Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more

 

Donnie Darko (2001)

Director: Richard Kelly

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

This flawed but promising debut from writer/director Kelly is like The Ice Storm with a surreal psychological twist. It's 1988, and the title character (Gyllenhaal) is a moody adolescent in small town America. After a near fatal incident in which a jet engine falls on his house, Donnie suffers schizophrenic hallucinations of a spooky figure warning of imminent apocalypse. Kelly's script is an over-ambitious mess, dragging in time travel, high school politics, premonition and the presidential chances of Michael Dukakis, but his assured direction compensates. The tone alternates nimbly between comedy and horror, and two early sequences combine music (Echo and the Bunnymen's 'Killing Moon' and Tears for Fears) and image to stunning effect.

Author: NY

Time Out Film Guide


What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields





Features

Do overs!

Do overs!

After Race to Witch Mountain, what should Disney remake next?

Gray's anatomy

James Gray wants to push buttons—again.

The next big thing?

Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.

Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema

So you think you can dance, comrade?

Puppet master

Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.

Socratic method

Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.

Wander woman

Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.

Oscars

Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.