Bee Season (2005)
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Reviews Counted: 105
Fresh: 45 | Rotten: 60
Bee Season is an intelligent, but frustratingly distant and diffuse drama about family dysfunction.
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Critic Reviews: 35
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 22
Bee Season is an intelligent, but frustratingly distant and diffuse drama about family dysfunction.
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Average Rating: 2.8/5
User Ratings: 12,351
Movie Info
Adapted from the novel by Myla Goldberg, Bee Season tells the story of a family whose turmoil is brought to the surface by a young girl's unexpected talent. Eleven-year-old Eliza (Flora Cross) is the invisible element of her family unit -- her mother and father (played by Juliette Binoche and Richard Gere) are both consumed with work and busy avoiding their faltering marriage. Her brother, praised for musical genius, is wrapped up in his own adolescent life. Eliza ignites not only a spark that
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Cast
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Richard Gere
Saul Naumann -
Juliette Binoche
Miriam Naumann -
Flora Cross
Eliza Naumann -
Max Minghella
Aaron Naumann -
Kate Bosworth
Chali
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All Critics (117) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (45) | Rotten (60) | DVD (13)
[A] pretentious family-in-crisis drama ...
Fine directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel (The Deep End) take a detour into mumbo jumbo.
There's no shortage of material on the screen in Bee Season -- it's just not assembled in a satisfying manner.
Bee Season is earnest and heartfelt and respectful. And a botch.
Co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, whose visual schemes lent a hypnotic aura to their previous collaborations ... don't find the right balance of story and image this time.
It's more thoughtfully conceived than most of what passes for filmmaking these days.
Words and letters may hold all the secrets of the universe, but 104 minutes wasn't enough to hold and resolve all the secrets and mysteries of Bee Season.
Perhaps the film's disparate subplots are given due attention in the book, but it all feels unfocused and jammed together here.
A well-told, enjoyable and insightful film, but its not necessarily as revelatory as its makers seem to think.
Os dez minutos finais de projeção parecem pertencer a um outro filme. Bem ruim, por sinal.
Something like a dream Madonna might've had while she nodded off during Spellbound...
We're knee-deep in tastefully presented balderdash.
This is second-rate Hallström, drama plus whimsy that, when rubbed together, creates not friction and fire, but a nubbing-down of both elements.
A visual feast, but a spiritual famine.
The premise is intriguing, but the oddly toned screenplay is a mostly opaque and convoluted string of dramatically convenient yet inconsistent assumptions.
A tiresome piece of claptrap masquerading as family drama.
This aloof, often cold drama may be too cerebral for its own good, as it fails to explain some of its more mystical elements.
...sneaks up on you starting as a family drama and tells that story in the guise of a religious thriller.
Here's an unusual but sweet little drama about a dysfunctional family.
Family dysfunctions, spellings bees, spiritual enlightenment--Bee Season definitely has an odd lot of things going on. But this family drama somehow draws you into its weird little realm and holds you there.
Very worth 'going with' for both the things it has to say and the bold ways in which it says them.
For the sake of variety, we need more spirituality in the movies, which is why the very existence of Bee Season is a blessing even if its haphazardness makes it something of a curse.
fragmented, a film with several provocative ideas and a few strong scenes but no sense of fulfillment and considerably less emotional impact than it should have.
Intriguingly, it can be viewed as a thrill-less update of a Val Lewton thriller... It asks the viewer to decide whether its characters are crazy, cursed or blessed as they encourage the incursion of the supernatural into their lives.
McGehee and Siegel have never met a mundane event they couldn't turn into an epiphany.
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