Average Rating: 4.9/10
Reviews Counted: 37
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 24
In getting its message about the AIDS epidemic across, the film unfortunately sacrifices story and character.
Average Rating: 4.5/10
Critic Reviews: 15
Fresh: 3 | Rotten: 12
In getting its message about the AIDS epidemic across, the film unfortunately sacrifices story and character.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 2,844
Three stories, which offer differing perspectives on the AIDS pandemic, are featured in this anthology-drama. Sister Clara (Chloë Sevigny) is a young nun who is working with two, more experienced, missionaries (Olympia Dukakis and Sandra Oh) in a village along the African coast. Sister Clara finds herself struggling against ignorance and misinformation among the natives, but discovers she can only accomplish so much through traditional means and is forced to make a great personal sacrifice for
Dec 1, 2006 Wide
Apr 3, 2007
Bigfoot Entertainment
All Critics (38) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (13) | Rotten (25) | DVD (4)
If nothing else, [director Thom] Fitzgerald has demonstrated how huge a challenge the AIDS epidemic is on a worldwide scale, and how it will take a concerted, intelligent effort to solve it. It'll take a lot more than throwing money around.
Only the African story feels complete, while the Chinese story is gloomily hopeless and the Montreal story is just a bad idea. 3 Needles is not about AIDS; it's about the exploitation of it.
Broad in scope and at times visually stunning, [director Thom] Fitzgerald's project is ambitious but lacks cohesion.
It's hard to know what exactly the movie means with a lot of the choices it makes, even if, ultimately, it means well.
Though not as coherent as it might be, 3 Needles, with its stunning cinematography by Thomas M. Harting, is never less than engaging and suggests powerfully the myriad reasons why AIDS, after a quarter of a century, remains so difficult to combat.
Had it taken a more hard-headed approach, 3 Needles might have been to the AIDS epidemic what Traffic was to the drug trade.
As a movie with an important message, 3 Needles is an idiotic waste of time.
great performances and the heartbreaking dilemmas
A marginally involving dramatization of how peopledeal with AIDS in 3 separate cultures
Making serious points about serious issues, the film underscores repeatedly the need for personal and official vigilance concerning "the virus,"
3 Needles is a case of diminishing returns with the first story of blood running in China the best and the last, set in Africa, the least compelling.
Three riveting dramas about the AIDS crisis set in South Africa, China, and Canada that open our eyes and our hearts to victims of this dread disease.
The situations are contrived, the ironies are cheap, and the dialogue is overly blunt.
Demonstrates that the transmission of HIV has become an uncontrollable global pandemic that feeds on poverty and recognizes no sexual, national or religious borders.
3 Needles is difficult to take at times, but it ultimately rewards those viewers willing to meet its challenges.
3 Needles, Thom Fitzgerald's globe-spanning investigation of the effects of AIDS, may ultimately be a call to unity, but there's an extreme amount of despair and misery before we get to hear that trumpet blare.
Nothing is as irritating as watching a film which is little more than an exercise of ego; worse is watching one that is about as discrete in its purpose as a missionary in Africa.
It's gorgeously filmed, but its character logic very rarely makes any sense.
A few years previously, writer-director Thom Fitzgerald made a film, "The Event," about a man dying of AIDS in New York City. With his latest film, "3 Needles," he brings a global perspective to the edidemic in three segments: "The Fortitude of the Buddha" - In southern China, Jin(Lucy Liu), a very pregnant blood
December 1, 2007Super Reviewer
My review back in 2007: Although this movie is filled with good actors, it falls very short of a captivating, inspiring, or intelligent story on the AIDS crisis. I was not fan's of any of these actors or the director, but due to the story subject I was willing to give it a try. The best story was the intial full story
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