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Kafka

Kafka

1991
Drama, Sci-fi
1h 38m
Kafka, an insurance worker gets embroiled in an underground group after a co-worker is murdered. The underground group is responsible for bombings all over town, attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society. He eventually penetrates the secret organization and must confront them.
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Kafka

1991
Drama, Sci-fi
1h 38m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 50.33% from 393 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(393)
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Rated 20 May 2009
20
44th
Unpersuasive, paceless, photographed in inky black-and-white most of the time and in jaundiced color for fifteen minutes, it's sort of a dim sophomore's idea of an "art film" ca. 1964. Actually -- not sort of -- it's Soderbergh's idea of one. Grey is like a duck taking to water as the official and officious office snitch; and a couple of curious chase scenes -- one involving a stalled elevator, the other a domelike magnifying lens -- enliven matters momentarily.
Rated 23 Oct 2008
10
9th
wtf! is this someone's idea of a joke,Soderbergh has not understood a single word of kafka, hehe kafka goes inside the castle!!! ~x(
Rated 30 Mar 2007
70
55th
This movie never received much attention but I think it's intriguing and rewarding in its own nutball sort of way
Rated 21 Apr 2008
78
79th
Lovely hammered dulcimer soundtrack, excellent cast, highly atmospheric, and with an unforgettable third act transition. Why is there no region 1 dvd of this yet? Jeez.
Rated 12 Feb 2010
83
56th
Odd idea, but effective. And a pretty good thriller too.
Rated 11 Dec 2010
35
19th
Steven Soderbergh sullies the name of Franz Kafka by directing this generic, mostly trite and sometimes laboriously quirky fictional script with the character of the great author as its protagonist. Jeremy Irons is tasked with portraying poor Kafka, Theresa Russell is degraded with the role of the fatalish "girl", and Ian Holm's talent is wasted playing a Bond villain. Watch Welles' The Trial or Gilliam's Brazil instead.
Rated 01 Jan 2011
67
38th
67.125
Rated 08 Apr 2011
90
86th
With an aesthetic approach borrowing heavily from The Third Man and German Expressionism and a story that takes Kafka's labyrinthine bureaucracies and horrific duplicities and feeds them into an entertaining murder-mystery, Soderbergh's sophomore effort may not be fully 'Kafka-esque', but it's a clever and cynical film that questions the need for closed doors at all in modern government as well as negotiating ideas of the modern as the most horrific state of all.
Rated 20 Feb 2012
80
67th
Thought it had a good atmosphere and good use of colour, while using an interesting idea of just "adapting" Kafka as a whole (in ways), and putting a murder-mystery in there. Someone said it's like Cronenberg's Naked Lunch and that's a good comparison, because Soderbergh did something very similar. Enjoyed it a lot, expected to come on here and see more glowing reviews. Don't see the hate.
Rated 08 Sep 2012
93
82nd
that was nice.
Rated 30 Mar 2013
52
20th
Although no Soderbergh films are quite alike, his restrained style really doesn't help him here. While there is great black & white cinematography and some good performances, the mix of fiction and non-fiction doesn't quite add up to a solid whole like the contemporary feature Naked Lunch does. A nice score, and a great atmosphere, but as the mystery deepens the film becomes less and less interesting. A sophomore slump which lifts maybe too much from German expressionism and Terry Gilliam.
Rated 06 Jul 2013
75
26th
I don't know how to process this one. It's one of Soderbergh's most daring films, a hodgepodge of Cronenberg and German expressionism, with some very powerful cinematography (including a color sequence that's incredible), but I never really warmed to it (possibly a result of cold Berlin atmosphere?) in a way that would make it a favorite of mine. Definitely one to see again.
Rated 02 Oct 2013
70
39th
69.500
Rated 06 Nov 2014
90
96th
mukemmel bir senaryosu var; kafka'nin yasamiyla kitaplari arasinda cok iyi harmanlanmis bir öykü. donusum yerine sato'yu odaga yerlestirmek cok isabetli bir karar zira sato kafka'nın uslubunu en iyi veren kitap. senaryoyu gercekten cok begendim: yazari yapitlariyla anlatmak cok iyi bir fikir. lem dobbs kafkayı oldukca iyi anlamis fakat soderbergh icin ayni seyi söyleyemiyorum: atmosfer filan iyi kotarilmis olsa da oyuncu secimini ve yonetimini cok kotu buldum.
Rated 12 Sep 2015
65
71st
Some problems, such as Russell's accent (but hired at a moment's notice), and more significantly it all seems overly restrained, with inklings of horror but an inability or unwillingness to genuinely embrace the nightmarishness of Kafka. Nevertheless, still some interesting elements, a good cast, and numerous cinematic and literary references, including Martinez's THIRD MAN-esque hammer dulcimer-based score. Not what it might have been, perhaps, but still better than 98% of Hollywood product.
Rated 17 Oct 2016
70
19th
(...)Für mich gehört Kafka in den Bereich existentialistischer Träumereien, bei Soderbergh aber kommt er wie ein verrückter Forscher daher. Warum hat Soderbergh sich da rangewagt? Vermutlich ist er Kafka Bewunderer und versuchte sich daher an diesem filmischen Labyrinth. Einer aber passt nicht in diese Welt: Kafka selbst.(...)
Rated 21 May 2020
65
42nd
Soderbergh's anachronistic blend of classic noir stylings and a bit of the dynamism from SL&V does a lot of the heavy lifting here for a script which seems more like a jumble of Wikipedia articles linked on the Kafka page than anything approaching the guy himself. I felt a not-insignificant amount of Solaris influence in the eerie climax, which makes me even more curious about his remake now.
Rated 06 Dec 2020
65
63rd
Whom amongst us hasn't attempted to write a fictionalized biopic of David Foster Wallace interpolating elements from Infinite Jest and The Pale King? I'm not saying I have, but I'm not saying I haven't, either...
Rated 19 Feb 2024
55
31st
This early venture of Soderbergh's is more palatable than later of that shit of his. There's something like, oh this is neat, but also overplays, or makes too obvious, references to Kafka's work, and the rendering of the 'Kafkaesque' is diluted for easier digestion. Or it is the writer's/director's own intellectual limitations that account for it.

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