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Under the Skin

Top 10 Cahiers du Cinéma (2010-2019)

Under the Skin

2013

Jonathan Glazer

Scarlett Johansson, Paul Brannigan, Robert J. Goodwin, Krystof Hádek ...

5.8

13,876

Sci-Fi. Drama A mysterious woman seduces lonely men in the evening hours in Scotland. Events lead her to begin a process of self-discovery in this surreal adaptation of Michel Faber's genre-bending novel of the same name.

	Author	Review
United States	Chris Willman IndieWire	"Glazer shares Nicolas Roeg’s taste in elliptical storytelling and interplanetary tragedy, arriving at something you could almost call horror with a heart (...) Johannson turns out to be perfectly cast"	POS
United States	Scott Foundas Variety	"It goes, for a needlessly protracted 108 minutes, as initial intrigue gives way to repetition and tedium (...) the fatal flaw of 'Under the Skin' isn’t that not much happens; it’s that what does happen isn’t all that interesting"	NEG
United Kingdom	Xan Brooks The Guardian	"Extraordinary malarial dream (...) the director works a magic on this material. He takes tired old prose and spins it into poetry. (...) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of five)"	POS
United States	Stephen Holden The New York Times	"The movie's eerie, climactic image challenges our conventional notions of human identity and leaves us reflecting on the possibility that every being in the universe is an alien in disguise."	POS
United States	Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter	"More pictorially arresting than intellectually coherent."	NEU
United States	Betsy Sharkey Los Angeles Times	"I’s helpful to come in with no preconceptions, no expectations, and just give yourself over to the primal ooze of the experience (...) Watching this film feels like a genesis moment"	POS
United States	Lou Lumenick New York Post	"[It] might have worked as a distaff version of Nicolas Roeg’s 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' if it weren’t for director Glazer’s decision to turn the movie into something like a TV reality show (...) Rating: ★ (out of 4)"	NEG
United States	Mick LaSalle SFGATE	"'Under the Skin' can be confused for a movie that hides its meanings, when it's really a movie that hides its meaninglessness"	NEG
United States	Eric Kohn IndieWire	"A totally wacky head-trip wit (...) [It] owes much to Johansson’s intense commitment to a strangely erotic, unnerving performance unlike anything she has done before."	POS
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"A brave experiment in cinema that richly rewards the demands it makes. The result is an amazement, a film of beauty and shocking gravity. (...) Rating: ★★★½ (out of four)"	POS
United States	Claudia Puig USA Today	"So unfathomable that it feels like a dully haunting nightmare whose details retreat and fade almost immediately upon waking. (...) Rating: ★★ (out of four)"	NEU
United States	Matt Zoller Seitz rogerebert.com	"A brilliant science fiction movie—more of an 'experience' than a traditional story, with plenty to say about gender roles, sexism and the power of lust (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United Kingdom	Dave Calhoun Time Out	"An intoxicating marvel (...) it offers some provocative sideways views on seduction, sexual power and its abuse. Daring and thoughtful."	POS
United States	Ann Hornaday The Washington Post	"Thanks to Glazer’s superb control and a mesmerizing performance by Scarlett Johansson, this creepy-cool exercise possesses a sinuous, insinuating power to burrow into the viewer’s consciousness"	POS

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