September 11 2002

Critics score:
78 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: An often brilliant, always revelatory, deeply interesting omnibus film. Read more

Dave Kehr, New York Times: September 11 no longer burns with urgency but still commands attention with several of its sequences. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: If 11'09"01 were an all-you -can-eat smorgasbord, your taste buds might burn out: There are so many global cuisines on offer, and each is spiced with herbs whose delicacy gets canceled out by the next dish thrust in front of you. Read more

Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times: There are some very fine directors represented here ... but none has fully risen to the full measure of their talent. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Indispensable. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: An uneven but telling document. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Self-conscious but fascinating sampling of art challenged by life. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: The films, both narrative and nonfictional, range from the engagingly elliptical to the simple-minded to the cloying and incomprehensible. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: The results are as mixed as your own reactions will be. Some will provoke contemplation, while others will provoke renewed grief. Others will just provoke. Read more

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: An ungainly, intermittently harrowing omnibus filled with moments of piercing sorrow and rage. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: The structure of September 11 is gimmicky, but the result is a serious and compelling collection of 11 short films about the destruction of the World Trade Center. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Voices and sounds without pictures force us to internalize a catastrophe almost impossible to visualize. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The results are mixed. Many of the films are too long, and even worse, the collection as a whole doesn't come to grips with the human scale of the tragedy. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: The results are not monumental, but they are a variety of sober responses to the tragedy that help place the event in a global context. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It's a darkness that 11'09''01 masterfully seeks to penetrate, using wisdom and understanding rather than rhetoric and bombs. Read more

Deborah Young, Variety: Read more

David Rooney, Variety: Read more

Dennis Lim, Village Voice: At best irrelevant and at worst obscene. Read more