Sadly, the real Thomas Vinterberg appears to be standing up. But for what exactly?

| Nov 19, 2013

We get it, Lars. Actually, we got it some time ago. Guns are bad things. They kill people and Americans are obsessed with them. Can we move on now?

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 24, 2006

If Jamie Bell can't rescue a movie, it's probably not salvageable.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 6, 2006

The scenario's practically straitjacketed in commentary. Von Trier's weak story doesn't help.

| Oct 6, 2005

Dear Wendy is loaded with ideas, some half-baked, some dead-on, some just stupid, and Vinterberg throws them at the screen willy-nilly.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 24, 2005

The audience is clearly expected to enjoy the bloodbath even while it disapproves.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 24, 2005

For a film that explores the nuances of this complicated issue, I suggest you rent Gus Van Sant's Elephant.

| Original Score: 0/4 | Sep 23, 2005

Bloody as it is, it has no access to viewers' emotions, and its message - play with fire and you get burned -- is too obvious to be provocative.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 23, 2005

It's so entertaining that even a die-hard NRA member might be impressed.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 23, 2005

An allegory on guns and violence in America that is all the more resounding for its acutely observed foreigners' perspective.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 22, 2005

The location is nowhere, the characters' diction is beyond stylized and Novella Nelson plays Dick's maid. Miner families with maids? Maybe in Denmark.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 22, 2005

Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier take another step toward intellectual bankruptcy with a pretentious film about a group of pacifists obsessed with handguns.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 22, 2005

Via stylized language, fetishism, and some obvious erotic obsessions, the filmmakers have created one weirdly provocative film, which isn't very successful but ought still to be seen.

| Original Score: C | Sep 22, 2005

It's a long slog, not because what the film says is provocative but because the technique is as slack as the writing.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 22, 2005

A tedious exercise in style, intended as a meditation on guns and violence in America but more of a meditation on itself, the kind of meditation that invites the mind to stray.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 22, 2005

Especially in the climactic, clumsily staged gunfight, the prevailing mode is wide-eyed idiocy -- which might be the point.

| Sep 20, 2005

A daft portrait of the U.S. (and its racism and gun-worship) that's wide of the mark.

| Original Score: D+ | Sep 18, 2005

An audacious exploration of guns and violence inside Vinterberg and Von Trier's heads.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 16, 2005

Although Dear Wendy, like most things Von Trier's name is attached to these days, has been widely attacked for selling a nave and ersatz version of American gun culture, what's most interesting about it is just how unapologetically unreal it is.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 9, 2005

It's all very stagey and contrived, but thought-provoking nevertheless.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 5, 2005