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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
58
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Appaloosa
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54
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55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
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xx
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Changeling
66
Che
84
Christmas Tale, A
93
Class, The
38
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57
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xx
Dostana
70
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62
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46
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xx
Extreme Movie
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80
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Gran Torino
30
Guitar, The
84
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31
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26
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49
How About You
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40
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JCVD
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Nobel Son
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Other End of the Line, The
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Otto; or Up with Dead People
75
Pool, The
78
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
xx
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Rachel Getting Married
58
Reader, The
56
Religulous
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
53
RocknRolla
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Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
77
Secret of the Grain, The
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Silent Light
86
Slumdog Millionaire
57
Special
80
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43
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U2 3D
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Waltz with Bashir
59
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80
Wendy and Lucy
71
What Doesn't Kill You
55
What Just Happened?
61
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40
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81
Wrestler, The
xx
Yonkers Joe
93
Class, The
89
Man on Wire
88
Waltz with Bashir
86
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
84
Silent Light
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Let the Right One In
81
Wrestler, The
80
Wendy and Lucy
80
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
80
Frost/Nixon
79
I've Loved You So Long
78
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
77
Secret of the Grain, The
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
74
Moscow, Belgium
73
Gran Torino
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
72
I Served the King of England
71
What Doesn't Kill You
70
Black Balloon, The
70
Hunger
70
Doubt
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
68
Theater of War
67
Synecdoche, New York
66
Che
65
Timecrimes
64
JCVD
64
Nothing But the Truth
64
Appaloosa
64
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
63
Changeling
63
Eden
62
Duchess, The
61
Where God Left His Shoes
59
Last Chance Harvey
59
We Are Wizards
58
Adam Resurrected
58
Reader, The
57
Special
57
Defiance
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Breakfast with Scot
49
How About You
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
40
While She Was Out
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
38
Dark Streets
36
My Name Is Bruce
36
Good
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
31
Let Them Chirp Awhile
30
Guitar, The
29
Lake City
28
Nobel Son
28
Fireproof
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Just Another Love Story
xx
Dostana
xx
Cargo 200
xx
Local Color
xx
Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
xx
Not Easily Broken
xx
Yonkers Joe
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The
Buena Vista Pictures
 |
|
FILM:
GAMES:
MPAA RATING: PG for battle sequences and frightening moments
Starring
Georgie Henley,
Skandar Keynes,
William Moseley,
Anna Popplewell,
Tilda Swinton,
James McAvoy,
Jim Broadbent,
and
Kiran Shah
C.S. Lewis' timeless adventure follows the exploits of the four Pevensie siblings -- Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter -- in World War II England who enter the world of Narnia through a magical wardrobe while playing a game of hide-and-seek in the rural country home of an elderly professor. Once there, the children discover a charming, peaceful land inhabited by talking beasts, dwarfs, fauns, centaurs and giants that has become a world cursed to eternal winter by the evil White Witch, Jadis. Under the guidance of a noble and mystical ruler, the lion Aslan, the children fight to overcome the White Witch's powerful hold over Narnia in a spectacular climactic battle that will free Narnia from Jadis' icy spell forever. (Walt Disney Pictures / Walden Media)
| GENRE(S): |
Action
|
Adventure
|
Drama
|
Family/Kids
|
Fantasy
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Ann Peacock
Andrew Adamson
Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
C.S. Lewis (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Andrew Adamson
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: April 4, 2006
Theatrical: December 9, 2005
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
140 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
Also known as "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
A generation-spanning journey that feels both comfortingly familiar and excitingly original.
100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Plunges into an imaginative landscape as large as all creation - and never slackens its barreling pace or shrinks its panoramic scope.
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A movie of intelligence and power, of beauty, universality and largeness of spirit.
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
The picture goes exactly where the prose does, enticing all of us, kids and adults and atheists and believers alike, down below the brittle surface of our cold logic and into a richer world of imaginative wonder.
91
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Spiritual redemption is a big theme of Narnia, but on a purely entertainment level, the movie also goes a long way in redeeming the current sad state of children's fantasy filmmaking.
90
Dallas Observer
Luke Y. Thompson
If you're a fan of C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, all you need to know is this: Disney has done right by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It's impossible to imagine it done much better, in fact.
90
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
By staying focused on the children -- frightened evacuees from the London Blitz whose parallel war in Narnia both taps into and finally quiets their unspoken terrors -- Adamson keeps faith with the humanity of Lewsis' tale.
90
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
What is lightly sketched in the novel, where much is left to the imagination, blossoms into full-blown, richly detailed life in the movie.
90
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Robust, engrossing, and surprisingly restrained in saving most of its effects for the grand finale, the first Chronicles of Narnia installment eschews Harry Potter's satanic subtext and "The Lord of the Rings'" Wagnerian cosmology. It may be as close to adult-friendly kid fare as Hollywood will ever get.
90
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
What's best about it is that it seems real by the logic of childhood - it looks as things SHOULD look, if kids had it their way.
