| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 1, 2003

Kormkur is fully content pimping his particular love/hate relationships with the beautiful/harsh landscapes of Iceland in as many different masochistic scenarios as possible.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 27, 2003

There is something willfully balanced about director- co-writer Baltasar Kormakur's vision of this imploding family.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 11, 2003

A subzero saga where dysfunction and distress -- and large quantities of herring -- rule.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 19, 2003

Funny and entertaining ... in an Icelandic sort of way.

| Jun 13, 2003

The different tones don't always blend smoothly, but it's still a pretty compelling tale.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jun 12, 2003

Bad behavior, by itself, can entertain for only so long. By film's end, the laughs had disappeared and black comedy had turned into dour, pointless drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 6, 2003

The potential for spiteful humor exists throughout the movie, but Kormakur keeps hooking into melodrama, and for that you need at least one sympathetic character in whom to invest.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 6, 2003

A likable movie about people who are anything but.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 5, 2003

A particularly strong family drama, and the Icelandic setting helps, adding a touch of the exotic.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 30, 2003

The Sea is overcrowded and overwritten, with too many shrill denunciations and dramatic surprises; we don't like the characters and, worse, they don't interest us.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 30, 2003

A messy but thoroughly engrossing family saga that combines the brooding tone of Ingmar Bergman with the over-the-top skulduggery of Eugene O'Neill.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 29, 2003

It's an invigorating hybrid of soap opera and tragedy -- a wild Cat on a Cold Tin Roof, a fiery Cherry Orchard, a tragicomic King Lear on ice.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 29, 2003

It's hard to imagine anyone enjoying it except for those seeking to see people up there on the screen unhappier than themselves.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 22, 2003

The movie, which means to be a no-frills baring of the human soul, is undone by its own malignant contempt for every one of its characters.

| May 22, 2003

With the script and most of the actors trying too hard, there's a shrillness to this unhappy clan, especially the women.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 18, 2003

Dysfunction seeps from every pore of this family, and the anger and ugliness of the characters overwhelm not just the story but the movie's stunning National Geographic location.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 16, 2003

Darkly humorous.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 16, 2003

If ever there were a movie to gladden the hearts of misanthropes, this is it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 16, 2003

The acidic Shakespearean family drama The Sea can't be faulted for lack of ambition. It can, however, be faulted for a fatal lack of heart.

| May 16, 2003