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The Kindness of Strangers

2019

Lone Scherfig

Zoe Kazan, Tahar Rahim, Andrea Riseborough, Caleb Landry Jones ...

5.8

523

Drama Clara arrives in wintry New York with her two sons on the back seat of her car. The journey, which she has disguised as an adventure for her children’s sake, is soon revealed to be an escape from an abusive husband and father. He is a cop, and Clara is desperately trying to elude his attempts to pursue her. The three have little more than their car, and when this is towed away, they are left penniless on the street. But the big cold ... [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		David Ehrlich IndieWire	"Even the most capable characters are vaguely unreal (...) There’s a palpable urgency to the film’s kindness, and a real despair to the film’s inability to make us believe in it."
		David Rooney The Hollywood Reporter	"A ponderous dollop of urban misery porn (...) It feels utterly synthetic, not to mention a romantically 'European' view of New York that's sheer nonsense."
		Guy Lodge Variety	"Too much of the kindness in 'Strangers' feels sentimentally story-dictated (...) leaving you with mild, woolly good feeling but little to contemplate or chew on."
		Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"One of those terrible ideas for a film: ensemble dramas that are superficially attractive because of all the big names shoehorned into the cast-list (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Geoffrey Macnab The Independent	"Scherfig manages to make us feel sorry for [the characters] (...) Pity, though, isn’t enough to sustain the film (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Pat Brown Slant	"[It] lacks the observed detail that might have lent its characters life and believability. And that also applies to the scenarios that Scherfig constructs(…) Rating: ★½ (out of 4)"
		Wendy Ide Screendaily	"A slightly manipulative quality undermines the legitimate question at the heart of the film"
		Norman Wilner Now Toronto	"A bad movie with good intentions (...) [It is] a bit of a problem that most of Alice’s scenes seem to have been shaved down to the bone, wasting Riseborough’s presence"

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