90
Slate
David Edelstein
An entertaining, emotional, and surprisingly intimate movie--an epic saga of fauns and talking (Cockney) beavers and evil sorceresses and triumphal resurrections and massive, sweeping battles that nonetheless feels … small.
90
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
There's nothing too clean or too overbright about it. It's magic, but not the loud, shiny kind: It has the texture of worn velvet, or a painstakingly hand-knit sweater stored away for years in tissue paper.
90
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Well told, handsome, stirring and loads of fun.
80
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
The next two hours might not have quite delivered on that initial promise of wonder - we grown-ups, being heavy, are not so easily swept away by visual tricks - except when I looked away from the screen at the faces of breathless and wide-eyed children, my own among them, for whom the whole experience was new, strange, disturbing and delightful.
80
Newsweek
David Ansen
Narnia, brightly lit and kid-friendly, has an appealingly old-fashioned feel to it. Adamson, codirector of "Shrek," wisely doesn't try to hip-ify the tale, leaving its curious blend of medieval pageantry, Christian fable and children's bedtime story intact.
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Tasha Robinson
Generations of readers have found The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe to be a gripping adventure that reaches well beyond its religious underpinnings, and this robust version respects both aspects and finds the same winning balance of excitement and meaning.
80
Variety
Todd McCarthy
An array of supporting craftspeople pull the viewer into a credible alternative world, even if the film itself is more prosaic than inspiring.
75
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The movie, for all its half-baked visual marvels, remains remarkably faithful to Lewis' story, and the innocence of his passion begins to shine through. It's there, most spectacularly, in Aslan, the lion-king messiah.
75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
A loving interpretation of C.S. Lewis's beloved parable for children, and it's almost perfect in every detail. Yet there's the one difficulty: It's almost perfect in every detail, fully realized in too few.
75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
On balance, more of the movie works than doesn't, but this isn't 140 minutes of unqualified successes.
75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
This is a film situated precisely on the dividing line between traditional family entertainment and the newer action-oriented family films. It is charming and scary in about equal measure, and confident for the first two acts that it can be wonderful without having to hammer us into enjoying it, or else. Then it starts hammering.
75
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
A gracefully subtle metaphor about life's Deep Magic has become a war film; what was a one-chapter battle toward the end of the book is now a ripsnorting Armageddon that looks like something Hieronymus Bosch might dream up after a heavy meal.
75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
An engaging and exciting family film that at times feels a bit like "The Lord of the Rings Jr."
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Working for the first time in live action, under the constraints of a classic novel, he (Andrew Adamson) proves himself to be a capable visual storyteller but no Peter Jackson.
75
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
The extensive CGI work is well used and the children are exceptionally well cast, especially the girls.
70
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
That's not to say that this first visit to a live-action Narnia on screen isn't enjoyable, or promising for the future of what will surely be a successful franchise. But there's not a lot of humor along the way, and the epic struggle between good and evil plays out in battles more impressive than thrilling.
70
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
The Christian themes of forgiveness and sacrifice are tastefully conveyed, and the opening sequence of Nazi bombs falling on London, an event only alluded to in the book, helps dramatize Lewis's fascination with power.
63
Miami Herald
Connie Ogle
There's little warmth or depth to the characters who, for the most part, trudge through the film with little wonder at the magical journey they're making.
63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
The menagerie of mythological beasties in Narnia don't seem quite genuinely, three-dimensionally real.
63
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Overlong, poorly paced and woodenly acted film.
63
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
This PG-rated movie feels safe and constricted in a way the story never does on the page. It leaves out the deep magic of a good movie, or a good sermon: the feeling that something vital is at stake.
60
Empire
Ian Freer
It's a more dynamic adventure than Potter IV but lacks the majesty and richness of LOTR. Still, it's an enjoyable adaptation and good enough for us to welcome this new franchise.
60
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
Younger children getting in on the ground floor of fantasy will enjoy the film.
58
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Though it's handsomely made and peppered with seamlessly achieved visual glories, Narnia is ineptly acted, crudely staged and burdened with a score that only a masochist could love.
50
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
The problem with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is this: The closer the many-hands screenplay gets to the Christ-like sufferings and resurrection of Lord Aslan, the lion (voiced by Liam Neeson), the more conflicted the filmmakers' efforts become.
50
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
The problem with any allegorical plan, Christian or otherwise, is not its ideological content but the blockish threat that it poses to the flow of a story.
40
Time
Richard Corliss
Disney is trying to lure the disparate audiences of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (kids) and "The Passion of the Christ" (Evangelicals). But on either level, Narnia fails. There's no fire, no passion and not much fun.
40
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Narnia is nearly saved by those immensely likable and altogether stiff-upper-lippy Pevensie kids.
38
Premiere
Peter Debruge
The movie is a leaden, slow-moving beast.
 The average user rating for this movie is 5.0 (out of 10) based on 466 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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