There are moments of sheer brilliance, but it's far too self-important and, ultimately, contrived.
Comment
11/02/05
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
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.
02/09/06
Top CriticThe situations are contrived, the ironies are cheap, and the dialogue is overly blunt.
12/02/06
It's hard to know what exactly the movie means with a lot of the choices it makes, even if, ultimately, it means well.
12/01/06
Click to read the article
04/23/09
The [AIDS] virus knows no boundaries, and chaos easily overcomes social order. With breathtaking cinematography by Thomas M. Harting, Thom Fitzgerald's take on this dilemma does not offer much hope.
06/24/06
By the time the movie returned to Africa, it had lost me despite its talented cast and its noble intentions.
11/29/06
Broad in scope and at times visually stunning, [director Thom] Fitzgerald's project is ambitious but lacks cohesion.
12/01/06
Top Critic[A] well-meaning misfire.
11/30/06
Give me a little Sevigny and somehow the landscape of the heart and mind changes. For me, her qualities were all the salvation I needed. Without them, Purgatory, here I come!
10/26/06
It's gorgeously filmed, but its character logic very rarely makes any sense.
11/30/06
A marginally involving dramatization of how peopledeal with AIDS in 3 separate cultures
12/22/06
As a movie with an important message, 3 Needles is an idiotic waste of time.
05/27/07
Who wants to see anything as hopeless and cynical as this?
11/30/06
I'd love a peek at the keyboard Fitzgerald uses to conjure his screeds: I've never seen one sledgehammered into dust and splinters before.
11/30/06
Nothing is as irritating as watching a film which is little more than an exercise of ego; worse is watching one that is about as discrete in its purpose as a missionary in Africa.
12/01/06
great performances and the heartbreaking dilemmas
04/17/07
The results can be gripping, but also difficult to follow in some places -- and difficult to swallow in others.
04/21/06
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
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
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