Esther KahnMovie Reviews

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Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 90
    The Onion A.V. Club | Scott Tobias

    Summer Phoenix has a screen presence that's simultaneously distancing and transfixing, an inscrutability that makes her seem either mysterious or a complete blank. Read full review

  • 80
    Los Angeles Times | Kevin Thomas

    Begins as a shadowy film that progresses from dark to increasing light. It has been stunningly photographed by Eric Gautier and has a wonderfully expressive score composed by Howard Shore. Read full review

  • 60
    L.A. Weekly | Manohla Dargis

    Brilliantly edited and gorgeously shot, Esther Kahn is a dream to look at and, courtesy of Howard Shore's minor chords and high-strung strings, definitely something to hear. Read full review

  • 50
    New York Daily News | Jami Bernard

    A draggy shaggy-dog story about a poor Jewish girl's painfully slow emotional awakening. The movie is 145 minutes long, so by the time Esther's awake, the audience may not be as lucky. Read full review

  • 50
    Slate | David Edelstein

    It's a charcoal draft of a movie -- magically allusive on some levels and utterly opaque on others, a strange combination of the overexplicit and the unwritten. Read full review

  • 50
    Christian Science Monitor | David Sterritt

    Desplechin wants to film an adventure of the human spirit in the manner of a Hitchcockian drama, but he doesn't have a solid enough grasp of English culture to equal the complexity of his French productions like "The Sentinel" and "The Life of the Dead." Read full review

  • 40
    The New York Times | Dana Stevens

    It is also possible that the problem lies not with Mr. Desplechin but with Ms. Phoenix. Her Esther is a fascinating mixture of passivity and ferocity, but it's not clear that she has the range to show both sides of the character. Read full review

  • 30
    Village Voice | J. Hoberman

    This is a movie about the nature of acting -- or, more specifically, the nature that creates an actress -- centered on what appears to be a spectacularly unconvincing title-role performance. Read full review

  • 20
    Variety | Todd McCarthy

    Senselessly long at two-and-three-quarters hours and with a protracted climax that eradicates any goodwill established in the fastidious first couple of reels. Read full review

  • 12
    New York Post | Megan Lehmann

    How do you inject life into a film whose central character is dull, slow, stupid and grim?If you're Arnaud Desplechin, you don't. Read full review

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