Popular reviews

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  Review by CinemaCl❄️wn ★★★★★ 8

  From one of world cinema's master storytellers & the writer-director of cinematic gems such as A Separation & The Past, About Elly is yet another masterpiece of intricate human drama from Asghar Farhadi which with its extremely gripping, morally challenging & simplest in approach narration turns out to be as riveting a tale of suspense, mystery & realism as the best of the genre can offer.

  Filmed with steady control by utilising nothing but simple real-life conversations to move its story forward, making full use of its raw cinematography & clever editing, performed with remarkable naturalness from its entire cast & exploring human nature in an intimate fashion to make a strong, universal statement about the society we live in, About Elly succeeds not only as…

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  Review by Nick ★★★★

  About Elly is the prime example of an excellent director extracting all the sensational elements out of a not otherwise sensational story, maximize its entertainment values, and inject his social commentary into it. It's a gripping, extremely patient slow-burn of how normal everyday life can easily spin out of hand over something as trivial as a reckless decision, well, many reckless decisions.

  It starts with cheerful, sunshine-drenched depiction of an Iranian weekend getaway featuring a group of colleagues and friends, until a tragedy suddenly hits the group, and their friendliness fades away and finger pointing takes over. Director Asghar Farhadi was consistent with the nonchalant tone of the movie, except for the shots when the tragedy happens, where you would…

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  Review by MK ★★★★★ 1

  Asghar Farhadi is really master of cinema, This movie proves that you don't need a big budget, special effects, killer soundtrack. Nice build up to the climax Terrific and surreal acting, good cinematography and a great storyline.. I really enjoyed watching it and will definitely watch it again.

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  Review by Jacob ★★★★★ 6

  "I knew."

  For years now, About Elly has been the film I recommend most aggressively to people. It's one of the best I've ever seen, and even on my fifth viewing, I love it more still. I'm always convinced that my friends will love it, too, but they rarely do. I truly believe that About Elly is technically astounding and is helmed by an absolutely incredible lead performance by Golshifteh Farahani and a likewise talented supporting cast. However, I've come to realize just how inherently Iranian this film is, and so much of my enjoyment of it comes from that cultural understanding that most of my American friends don't relate to.

  Persian culture is, like any culture, far too complex…

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  Review by Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★★★½ 5

  About Elly taught me a lot about why I must always seek to widen the net when it comes to appreciating cinema.

  Perhaps it's only, for me, natural to be reluctant to approach a genre of film, or a nation's film output sometimes. It still seems daunting to me if such things have been showered with awards and accolades from highbrow publications and societies, because I'm always fearful that I won't quite have the ability to appreciate the films as much as I always really want to. Or even by people with a highly respected standing right here on this very site.

  Yet over the last year or so I've become less experimental with what I watch and have stuck…

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  Review by Prateek Sharma ★★★★½ 6

  A bitter ending is better than an endless bitterness.

  God damn, this is art. Take a bow again Asghar Farhidi, this is just the second film of his filmography I've seen after The separation and have to say both are absolute masterpiece.... There's this one set piece of almost 25-30 mins and those who have seen knows what I'm talking about is just top tier filmmaking.. The chaos, horror, anxiety, confusion and top of all that cinematography which was creating more tension with each passing second with the moving camera, it looked like I'm watching again a Safdie brothers classic movie... A story about three families, and one of the leading female in them Sepideh played remarkably by Golshifteh Farahani…

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  Review by Emily Housel ★★★★½

  Golshifteh Farahani is the most beautiful person I've ever seen.

  A bitter ending is better than an endless bitterness. 

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  Review by Scott Renshaw ★★★★★ 1

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I mean seriously, this Farhadi fellow is just flat-out ridiculously good.

  I'm glad I was already used to the way his morality tales sneak up on you with their force, or the first act might have felt slight enough to lose interest. But everything pulls together masterfully in a story the impact of which didn't fully register until a couple of hours after I finished watching. Essentially, once it's clear that Elly did in fact drown, the actions of the friends at the beach house turns into a staggering moral collapse. They throw the reputation of this girl under the bus so that they can save themselves from an uncomfortable confrontation, and the person they are impugning is a virtual…

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★ 1

  Wow. This is a great film.

  Farhadi kept evolving with every new film he made. He still uses a divorce in the film, but that divorce is transformed into a subtext this time in order to apply his own Antonioni-esque plot in a very similar physical setting: the sea, which vastness hides a bloodcurling amount of incomprehensible secrets.

  And then again, if we compare both films, we'll realize we are with entirely different universes, and perhaps aren't comparable at all. Truth to be told however, Antonioni's film was a character study of alienation, the disappearance of the character creates a new unspoken attraction between two new leads and becomes a metaphor of the disappearance of the life priorities of oneself's…

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  Review by adamhope ★★★★

  The ending of ‘About Elly’ doesn’t work that well in my opinion but the first hour and a half are riveting beyond belief. The scenes in the water are so intense that my shoulders are still aching with the tension. It definitely suffers from the fact that it’s most interesting character, as a matter of necessity to the story, is absent for much of the runtime, but that being said, this was thoroughly gripping.

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  Review by MOHVIC ★★★★★

  "A bitter end is better than a bitterness without ending."

  
  "حول إيلي" فيلم رائع آخر من روائع أصغر فرهادي 

  يمزج الواقعية الاجتماعية بعناصر من الغموض والإثارة إنه نوع الافلام التي أحبها حقًا ، والتي تاخذنا بسيناريو بسيط ولكنه مثير للاهتمام ويتبع تداعياته بطريقة واقعية ومعقولة ، ويكشف عن القليل من الأفكار حول الطبيعة البشرية ..

  في "حول ايلي" تنقلب الشخصيات على بعضها البعض ، وتتصاعد المشاعر إلى نقطة الانهيار وتطفو جميع الأسرار الخفية على السطح..

  طاقم التمثيل مذهل تمامًا ، كما كان الحال في فيلم فرهادي انفصال وايضا البائع المتجول ...

  "حول ايلي " عبارة عن لغز مصنوع بخبرة مع ما يكفي من التقلبات والمنعطفات التي ستتحداك فيما يتعلق بأخلاق الشخصيات ودوافعها..

  
  عظيم.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★½ 2

  62/100

  [Originally written on my blog. Note that I saw this before A Separation and The Past; I wonder if my reservations would diminish were I to revisit it now.]

  Easy to see why the Berlin jury gave Farhadi their Best Damn Filmatist prize—not only does he have superlative camera sense, but he's working in a complex, highly choreographed Altmanesque mode that resembles nothing else coming out of Iran (for Western import, anyway). Lengthy setup is utterly superb, juggling multiple characters with whirligig economy and offering one compelling stray detail after another; for about 40 minutes the film is nearly plotless, engagingly hectic and easily the best window onto the Iranian middle class I've ever seen (Leila included). Then an…