You want to like a movie made with the poise and precision of Birth, but the film feels only partially conceived.
Birth (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:136
Fresh:53
Rotten:83
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: A well-mounted production is undermined by a muddled, absurd storyline of questionable taste.
Theatrical Release:Oct 29, 2004 Limited
Box Office: $5,005,883
Synopsis: Maverick young filmmaker Jonathan Glazer affirms the promise of his brilliant debut, Sexy Beast, with his new film Birth, teaming with Academy Award® winner Nicole Kidman for a metaphysical love... Maverick young filmmaker Jonathan Glazer affirms the promise of his brilliant debut, Sexy Beast, with his new film Birth, teaming with Academy Award® winner Nicole Kidman for a metaphysical love story that explores the space between what we know and what we feel. Kidman stars as Anna, a delicate young widow who is on the verge of a new life when a solemn little boy appears, claiming to be the reincarnation of her dead husband. As Anna, Kidman achieves a breathtaking emotional transparency to portray an intelligent woman who discovers another side of herself in the face of a bizarre, yet tantalizing possibility. The actress is beautifully paired with Canadian child actor Cameron Bright, who portrays the boy interloper with a haunting stillness and conviction. Bringing an assured sense of style and form to a decidedly unconventional narrative, Glazer creates a world that is at once strange and familiar, like a fairy tale. Like many fairy tales, Birth is part romance, part mystery, and part family drama - woven into a magical whole about love, mortality and the unknown. Birth is scheduled for a Nov. 5 release. [More]
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Danny Huston, Cameron Bright, Lauren Bacall
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Danny Huston, Cameron Bright, Lauren Bacall, Alison Elliot, Arliss Howard, Anne Heche, Peter Stormare, Zoe Caldwell, Milo Addica, Ted Levine, Cara Seymour
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Screenwriter: Jean-Claude Carriere, Milo Addica
Producer: Nick Morris, Lizie Gower
Composer: Alexandre Desplat
Studio: New Line Cinema
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Reviews for Birth
[Bears] all the hallmarks of a too-long-in-gestation pet project: over-planned, over-thought, and meticulously fussed-with to the point of stasis.
The picture isn't scary or convincingly dramatic and is thoroughly devoid of humor or irony.
Hilariously pretentious, it's Nicole Kidman's funniest movie since The Hours and 2004's barmiest motion picture disaster area.
Copious strands of skill are wasted in a futile attempt to capture us in a net that's insupportable. Adult minds should rebel.
It takes care and precision to make an audience go along with a premise as peril-fraught as this one, and Birth doesn't quite manage it.
effective at creating a desolate, haunting atmosphere, an uncanny visual strategy that sustains the film for much longer than it deserves.
There’s a mysterious, hypnotic quality to the atmosphere of the film that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.
Although slightly exploitative in its provocative skin, Birth is a daring but stylishly sluggish mysterious melodrama that misses its mesmerizing, tawdry mark
Although Birth is not a complete disaster, it comes pretty darn close.
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