Movie Information
Overall Rank: 1251
Average Rating: 3/4
# of Ratings: 88
Theatrical Release Date: 10/24/2008
Blu-ray/DVD Release Date: 03/10/2009
Language: English
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Actors: Catherine Keener, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sadie Goldstein, Peter Friedman, Josh Pais, Daniel London
Plot: A struggling stage director feels that his life is unsuccessful as he struggles with success and women. He discovers an old warehouse and decides to direct a play that includes a life size replica. How long will it take for him to pull off this play?
Quick Movie Reviews
Rating of
3/4
Logan D. McCoy - wrote on 05/30/2019
A portrait of midlife crisis, "Synecdoche, New York" is backed by a sense of cerebral surrealism only Charlie Kaufman could provide.
Rating of
3/4
Amy - wrote on 02/08/2014
Bleeeeeh. I guess this was a good movie, it certainly had some good performances and some interesting ideas, but too upsetting, like being caught in an interminable anxiety dream. If I need to see someone fret over being an artistic fraud and having gum disease, I can just take a nap.
Rating of
2.5/4
Amyaronson - wrote on 07/18/2011
Wow, this movie is a real doozy. Charlie Kaufman, you mind-fucked me again. I can't explain this movie, but it defies all laws of reality and chronology. Even more so than Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. It's totally crazy and confusing and if you are the kind of person who has to know what everything means and the order of events and you must take things literally, then don't watch it. It's like The Fountain; you just have to accept that it's weird, you're not really going to fully GET it, and you probably aren't supposed to. Just relax and go with it. Feel it. Surrrrreal it.
Full Movie Reviews
Rating of
4/4
Life get's shorter every day.
Matthew Brady - wrote on 09/01/2014
This is a movie where life itself is getting shorter.
Synecdoche, New York is about a struggling stage director feels that his life is unsuccessful as he struggles with success and women. He discovers an old warehouse and decides to direct a play that includes a life size replica. How long will it take for him to pull off this play.
This movie not like another movie that i have seen, because with new movies trying to be new and try to be bold and smart, well this movie does it well by it's brilliant directing. You know when people say to you that life is short or you will always be daddy's baby, well in this movie a stage director played by the great Philip Seymour Hoffman, well his life is going past him very quick and his daughter never ages in this film at all, because this …
Rating of
2/4
Ambitious but Doesn't Deliver
Franz Patrick - wrote on 05/17/2009
This is the kind of movie that is frustrating to watch because its ambition got in the way of true emotional resonance. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Caden Cotard, a theater director who one day decides to make an epic life-size play about his whole life. He makes that decision because he wants to know how his life turns out the way it is, to understand why his relationship with the people he loves most simply did not work. There are four women in his life that have impacted him greatly: Samantha Morton, a box-office worker, Hope Davis, a shrink, Michelle Williams, a stage actress, and Catherine Keener, Caden’s wife. The first thirty minutes of this picture is very engaging: I felt how alienated Caden was because he doesn’t feel appreciated by his family and the people he works …
Rating of
3/4
Creative, Confusing, and Unique But That's it
Alex - wrote on 12/07/2008
Charlie Kaufman is a creative genius. He brings his vast creativity to this flick much like he did in all of his other films he wrote. This time though, Kaufman is the writer and the direcotor while normally he only writes.
Hoffman and cast do an amazing job of acting in this wierd, out of control flick. This movie is not for everyone. If you are not a fan of his previous films (or even if you are) you may be disappointed. It is very good at times and highly entertaining through small parts. But the uniqueness is the sole reason why I gave it 3 stars.
The bad part is that I was bored for about a half hour (towards the end) and didn't seem to move enough. The film was not all that long so I think it could have been improved with some simple edits. The other bad thing is …
Related Movie Lists
Recent Movie Talk Posts
Austin Shagwell - wrote on 2009-03-24 20:48
Thats prety much what I came up with, that it was all just a fable of his mind, except for the wife leaving him with the child. & I think that his theater piece was just what he wished his life could have been, or something like that, I almost want to watch it again just to figure out what ws going on.Im slightly anoyed/ embaresed, because i haven't put this much thought into a movie since Donnie Darko.
Alex - wrote on 2009-03-23 18:44
That was jacked up.  Not sure.  To me it was imagination but I could be wrong.  It was all apart of his world and what was happening.  I think his whole life was a farce and that he just died lonely, not even in his own production.  The movie should have been shortened by about 45 minutes, then it would have been really good.  Good question though.
Austin Shagwell - wrote on 2009-03-23 16:20
Has anyone else seen this movie?If so, could you please help me better understand the fire in the one womans house? Is it symbalism, or just imagination?
