A powerful piece, 3 Needles ultimately fails to cohere as narrative, but there can be few more compassionate films playing at the festival this year.
Comment
02/09/06
3 Needles (2006)
35
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:37
Fresh:13
Rotten:24
Average Rating:4.9/10
Consensus: In getting its message about the AIDS epidemic across, the film unfortunately sacrifices story and character.
Runtime: 2 hrs 7 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Canadian writer-director Thom Fitzgerald's sweeping 3 NEEDLES journeys across several continents to show just how widespread HIV/AIDS has become in our modern world. Three distinct stories are... [More]
Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Lucy Liu, Stockard Channing, Olympia Dukakis
Director: Thom Fitzgerald
Reviews for 3 Needles
Top CriticThere are moments of sheer brilliance, but it's far too self-important and, ultimately, contrived.
11/02/05
Demonstrates that the transmission of HIV has become an uncontrollable global pandemic that feeds on poverty and recognizes no sexual, national or religious borders.
12/01/06
It sometimes produces moments of unexpected power. It also produces a bizarre and fatally uneven movie, veering from black comedy to maudlin religiosity, which seems to have been made in total defiance of both narrative conventions and emotional logic.
11/29/06
While fraught with structural problems because it over-reaches, Thom Fitzgerald's film is still a wonder in terms of ambition and social relevance.
04/21/06
Making serious points about serious issues, the film underscores repeatedly the need for personal and official vigilance concerning "the virus,"
12/21/06
As a movie with an important message, 3 Needles is an idiotic waste of time.
05/27/07
Sprawling from Montreal to South Africa to China, Thom Fitzgerald's 3 Needles is a great discussion tool for World AIDS Awareness Day that never achieves coherent shape as a three-paneled drama.
10/06/05
Top Criticgreat performances and the heartbreaking dilemmas
04/17/07
Each of these stories is a hissy fit of heinous proportions, one progressively worse than the other: all end on a sickeningly satisfied note of irony, tied together with hectoring narration that suggests a yuletide story.
11/07/06
Who wants to see anything as hopeless and cynical as this?
11/30/06
3 Needles, Thom Fitzgerald's globe-spanning investigation of the effects of AIDS, may ultimately be a call to unity, but there's an extreme amount of despair and misery before we get to hear that trumpet blare.
12/01/06
Three riveting dramas about the AIDS crisis set in South Africa, China, and Canada that open our eyes and our hearts to victims of this dread disease.
12/03/06
If nothing else, [director Thom] Fitzgerald has demonstrated how huge a challenge the AIDS epidemic is on a worldwide scale, and how it will take a concerted, intelligent effort to solve it. It'll take a lot more than throwing money around.
12/01/06
A marginally involving dramatization of how peopledeal with AIDS in 3 separate cultures
12/22/06
Only the African story feels complete, while the Chinese story is gloomily hopeless and the Montreal story is just a bad idea. 3 Needles is not about AIDS; it's about the exploitation of it.
12/01/06
Provocative and ambitious.
11/30/06
It's gorgeously filmed, but its character logic very rarely makes any sense.
11/30/06
3 Needles is difficult to take at times, but it ultimately rewards those viewers willing to meet its challenges.
12/01/06
By the time the movie returned to Africa, it had lost me despite its talented cast and its noble intentions.
11/29/06
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