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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Starting Out in the Evening
Roadside Attractions


7.9

based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 14 votes
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FILM:

The Talent Given Us

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for sexual content, language and brief nudity

Starring Frank Langella, Lauren Ambrose, Lili Taylor, Karl Bury, Anitha Gandhi, Sean T. Krishnan, Jessica Hecht, and Adrian Lester

All that remains for Leonard Schiller is his work. His one enduring goal in life is to finish the novel whose completion has eluded him for ten years. With his earlier books out of print, he has learned to starve himself of the desire for the success he was once so close to, though beneath this practice lies a pull for his work to be rediscovered. Schiller’s main contact to the world is through his daughter, Ariel, with whom he has settled into an amiable relationship, though he must hide his disappointment that at 39 she remains befuddled by life, still looking for love and a father for a longed-for child. Schiller’s world is shaken when Heather Wolfe, a smart, ambitious graduate student, convinces him that she can use her thesis on his work to bring him back into the literary world spotlight. (Roadside Attractions)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Fred Parness Andrew Wagner
DIRECTED BY:	Andrew Wagner
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: April 22, 2008 Theatrical: November 23, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	111 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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 Magazine David Edelstein

Above all is Langella, achingly vulnerable under layers of flesh. In one scene, alone, he eats peanut butter intensely, thoughtfully, and nothing he could do as Hamlet would seem deeper or more poetic.

100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Intelligent, involving and conspicuously adult, Starting Out in the Evening is almost shocking in its distinctiveness, its ability to create high drama from an unlikely source.

100

The Hollywood Reporter James Greenberg

Succeeds so beautifully because of a compelling story, great acting, intelligent writing and sensitive direction.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie is carefully modulated to draw us deeper and deeper into the situation, and uses no contrived plot devices to superimpose plot jolts on what is, after all, a story involving four civilized people who are only trying, each in a different way, to find happiness.

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A rapturous, ruefully funny flight of sympathetic imagination. Featuring the first movie role for Frank Langella that ranks with his best stage parts, it's a rare kind of American movie.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Andrew Wagner has made a lovely comedy of death and rebirth.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

What is so remarkable about Mr. Langella is that he seems to hold Leonard’s intellectual cosmos inside him, to make it implicit in the man’s every gesture and pause.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It's rare to see a movie adaptation in which a filmmaker has taken so much care in translating the odd little qualities that make a particular novel special, to preserve the complex and fragile threads of feeling between characters that are often much easier to grasp on the page.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Whether this reserved, hypercautious widower can deal with the arousal she creates in him - let alone be physically able to act on it - is one of the many layers of tension that drive this unusual and absolutely riveting dance.

USA Today Claudia Puig

We are slowly and mightily drawn into this intimate story, which is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Director Andrew Wagner, adapting a novel by Brian Morton, is sometimes understated to a fault, but his work with the actors, who also include Lili Taylor as Leonard's daughter, is impeccable.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Movies about writers are almost always romanticized affairs but Starting Out in the Evening is the rare exception. It is at once an elegy for the vanishing generation of Bellow, Cheever, Mailer and Updike and a dead on indictment of our culture’s current state.

The New Yorker David Denby

Langella is superb, and Starting Out in the Evening is a classy film.

Newsweek David Ansen

Like most of this refreshingly subtle film, it's not what you expect, and it's not something you've seen before.

Variety Scott Foundas

Director Andrew Wagner draws topnotch work from a pro cast in Starting Out in the Evening, a wise, carefully observed chamber drama.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

This wise, observant, and exquisitely tacit chamber piece complicates every May-December, academic-novel cliché in the book.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Langella delivers a master class in acting. He's playing Leonard Schiller, an aging author aching from the loss of his wife, a weak heart and literary neglect.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It's a gentle, unhurried drama about how people can connect with each other through conversation, nonverbal gestures, and writing.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Taylor also makes an impressive comeback as the conflicted daughter who instinctively distrusts Heather, but Starting Out in the Evening is first and foremost a triumph by Frank Langella.

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

Because the characters are richly realized and their dialogue rings true, we stick around, rooting for something like a happy ending.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

If the film has a weakness, it's an ending that's so vague and open to interpretation that it's not at all clear how director Andrew Wagner ultimately wants us to feel about these self-absorbed characters and their precious literary concerns. But the performances carry the day.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It never commits the sin of sentimentalizing old age, as Hollywood usually does when it deigns to admit that people over 55 exist.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This is a human-sized drama about people with contradictory motives, trying to help or use each other.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Fact is, Starting Out is pretty dry stuff as a movie, even as it's enlivened by vivid acting.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A "small" movie. But in its keenly observed examination of strangers who become intimates - and of family members who remain, in part, strangers - it has big things to say.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Part of Morton's achievement is to present all four people through the viewpoints of the other three; Wagner can't do that, but the performances are so nuanced that the characters remain multilayered, and they're not the sort of people we're accustomed to finding in commercial films.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's also and most interestingly about the writing process itself, a difficult feat to pull off on film, which Wagner and co-screenwriter Fred Parnes manage to display with unvarnished realism.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Taylor is effective as a woman struggling to take control of her life, but Ambrose's work feels shallow in comparison.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A gentle collection of scenes that work and scenes that don't.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Intelligently acted but oddly stagnant adaptation of Brian Morton's acclaimed novel.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Starting Out never builds to the explosive climax it seems to be heading for, which I suppose is a good thing for its overall integrity, but maybe not so good for its motion-picture value.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Wagner and company fail to follow Langella's primary rule of storytelling: "Follow the characters around until they do something interesting."

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Wallows in bleakness and settles for sentimental gestures.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 14 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Joan gave it a10:
If Frank Langella isn't nominated for an Oscar for his performance in this film, then no one should be nominated. A beautifully cast and directed film...full of "real" NYC location shots and a sensitively portrayed character study of relationships. I loved it.

Nancy O. gave it an8:
Excellent and nuanced performance by Frank Langella. Lauren Ambrose was also great as the mainpulative, would-be seductress. Lili Taylor as the conflicted and weaker character of the daughter displayed the intelligence and ambiguity one would expect. Really interesting film.

Jane S. gave it a0:
I saw this because Ebert said it was for anyone who loved writing and literature. i didn't sign up to see a 25 year old Alice in wonderland kid have sex with a 65 year old dotard. disgusting from a young woman's point of view if you ask me. i nearly died. Ii hated this film, and it doesn't portray English majors favorably at all, or writers for that matter.

Bob L. gave it a10:
Brilliantly executed, with superb performances by Frank Langella and the rest of the cast. No simple truths, no simple resolutions. A thoughtful, original, impressive film.

Doug G. gave it a10:
An outstanding film to which the whole cast made a terrific contribution, especially Frank Langella with is Oscar worthy performance. Andrew Wagner did a sensational job of directing!

Comments Comments gave it a10:
This is the kind of movie Woody Allen was traveling toward around the time of crimes & misdemeanors but got upstaged by his frightful mix of ego & insecurity. The combination of wagner & parnes, plus all the great craftwork of DP, ED & COMPOSER is overdue and gratefully embraced by this moviegoer, in love with beautiful details and the care that all these professionals provide.

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Starting Out in the Evening Roadside Attractions

Starting Out in the Evening
Roadside Attractions