A stoic tease of a movie. But it is a worthy effort because Mr. Malkovich proves his devotion to actors, lingering on them during moments of silence.
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05/01/03
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The Dancer Upstairs (2003)
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Reviews Counted:112
Fresh:71
Rotten:41
Average Rating:6.4/10
Consensus: Bardem is compelling in the lead role, and Malkovich proves adept at crafting mood.
Theatrical Release:May 2, 2003 Limited
Box Office: $2,282,798
Synopsis: The directorial debut of John Malkovich, THE DANCER UPSTAIRS is a riveting political drama set in an undetermined Latin American city. A revolution has started, and the local police have been... [More]
Starring: Javier Bardem, Laura Morante, Oliver Cotton, Luis Miguel Cintra
Director: John Malkovich
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Reviews for The Dancer Upstairs
Top CriticThe actors' diverse accents clash, some are clearly more fluent than others and the sense of relief when anyone speaks a rare line in Spanish is palpable.
05/01/03
Bardem is easily up to his part of the job, but Malkovich has a weakness for unfocused mood-setting and cinematic meandering that dilute the movie's emotional strength.
05/01/03
Bardem ... marvelously underplays here as a man getting resigned to lifelong weariness in both his personal and professional lives.
05/01/03
Top CriticHere, the urgent question of how an individual maintains his humanity when his paychecks are cut by a government every bit as corrupt as its terrorist outlaws isn't the stuff of abstract speculation but a matter of life, death and honest screen thrills.
05/01/03
Javier Bardem is terrific, as usual, in a film that hovers between genres, albeit with considerable grace.
05/01/03
Top CriticA labor of love hobbled by a stubborn desire to eke its delicate love story out of a premise that all but sits up and begs to be treated as a political thriller.
05/01/03
Malkovich squeezes the most from his exotic locations, and the intriguing performances give a human face to its topical subject.
05/01/03
A promising film rather than a fully realized one, an ambitious but cloudy tale through which the warm rays of a luminous intelligence and sympathy occasionally glint.
05/01/03
Top CriticThe Dancer Upstairs is a subtle and sophisticated political thriller marking the directorial debut of John Malkovich.
05/01/03
The movie has a mystery, and moral unease, that lingers.
04/30/03
Top CriticDespite Bardem's charisma and an intriguing scenario based on historical events, it's flabby and more than faintly self-indulgent.
04/30/03
Little other than the love story subplot to energize the proceedings, many viewers will find that, for all its grace, The Dancer Upstairs moves too slowly.
04/29/03
Top CriticInitially engrossing, The Dancer Upstairs slackens in its second half.
04/29/03
Top CriticDirector John Malkovich does a slow-motion Costa-Gavras.
04/03/03
Stretches are terrific, but the slow pacing becomes methodical, and the final stretches, which should be lingering and reflecting on emotional threads, simply end up ponderous.
02/16/03
Despite its identity crisis, The Dancer Upstairs is eminently entertaining -- if a film about murderous terrorists and corrupt bureaucrats can be said to amuse.
01/25/03
Feels less tantalizingly ambiguous than it does like a prologue that has somehow taken the place of the story that was meant to succeed it.
01/18/03
Though character-driven, there is heart-pounding tension in this spy story, John Malkovich's directorial debut.
01/15/03
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12/10/02
Latest News for The Dancer Upstairs
February 17, 2006:
Newell & Bardem Come Down with "Cholera"
International acting stud Javier Bardem and well-rounded movie director Mike Newell are about to bring the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Love in the Time of Cholera" to the... More...
May 06, 2003:
. . . this is a thriller that means to get under your skin rather than make you leap from your seat. 
More...
September 25, 2002:
From the Oscar nominated dramatic powerhouses, John Malkovich and Javier Bardem, comes an English language drama exploring real life terrorism in 1980s Latin America. As the opening film at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, 'The Dancer Upstairs' is hoping
More...
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