Full of fussed-over significant images and delicately planned interlocking narrative motives, and it's about as subtle and clever as somebody clubbing you over the head with a folding chair
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04/29/08
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The Life Before Her Eyes (2008)
24
%
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Reviews Counted:91
Fresh:22
Rotten:69
Average Rating:4.4/10
Consensus: Despite earnest performances, Life Before Her Eyes is a confusing, painfully overwrought melodrama.
Theatrical Release:Apr 18, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $166,373
Synopsis: Imaginative, impetuous and wild, Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) can’t wait for her adult life to begin. Whiling away the final days of high school in the lush springtime, Diana tests her limits with sex... [More]
Starring: Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri, Oscar Isaac
Director: Vadim Perelman
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Reviews for The Life Before Her Eyes
And then, THUD. Like an Acme anvil, the ending smashes everything to smithereens and you're left as discouraged as Wile E. Coyote.
05/01/08
... not so much a bad movie as an infuriating one, a pretty empty thing that wants desperately to be loved for its deep thoughts.
05/09/08
Perelman eases the transitions between the past and the present with echoing phrases and situations, but they all seem rather pat and contrived.
04/25/08
The dread is thick and the atmosphere is so heavy that every simple car ride or bedtime story seems like it's happening on the crumbling edge of a lonely cliff.
04/17/08
(The Life Before Her Eyes) is one of those films that you will walk out of just feeling very shaken up and disturbed.
05/14/08
The Life Before Her Eyes might offer a fresh perspective on aborted dreams, but its insights are buried under stale, inflated moviemaking.
04/25/08
What this film knows about grief, you could put in a haiku. (It’d read: “Death sucks, like really/Nothing else matters, ever/Therapy—what’s that?”)
04/18/08
If The Life Before Her Eyes has a message, it is that life is too short to squander on foolhardy meaninglessness. Take the film's advice. Stay away.
04/25/08
The roles are superbly realized by Wood and Thurman, but the real backbone of the picture is Perelman, who takes great care to weave the small tragedies into a wounded whole.
04/17/08
That the ending doesn't play fair with the audience is a misdemeanor; the felony is that the filmmakers don't seem to realize what an ugly moral statement they're making with it.
05/09/08
A thoughtful, if sentimental, semi-successful attempt to craft a drama about life and choice around the difficult subject matter of a school shooting.
03/28/09
Studio movies rarely depict Christians as fallible, thoughtful people who've been strengthened by faith but don't take it for granted.
05/23/08
Perelman never overcomes the disjuncture of having two familiar actresses play the same grown character, and despite the endless crosscutting, the two halves settle respectively into ghoulish foreboding and murky psychological drama.
04/25/08
Not a film entirely devoid of virtue, though it comes closer to that mark than any movie I've seen this year--closer than any movie I'd care to see in any year.
04/25/08
Top CriticIt's too clever by half, too facile in its use of sensationalist headline material, too far-fetched in its psychological fancy.
04/24/08
Director Vadim Perelman is big on slo-mo lyrical effects and confusing time shifts, making the movie unnecessarily arty and detracting from what could have been a searing psychological study.
04/18/08
It's an underrated, and horrific little dramatic thriller that twists the noose at every turn...
06/29/08
Involvement is less than it might have been as sympathy gets nicked away by the effort to resolve the associations and meanings. The search for the "ah hah!" moment is exhausting.
03/27/08
Audiences used to having everything spelled out for them may find the film too much work, but there are, I hope and believe, many people who appreciate and enjoy unraveling the mysteries of a poem or painting for themselves.
04/12/08
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