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Downloading Nancy (2008)

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All Critics
Top Critics

Average Rating: 3.8/10
Reviews Counted: 29
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 24

Unseemly, unsettling, and unremittingly bleak, Downloading Nancy is slickly made but mostly unpleasant.

Average Rating: 2.6/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 8

Unseemly, unsettling, and unremittingly bleak, Downloading Nancy is slickly made but mostly unpleasant.

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Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 8,757

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Movie Info

A self-destructive housewife takes what may be her final step into the abyss in this independent psychological drama. Nancy Stockwell (Maria Bello) is a woman edging into her forties who has fallen into a deep and prolonged state of depression, finding her only solace in self-inflicted pain. Nancy has grown weary of her relationship with her husband, Albert (Rufus Sewell), and one day he comes home from work to find a note in which Nancy says she's decided to visit an old friend for a few days.

Unrated, 1 hr. 42 min.

Mystery & Suspense, Drama

Directed By: Johan Renck

Written By: Pamela Cuming, Lee H. Ross

In Theaters: Jan 21, 2008 Wide

On DVD: Jan 12, 2010

Strand Releasing

Downloading Nancy Trailer & Photos

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Cast

Critic Reviews for Downloading Nancy

All Critics (29) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (6) | Rotten (24) | DVD (2)

You can't really blame Bello for taking every chance available to let her monster talent off its chain, even when the opportunity takes the form of something so ill conceived and unworthy (and dull and ridiculous) as Downloading Nancy.

July 10, 2009 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle

| Comment

Mick LaSalle

San Francisco Chronicle

Top Critic

Some suspense arises about just how far the woman's sickness will take her, but it's overwhelmed by the pointlessness of the story.

June 5, 2009 Full Review Source: New York Post

| Comment

Kyle Smith

New York Post

Top Critic

Downloading Nancy is a nasty exploitation flick tarted up with art-house actors and psychobabble.

June 5, 2009 Comment

Manohla Dargis

New York Times

Top Critic

What makes the movie a trial to sit through isn't just the heroine's pain-freak tastes. It's that a kinkfest with this blah an emotional spectrum is selling its own chic form of puritanism -- sex with all the life force repressed.

June 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly

| Comment

Owen Gleiberman

Entertainment Weekly

Top Critic

Not only does it waste the audience's time with 102 minutes of misery and despair, but it also trashes the talents of four fine actors who should have stayed in bed reading better screenplays that deserve attention and enhance careers.

June 3, 2009 Full Review Source: New York Observer

| Comment

Rex Reed

New York Observer

Top Critic

When you peel away this film's complex performances, at the core of its drawn-out suicide spectacle is pain so extreme, so alienating, and, in the end, so pointless.

June 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Village Voice

| Comment

Elena Oumano

Village Voice

Top Critic

A tawdry tale which suggests that in the Internet Age, if you're contemplating suicide but can't quite summon up the nerve to do yourself in, you might surf S&M chat rooms to find a sadist whose fetish corresponds with your masochistic tendencies.

January 8, 2010 Full Review Source: Sly Fox

| Comment

Kam Williams

Sly Fox

Tortuous, painful, confusing, contrived. It's enough to put the viewer on the couch.

November 26, 2009 Full Review Source: Cinema Signals

| Comment (1)

Jules Brenner

Cinema Signals

Bello throws herself into Nancy admirably. Yet the film squanders her talents, and what's left of our patience, en route to a finale that is neither surprising nor illuminating: Like the rest of the movie, it's misery for misery's sake.

August 8, 2009 Full Review Source: San Francisco Examiner

| Comment

Rossiter Drake

San Francisco Examiner

A film that may be too heavy for its own good. Christopher Doyle fans will love it while tolerating the harshness of the story.

June 10, 2009 Full Review Source: Monsters and Critics

| Comment

Ron Wilkinson

Monsters and Critics

Director Johan Renck essentially builds Nancy and Albert's reality out of an aggregation of overwrought kitsch... and so what seem like occasional lapses into deadpan moments of fantasy aren't always productive in contrast. Heavily art directed for unplea

June 9, 2009 Full Review Source: SpoutBlog

| Comment

Karina Longworth

SpoutBlog

Boasts a raw, brave performance by Maria Bello and a stylish cinematography, but suffers from too much style over substance. Its dull, stilted screenplay has poorly developed characters and lacks any real suspense.

June 9, 2009 Full Review Source: NYC Movie Guru

| Comment

Avi Offer

NYC Movie Guru

Maria Bello and Jason Patric in a world of pain.

June 8, 2009 Full Review Source: MTV

| Comment

Kurt Loder

MTV

An amazing example of talented actors doing their best to make something genuine of a complex concept but being betrayed by writers and a director who seem afraid to really let the film connect.

June 6, 2009 Full Review Source: Movie Retriever

| Comment

Brian Tallerico

Movie Retriever

Maria Bello's courageous performance should find critical admiration but will not be enough for this spare and difficult drama to find much of an audience in its limited theatrical runs.

June 5, 2009 Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine

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Pete Hammond

Boxoffice Magazine

A chilly, bleak film about characters so programmatic that their plight is easy to shrug off.

June 4, 2009 Full Review Source: AV Club

| Comment

Noel Murray

AV Club

creates a deadening sense of ennui not through empathy or lived-in performances, but tedium.

June 4, 2009 Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com

| Comment

Jesse Hassenger

Filmcritic.com

For all the bad behavior on display, the emotional stakes remain hazily defined.

June 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Time Out New York

| Comment

Kevin Lee

Time Out New York

June 3, 2009 Full Review Source: NewsBlaze

| Comment

Kam Williams

NewsBlaze

An emotionally sterile and self-serious terminal disease drama without a moment of levity to be found from first frame to last.

June 1, 2009 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine

| Comment

Ryan Stewart

Slant Magazine

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Audience Reviews for Downloading Nancy

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Most films that explore sadomasochism do so in ways that can still be appealing and alluring to an audience comprised of people with relatively normal, well-adjusted ideas about sex and sexuality, but this is a notable exception. The sadomasochistic scenes in Downloading Nancy are fucking brutal, cringe-worthy, and

December 10, 2010

Jim Hunter

Super Reviewer

First of all, this film is by no means a feel good, popcorn popping piece of cinema. It's a rather dark, disturbing tale shot in quite dismal premises to tell a story that is real, but not one people want to hear. However, I was glued to the screen due to the brilliant acting performances by Maria Bello and Jason

August 27, 2009

Eric S

Super Reviewer

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