The September Issue (2008)
Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 109
Fresh: 91 | Rotten: 18
This doc about the making of Vogue's biggest issue and its frosty editor-in-chief is fascinating eye candy and light-on-its-feet fun.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 26 | Rotten: 4
This doc about the making of Vogue's biggest issue and its frosty editor-in-chief is fascinating eye candy and light-on-its-feet fun.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 49,129
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Movie Info
Vogue has been the most powerful and best-respected fashion magazine in the world for decades, and each year the journal devotes a fall issue to the designs and designers that the editors feel will be influential in the coming year. The September 2007 issue of Vogue, that year's annual Fall Fashion issue, became the biggest single issue in the magazine's long history, and filmmaker R.J. Cutler was given unprecedented access to Vogue's creative team as the issue was being prepared. The September
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All Critics (110) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (92) | Rotten (18) | DVD (4)
Grace, the movie implies, is the genius behind what Vogue really sells, which is romantic aspirational fantasies for women.
Top CriticWhile it's fun for fashionholics just to watch a movie in which people say "It's a famine of beauty!" and "The jacket is the new coat," the film becomes more substantial as it narrows its focus to two people: an artist and a curator.
A mesmerizing study of the tension between commerce and creativity.
Coddington, at least, gives us an appreciation of the talent seeing to it that the grandest fashion magazine of them all still sells the dream of glamour with style.
An insider's view of high fashion's ultimate tastemakers proves it's not just for aficionados.
[Cutler] worms his way into subcultures without judgment or probing, preferring to let group dynamics speak for themselves.
The September Issue is like the world's most perfect accessory; pointless, but difficult not to look at. And look at it long enough, you might actually find you like it.
full review at Movies for the Masses
The War Room director R J Cutler is a serious filmmaker, and while some may think fashion is a less than serious subject (Wintour's daughter Bee being one of them, as we find out in one amusing scene), his film is a riveting insight.
A handsome DVD treatment of a useless, predictable documentary experience%u2014an assessment Anna Wintour would say points to my insecurity.
a more perfect representation of the eternal struggle, and even more eternal dependence, of art and commerce, there could not be.
R. J. Cutler's documentary appears to gloss over many pertinent details and the filmmaker has been accused of being too easy on Wintour, but The September Issue is incisive, detailed and somewhat cruel.
sporadically successful, but mostly feels stranded at the surface, possibly because its insider-ism gets the best of the filmmakers by keeping them so trapped inside the Vogue universe that we never hear any outside voices
For some, fashion might not seem like exciting material, but director R.J. Cutler is able to create some genuine suspense and tension, as the days and hours count down to the "close" of the issue.
They say that when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you. Looking into the sunglasses of Vogue editor Anna Wintour must be kind of like that. Except that you never think to yourself, "I wonder if the abyss thinks I look fat in these jeans?"
In its way, The September Issue is about expert craftsmen toiling away at a factory, albeit an unimaginably glamorous one.
Cutler takes an often riveting nuts-and-bolts look at what goes into creating the Vogue September issue, and it's a shame that he isn't more focused on the procedural.
Grace Coddington, Vogue's Creative Director, is the secret weapon the movie needs. One sits through all the Anna Wintour stuff just to get back to her.
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