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Pineapple Express
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61
Wackness, The
60
Traitor
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57
Towelhead
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House Bunny, The
55
Ping Pong Playa
54
Hamlet 2
51
Mamma Mia!
51
Savage Grace
51
Step Brothers
49
Hancock
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
43
Eagle Eye
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Anamorph
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
42
Fred Claus
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Space Chimps
36
Righteous Kill
36
Fly Me to the Moon
31
Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The
27
Women, The
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
20
American Carol, An
16
Surfer, Dude
15
Disaster Movie
xx
Eden Lake
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Alphabet Killer, The
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
IFC First Take
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring
Anamaria Marinca,
Laura Vasiliu,
Vlad Ivanov,
and
Alexandru Potocean
During the final days of communism in Romania, two college roommates Otilia and Gabita are busy preparing for a night away. But rather than planning for a holiday, they are making arrangements for Gabita's illegal abortion and unwittingly, both find themselves burrowing deep down a rabbit hole of unexpected revelations. (IFC Entertainment)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Cristian Mungiu
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Cristian Mungiu
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: October 14, 2008
Theatrical: January 23, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
113 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
Romania |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
Romanian / English |
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
Empire
Damon Wise
Tense, kinetic, intelligent and real – as if Paul Greengrass had remade Vera Drake.
100
Time
Richard Corliss
One of the strongest movies in recent years.
100
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
This is a film with a commitment to reality unlike any we're used to seeing.
100
Variety
Jay Weissberg
Pitch perfect and brilliantly acted, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a stunning achievement, helmed with a purity and honesty that captures not just the illegal abortion story at its core but the constant, unremarked negotiations necessary for survival in the final days of the Soviet bloc.
100
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
Though the frighteningly late-term abortion at its center hints at larger sins in the last gasp of Nicolae Ceausescu’s iron-fisted regime, it’s no metaphor, but a sordidly visceral transaction conducted in the next best thing to a back alley.
100
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Nothing good happens in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the riveting, horrifying chronicle of an illegal abortion performed in 1987 when Ceauescu's dictatorial hand still gripped Romania's throat. And yet no lover of greatness in filmmaking will want to look away from one of the very best movies of 2007.
100
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
It’s a pitiless, violent story that in its telling becomes a haunting and haunted intellectual and aesthetic achievement.
100
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
4 Months unfolds like one of those street-level Dardenne brothers movies (Rosetta, L'Enfant).
100
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
A remarkably engrossing and thoughtful picture, beautifully rendered in an artful mode of realism.
100
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Elegantly crafted, brilliantly acted film.
100
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
This year’s foreign language Oscar scandal – there is always at least one – is the snub of director Cristian Mungiu’s disturbing, masterful realist drama following two college roommates as they carry out plans for one’s black market abortion in Communist Romania.
100
TV Guide
Ken Fox
The film is bold stroke that hopes to push Romanian society forward by staring into the dismal failures of its recent past.
100
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
Despite their terrible ordeal these women are heroes, not victims. As Mungiu makes clear in the casual, brilliant final scene of this amazing movie, heroes persevere.
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
First, this movie should be enjoyed. Later, marveled at. And then, once the excitement has faded, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days really should be studied, because director Cristian Mungiu creates scenes unlike any ever filmed.
100
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
The New Wave of Romanian cinema is the most exciting in the world right now. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is its latest masterpiece.
100
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Writer-director Cristian Mungiu confirms the Romanian cinema renaissance while creating a paradoxical marvel: a bleak tale of illegal abortion that powerfully affirms one's faith in people.
100
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
The result is a mixture of unified atmosphere and lived-in character study, and while Vasiliu’s role is not as indelible as that of her co-stars, Marinca’s Otilia and Ivanov’s steely abortionist are just about perfect.
100
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
This is a powerful film and a stark visual accomplishment, but no thanks to Gabita (Laura Vasiliu). The driving character is her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who does all the heavy lifting.
100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
A grueling and deeply affecting human drama.
100
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
In a truly great movie the form becomes indistinguishable from the story, and that’s certainly the case here.
100
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's brilliantly discomfiting second feature is one long premonition of disaster.
100
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
You just don't expect Hollywood to produce a masterwork so early in the new year. And it hasn't. This slice of celluloid dynamite comes from Romania, and what you see will floor you.
100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Without a single gunshot (and just one flick of a switchblade), it turns into an existential suspense film with the highest stakes imaginable: the survival of the human spirit.
100
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Brilliant, suspenseful, absolutely riveting film.
90
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Anamaria Marinca delivers an utterly transfixing performance as Otilia, a young woman who helps a friend (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an illegal abortion in the waning days of Romania's communist Ceausescu regime.
90
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
The coup de grâce is especially graceless because everything we know is already visible in Marinca’s eyes. The actress is extraordinary.
90
Slate
Dana Stevens
A beautiful and formally compelling work of art.
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Relentlessly dark but expertly rendered, it shares its cinematographer and quality of aggrieved compassion with another recent Romanian art house hit, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu."
88
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Depressing and gut-wrenching, but always powerful and gripping.
88
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
It is filmmaking as it should be but usually isn't.
88
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Despite being slow and deliberate, it is often compelling and occasionally riveting. As "The Lives of Others" was in 2007, this is the first memorable movie of 2008.
83
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
A grueling film in both technique and subject matter.
80
Film Threat
Rick Kisonak
This is a tale of friendship, corruption, betrayal and desperation masterfully told without an ounce of filmmaking flash and with an unflinching commitment to realism.
80
The Hollywood Reporter
Ray Bennett
The film is dark, gloomy and without music, but it is also observant and highly suspenseful, with Mungiu using his often static camera to balance banal cruelty with simple generosity.
80
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
Mungiu’s pacing is so sure, however, in its switching from loose to taut, and the concentration of his leading lady so unwavering, that the movie, which won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, feels more like a thriller than a moody wallow.
78
Austin Chronicle
Josh Rosenblatt
A curious filmgoing experience: Virtuosic, assured, and possessed of undeniable aesthetic force, it’s also hard not to turn away from.
63
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
It makes "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and "12:08 East of Bucharest," the last glum Romanian movies about life under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, seem merry.
 The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 88 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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