Average Rating: 3.9/10
Reviews Counted: 60
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 45
Filth and Wisdom, while certainly ambitious, is mostly unconvincing and incoherent.
Average Rating: 4.2/10
Critic Reviews: 23
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 16
Filth and Wisdom, while certainly ambitious, is mostly unconvincing and incoherent.
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Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 1,843
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After more than two decades as one of the world's most recognizable stars, Madonna steps behind the camera for the first time with this comedy drama about a handful of bohemians struggling to make a name for themselves in London, which she both wrote and directed. A.K. (Eugene Hutz) is a Ukrainian émigré and struggling musician who fronts a band blending gypsy music with punk rock. Still coming to terms with a childhood pock-marked by abuse, A.K. believes that one has to confront the seamy side
Oct 17, 2008 Wide
Sep 29, 2009
IFC Films
All Critics (62) | Top Critics (23) | Fresh (15) | Rotten (45)
This is a terrible, terrible worthless movie that you shouldn't give any time to.
I'm confident the material girl has more good material for movies ahead of her.
Does anyone remember when Madonna was considered shocking?
At 84 minutes, the movie feels both overpadded and underdeveloped.
Nothing in this cynical bit of claptrap feels remotely real.
This is a movie that's just sort of there, and nobody much would have paid any attention to it without the Madonna connection. And chances are nobody much will even with that connection.
Madonna's direction isn't half-bad...too bad she chose a poor script teeming with uninteresting characters
Either Madonna failed to successfully guide her movie to a coherent state of mind or she simply has no gift for filmmaking. A case could be made for both, though the latter is an awfully tempting summarization of Filth and Wisdom.
If this were the first film of a 17-year-old who got a camcorder for his birthday...it could be called a promising first effort.
It's sweeter and sunnier than its material suggests, but not smarter.
Imagine having a philosophical discussion with Madonna. I imagine it would be like having one with any other high school dropout.
Madonna's directing debut shows that the megastar did not learn a lot about film craft and creates a routine, occasional amusing debut oeuvre. It should have been a more mature work and it is not.
Message to the director: Don't quit your day job just yet, but in the category of multidisciplinary artists moonlighting as filmmakers, I'll take you over Julian Schnabel any day.
There's no wisdom in this script.
As Bart Simpson once said of NAKED LUNCH, I can think of two things wrong with this title.
Curiosity-seekers may trickle in, but despite the deliberate move to release the flick unrated, there's nothing in here to merit a raised eyebrow.
At 83 minutes, it's tedious, pretentious, and just plain boring. I kept waiting for something to happen, but nothing does.
Is Madonna's "Filth and Wisdom" as bad as you've heard? Well, I have to say yes. When the film came out, it was savaged by critics and pulled from circulation in just a few days. I suspected the critics were being overly negative, as they are wont to do when a woman artist takes risks. But in this case the extreme
September 12, 2011
Super Reviewer
I don't see what the point of this was. I love Madonna, but obviously more so in front of the camera than behind.
November 7, 2009Super Reviewer
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