An interestingly designed but inescapably pointless film.

| Mar 16, 2007

Kidman delivers another standout performance, transparent and magnetic. Burrell is no match for Downey's hypnotic beast. The hairy romantic chemistry with Kidman is electric, the context inspired.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 16, 2007

Certainly the film isn't without its flaws. Then again, perfection is in the eye of beholder.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 16, 2007

Far-out touches and liberal application of metaphor are compensated for by intensity and two mesmerising performances.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 13, 2007

During their first meeting, the cryptic dialogue between Arbus and Lionel is intended to sound provocative and surreal, but the result is confusing and creepy.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 30, 2006

Stilted, stylized and art-directed within an inch of its life, Shainberg's movie (which was written by his Secretary collaborator, Erin Cressida Wilson) manages to be both oppressively literal and fatefully fuzzy at the same time.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 29, 2006

Don't be fooled for a second by that subtitle. Fur bills itself as An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, but this thing's got all the imagination of a career bureaucrat slumped in his cubicle awaiting a pension.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 29, 2006

Shainberg neither sugarcoats [Diane Arbus's] distance from her girls nor judges it. The filmmakers understand Arbus's story within the context of her time and upbringing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 1, 2006

Not a single frame of Fur conveys Arbus's distinctive vision ...

Full Review | Original Score: F | Nov 30, 2006

As a biopic, it is as meretricious as most, but as a myth about love and loss, about otherness and identity, about compassion and revulsion, about fetishism and sex, about art and life, it will likely stay with you for days.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 21, 2006

The movie officially becomes the one thing Arbus's photography refused to be: normal.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 21, 2006

Fur is stuck with offering a reductive and unenlightening view of the real Arbus.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 21, 2006

Arbus's life has been put through the fantasy blender.

| Original Score: C- | Nov 21, 2006

If the movie is highly unlikely to connect with all who see it, it will connect on a deep level to some who do, in no small part because of Kidman's committed, even daring performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 21, 2006

This fractured beauty-and-the-beast fairytale comes off disturbingly simple-minded.

| Original Score: C | Nov 21, 2006

Arbus (whose actual work is unseen, presumably because of rights issues) remains an enigma, and Kidman's wispy portrayal doesn't give the film the center it needs.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 21, 2006

The film takes enormous liberties by embellishing one small aspect of her life to the point of silliness.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 21, 2006

Purists will howl at the liberties Shainberg has taken with the facts, but there's a bravery to Fur, an uncompromising commitment to its narrow focus -- of one woman's creative birth -- that rhymes with Arbus's own artistic courage.

| Nov 16, 2006

Its nerviness only pays off in a few details and in Nicole Kidman's resourcefulness -- mainly a way of suggesting morbid curiosity as erotic stimulation, though the script manages to find diverse excuses for undressing her.

| Nov 16, 2006

A revelatory, challenging and deeply affecting portrait, anchored by what may be Kidman's most profoundly moving performance to date.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 16, 2006