Popular reviews

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  Review by movie enjoyer ★★★★ 9

  i did not push her. it's not true. it's bullshit! i did not push her. i did naaaht

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  Review by Cramer K. ★★★★★ 21

  A few years ago I was talking to a friend who had just seen David Gordon Green's "All the Real Girls." My friend isn't much of a film buff, but he knew that he'd seen something special. When I asked what he liked most about it, he didn't say anything about the acting or the direction or nuances of the plot. Instead, he simply said "because that stuff really happened."

  Of course, my friend was not speaking literally. Instead, I think he was trying to talk about a feeling that the movie captured that transcends what we generally consider realism. It struck a nerve with him because it resonated in a deeper way than he could have ever expected. It…

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  Review by Erik 🎼 ★★★★★ 6

  this makes up for every badly written film i've ever seen in my entire life and i hope woody allen's crusty ancient ass dies soon for stealing best original screenplay from this

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  Review by maria ★★★★½ 9

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  you can be sure as hell the first thing i googled after finishing this was "WHO THE FUCK TOOK THE MONEY IN SEPARATION 2011?????"

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  Review by Aaron Michael ★★★★★

  One of the greatest films ever made and still my pick for the best film of the decade, if not the century.

  The first scene of Asghar Farhadi's masterpiece A Separation opens with a married couple - Nader and Simin - arguing in front of a judge over their petition for divorce. This single scene, filmed in one long take, epitomizes Farhadi's incredible style of storytelling. He takes a simple scenario and fills it with nuanced characters, moral complexity, and cultural conflict. In the scene, Nader and Simin are arguing over the custody of their daughter Termeh. Simin wants to leave Iran so that Termeh may receive a better education and have a brighter future while Nader wants to stay…

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 8

  Fear is a spider that weaves a web of distrust.

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  Review by Rida ★★★★★ 13

  Once in a while there comes along a film that features characters who you think couldn't be more different from you, but whom you start to feel for as though they were part of your own family, as though you share a life with them. And by the end of the experience, you know that something inside you has shifted. You begin to make room for new ideas, new ways of thinking.

  I've watched only a handful of films that have done that to me, and A Separation is foremost among them. I don't want to explain the plot too much; the less that viewers know going in, the better their experience will be.

  Besides, A Separation is the rare…

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  Review by Ayo Edebiri ★★★★★

  for anyone who did not go to Tisch let me tell you everything you would experience there for free - it is the feeling of 100 boys who have just watched this movie and are obsessed with the idea of the “butterfly effect” trying to rewrite this movie in film 1 or thesis play, but like. in upstate New York or like LA. and you go “uh huh”

  Anyway Ashgar Farhadi forever // Iranian cinema forever // I could watch the opening credits and end credits completely separate from the movie and still cry

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 3

  95

  First viewing since its initial release. I'm not as familiar with Asgar Farhadi's work as I'd like to be (the only other film of his that I've seen is The Past), but this is undoubtedly a staggering achievement in contorting viewpoints and festering familial turmoil. Farhadi hardly misses a step here. What's important to recognize is the consistent physical barriers placed between characters, often which symbolize the distance they intentionally construct, either in pursuit of their own misguided sense of pride or even to prevent further self-inflicted heartbreak. How Farhadi depicts the fracturing state of this family is just as technically precise as it is completely organic moment-to-moment, which results in a stunning blend of unease and pain. What…

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★★

  95/100

  [originally written on my blog]

  Previously addressed here, though I now repudiate my assessment of its visual scheme as "purely functional"—Farhadi has an elegant, fluid sense of how to organize chaotic human behavior for maximum expressiveness, one that extends well beyond his rather obvious (but still effective) strategy of placing physical barriers (usually glass) between characters in nearly every shot. (I think it seemed less impressive to me than About Elly the first time simply because this one takes place in the city, mostly indoors; it's hard to beat the seaside for ready-made grandeur.) Second viewing turned it into a slow-motion disaster movie, as I was even more cruelly aware of various points at which the entire mess could…

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  Review by CinemaCl🎃wn ★★★★★ 8

  From the acclaimed writer-director of About Elly & Fireworks Wednesday, A Separation is Asghar Farhadi’s finest offering to world cinema that not only works as his best film to date but with this masterpiece, he may have very well crafted his magnum opus. Simplest in approach, minimalist in presentation, economic in creation & artistically subtle, A Separation is one of the perfectly flawless films of 21st century cinema and arguably the finest that Cinema of Iran has offered us so far. It’s a riveting, suspenseful drama that is highly gripping & involving, tough to let go, morally & emotionally draining but in the end, is absolutely worth your time & money.

  A Separation tells the story of an Iranian middle-class family. Nader & Simin are separating…

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★½ 18

  Simply put, A Separation is an incredible drama. It is well written, well acted, well shot, and well edited. For not a single second is it boring and it is always compelling. Very few dramas are better than this.

  The first scene of A Separation sets a false impression for what this film is about. It is not merely a film about a couple trying to divorce, because that story becomes intertwined with one of religion and crime, and how one family ruins the life of another. A Separation centres of a middle class Iranian family, yet the film is also about social and religious divisions within Iranian society. Different social strata have different needs. A poorer family within the…