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Woman on the Beach
72
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71
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67
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64
Wanted
64
Pineapple Express
63
Man Named Pearl, A
63
Burn After Reading
62
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62
Duchess, The
61
Wackness, The
60
Traitor
60
Blind Mountain
57
Towelhead
55
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
43
Anamorph
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
42
Fred Claus
36
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
xx
Alphabet Killer, The
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Edge of Heaven, The
Strand Releasing
 |
|
FILM:
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring
Nurgül Yesilçay,
Baki Davrak,
and
Tuncel Kurtiz
Nejat initially disapproves of his widower father Ali`s choice of prostitute Yeter for a live-in girlfriend. But the young professor warms to her when he learns that most of her hard-earned money is sent home to Turkey for her daughter’s university studies. After Yeter`s accidental death, Nejat travels to Istanbul to search for Yeter`s daughter Ayten. Political activist Ayten has fled the Turkish police and is already in Germany. She is befriended by a young woman, Lotte, who invites rebellious Ayten to stay in her home, much to the displeasure of her conservative mother, Susanne. When Ayten is arrested and her asylum plea denied, she is deported and imprisoned in Turkey. Passionate Lotte abandons everything to help Ayten. A tragic event brings Susanne to Istanbul to help fulfill her daughter`s mission. (Strand Releasing)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Fatih Akin
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Fatih Akin
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: October 14, 2008
Theatrical: May 21, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
122 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
Germany | Turkey | Italy |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
German | Turkish | English |
Alternative Titles: Auf der anderen Seite
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
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The best approach is to begin with the characters, because the wonderful, sad, touching The Edge of Heaven is more about its characters than about its story
100
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Oropelled by memorable performances by mostly unknown actors. The most famous of the ensemble, Hanna Schygulla, delivers a by turns serene and shattering performance as a mother struggling with loss, conscience and the first glimmers of unexpected connection. She's only one essential and unforgettable part of a flawless whole.
100
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
With impeccable skill, Akin has made a film roiling with cruelty but guided by tough political optimism. No, we can't all get along, but some us of are trying.
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
The experience of seeing this film is cumulative, sober and profound.
100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Though I love McCarthy's movie, The Edge of Heaven - with its virtuoso narrative and frames packed to bursting with unruly life - has the potency of "The Visitor" squared.
91
Portland Oregonian
Marc Mohan
Akin is German-born but of Turkish heritage, and his films have often been concerned with the particular clashes and conflicts between those cultures. This film, though, does so in a much more oblique way than 2004's "Head-On."
91
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Hopping from Germany to Turkey and back again, Akin is out to capture the ways that a globalized world can tear up our hearts, and repair them, too.
90
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
The Edge of Heaven is powerfully unsettled--it comes together by not coming together.
90
Newsweek
David Ansen
Schygulla's heartbreaking performance--like the movie itself--will stay with you long after the film's quietly devastating final frame.
90
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
By the end you know the characters in it so well that you can't believe you've seen the movie only once, yet on a second viewing it seems completely new. And that may be because the world they inhabit is immediately recognizable -- until we get to heaven, it's where we live -- and like no place you've been before.
90
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Mr. Akin's film is so full of life that it leaves you breathless.
90
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
A story about generational expectations and cultural shifts, The Edge of Heaven raises questions it can't answer, which makes it only more powerful.
88
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Akin achieves a peaceful balance here –- alongside the death and seemingly senseless tragedy, there’s also a kind of reassuring equilibrium.
88
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
The Edge of Heaven is marked by a number of remarkable performances.
88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
The movie is near-perfect, suspenseful, heart-breaking, profound.
83
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Noel Murray
Akin divides The Edge Of Heaven into thirds, and ends the first two sections with emotionally devastating scenes of violence, before easing into a third section that deals with the repercussions and lessons learned.
80
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
I prefer to think of Akin, however, not as a forger of patterns but as an ironist who understands that bad luck is a crucible, in the heat of which we are tested, burned away, or occasionally transformed. The Edge of Heaven is about something more exasperating than crossed paths; it is about paths that almost cross but don't, and the tragedy of the near-miss.
80
The Hollywood Reporter
Ray Bennett
The director, who also wrote the script, achieves a keen-eyed view of the Turkish expatriates in this film while sustaining his remarkable ability to make them universal.
80
Variety
Derek Elley
Superbly cast drama, in which the lives and emotional arcs of six people -- four Turks and two Germans -- criss-cross through love and tragedy.
75
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Intermittently powerful drama explores a cross-cultural estrangement.
75
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
All too often, films about interconnected lives stumble under the weight of coincidences. Not The Edge of Heaven.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
It's a vivid ensemble experience, and the acting is wonderful.
70
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Born in Hamburg to Turkish parents, director Fatih Akin brought an unusual cultural perspective to "Head On" about a marriage of convenience between a beautiful Turk and a suicidal German. In The Edge of Heaven, his first dramatic feature since then, the characters navigate the same cultural divide, but here Akin is more preoccupied with the sense of responsibility that links parents to their children (or vice versa).
70
Village Voice
Nick Pinkerton
It's not brilliant, but it wears current events on its sleeve, feeling out the state of German-Turkish relationships as the former Ottomans clean house for E.U. membership, and the demographic earthquake of 70 million Muslims waits at Europe's door.
67
Austin Chronicle
Josh Rosenblatt
In The Edge of Heaven, a more tempered Akin seems content to allow the incidental lives of incidental people merging incidentally to pass quietly and at their own paces. Which indicates a much-needed maturation of the "Babel/Crash" formula but also fails to rattle your bones the way those movies did. Pick your poison, I suppose.
60
New York Daily News
Joe Neumaier
Like a more personal, less pretentious version of Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Babel," this spiraling dissection of circumstance, choice and fate is more about thoroughness of vision than tricky storytelling.
 The average user rating for this movie is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 16 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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