]

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach de Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach de Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Michael Abiteboul, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier, John Hurt, Chloe Sevigny

Director: Lars von Trier

Director: Lars von Trier
Screenwriter: Lars von Trier
Producer: Vibeke Windelov
Studio: IFC Films

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Reviews for Manderlay

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61 - 80 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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The movie's considerably enveloping success lies in the disarming fashion in which it mixes stark artificiality and naturalism, as well as, eventually, in its marked lack of a hero or heroine.

Full Review Source: Now Playing Magazine | comment Comment
02/02/06
Brent Simon
Brent Simon
Now Playing Magazine

It’s true, of course, that Trier still hasn’t set foot on U.S. soil, but it may be that he sees us, in all our virtue and victimhood, that much more clearly for it.

Full Review Source: L.A. Weekly | comment Comment
02/02/06
Scott Foundas
Scott Foundas
L.A. Weekly

Von Trier, there's no doubt about it, has become a taxidermist of America's sins, but the way he puts those sins on display only to thumb his nose at them marks him as a new style of prankster-hypocrite.

Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly | comment 1 Comment
02/01/06
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

I am glad that [Von Trier] exists, to decry our sins, but, with another sequel to come (Manderlay is the centerpiece of a trilogy), I am even gladder that he is one of a kind.

Full Review Source: New Yorker | comment Comment
01/30/06
Anthony Lane
Anthony Lane
New Yorker

Manderlay certainly has its fair share of sanctimony and the familiarity of old school psychological racial conflict but it effectively works on the hungry psyche.

Full Review Source: TheWorldJournal.com | comment Comment
01/28/06
Frank Ochieng
Frank Ochieng
TheWorldJournal.com

Dubious intentions aside, Manderlay is an engrossing piece of art-house cinema, relying heavily on talent to make its points.

Full Review Source: FilmJerk.com | comment Comment
01/28/06
Brian Orndorf
Brian Orndorf
FilmJerk.com
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Toronto Star | comment Comment
01/28/06
Toronto Star

The film's conceits grow thin and von Trier's mocking, hectoring tone tiresome.

Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide | comment Comment
01/27/06
Ken Fox
Ken Fox
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Deadly slow and repetitious.

Full Review Source: Newark Star-Ledger | comment Comment
01/27/06
Lisa Rose
Lisa Rose
Newark Star-Ledger

Another ridiculous anti-American screed by the minimalist Danish director Lars von Trier, who has never set foot in this country.

Full Review Source: New York Post | comment Comment
01/27/06
Lou Lumenick
Lou Lumenick
New York Post

If Dogville offered up a ham-fisted critique of 'America' from a plane-phobic Dane who's never visited the place, Manderlay ups the arrogance ante by bonking us on the head with supposedly searing 'truths' ...

Full Review Source: Slate | comment Comment
01/27/06
Dana Stevens
Dana Stevens
Slate

Whether we like it or not, Von Trier's arguments have a universal social insight that would be detrimental to ignore. There's always value in seeing something from another's perspective.

Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews | comment Comment
01/26/06
Jeffrey Chen
Jeffrey Chen
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Set in Alabama in 1933, the movie lays out an excoriating examination of the legacy of slavery in the United States.

Full Review Source: New York Times | comment Comment
01/26/06
Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden
New York Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

As clumsy and ham-fisted as the movie's narrative process may be, its conclusion, however mordant or unforgiving, can't quite be shaken off so easily.

Full Review Source: Newsday | comment Comment
01/26/06
Gene Seymour
Gene Seymour
Newsday

Controversy comes as naturally to Danish director Lars von Trier as breathing, and he'll use any means to achieve his goal.

Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune | comment Comment
01/26/06
Colin Covert
Colin Covert
Minneapolis Star Tribune

It may be that the director has overreached in Manderlay by trying to deal with racial conflicts in an excessively abstract manner.

Full Review Source: New York Observer | comment Comment
01/26/06
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
New York Observer

One should be happy to learn "Manderlay" is better than "Dogville," if only because it is forty-five minutes shorter.

Full Review Source: FilmJerk.com | comment Comment
01/25/06
Edward Havens
Edward Havens
FilmJerk.com

Von Trier's hand isn't as sure in Manderlay as it was in Dogville. His film exasperates and illuminates in equal measure. But no film addict will want to miss his cinematic brilliance.

Full Review Source: Rolling Stone | comment Comment
01/25/06
Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

Von Trier's obvious bigotry towards the U.S. and the significantly weaker cast makes his revolutionary ideas a harder sell the second time around.

Full Review Source: ComingSoon.net | comment Comment
01/24/06
Edward Douglas
Edward Douglas
ComingSoon.net

Among the boldest and most original movies in recent release.

Full Review Source: Film Threat | comment Comment
01/19/06
Phil Hall
Phil Hall
Film Threat
 
 
61 - 80 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Text View | |< << 1 2 3 4 5 6 >> >|
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