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A Zed & Two Noughts

Play trailer Poster for A Zed & Two Noughts Released May 25, 1990 1h 55m Fantasy Play Trailer Watchlist
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78% Tomatometer 18 Reviews 85% Popcornmeter 2,500+ Ratings
Identical twins lose their wives in a car crash caused by a white swan. Both brothers are zoologists and become obsessed with the death and decay of animals. They develop a strange and unusual relationship with the woman driving the car, who is now an amputee.

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A Zed & Two Noughts

Critics Reviews

View All (18) Critics Reviews
David Fear Time Out Rated: 5/5 Nov 17, 2011 Full Review Jeremiah Kipp Slant Magazine None of Greenaway's films take place in anything resembling naturalism or realism, and they don't feel modern. They're like archaic storybook adaptations of Jacobean plays illustrated by Vermeer. Rated: 3/4 Jan 22, 2008 Full Review Nathan Lee Village Voice An enjoyably decadent, ridiculously convoluted thingamajig. Jul 5, 2007 Full Review Ángel Luis Inurria El Pais (Spain) Presumptuous, cold, distant, bad, and excessive in its length. [Full Review in Spanish] Mar 31, 2020 Full Review Tim Brayton Antagony & Ecstasy A big, over-the-top comedy, with a sense of humor probably best appreciated by misanthropic nihilists. Rated: 8/10 Dec 5, 2016 Full Review Amber Wilkinson Eye for Film Despite overkill in the ideas department, which many will find too pretentious for comfort or coherence, visually, Zed is a masterpiece. Rated: 3.5/5 Sep 8, 2010 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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g j A gaudily shot, annoyingly acted and horribly paced slog of a film, that is considerably less enjoyable than the nature documentaries that it sporadically displays snippets of. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 08/07/24 Full Review Roy M a nightmare not suited to everyone's sensibilities... about impermanence and decay... and failure of vision (at the very end- not a true spoiler) Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/23/23 Full Review Audience Member i'm not sure what i think about this one; the premise is definitely weird - but the movie itself was really quite boring. i thought the random time-lapses were misplaced until the very end - which i *did* like - a tragic ending, by their own doing/obsession. so i did find this movie to be interesting, you just have to sit through a lot to get there. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member This one's a wild ride. It's about these twin brothers whose wives die in a freak accident, so they get obsessed with the process of death and decomposition and begin taking stop-motion photography of animals decomposing. They get them from the zoo where they happen to work. So throughout the film randomly interspersed through the plot, you watch a time lapse of larger and larger animals decomposing in time lapse with jaunty music. Another plot centers around a Vermeer obsessed veterinarian who attempts to transform his patients into replicas of those found in Vermeer's paintings. There's a lot going on here which will probably take multiple views to process. Pitch black humor. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member Peter Greenaway's films may be an acquired taste, and this one certainly falls into that category - a visually stylistic examination into who-knows-what. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member The wives of twin doctors working for a zoo are killed in a car accident. The woman in the other car survives, but loses a leg. The brothers develop an obsessive sexual relationship with her ... and a ton of other things happen. They become obsessed with death and film time lapse footage of putrefying animal corpses. A young girl learns the alphabet. They amputate the other leg because ... well, symmetry I guess. I like but don't love this film. It has a lot of Greenaway's hallmarks ... a slightly atypical, but incredible Michael Nyman score, stunning cinematography from Sacha Vierny (working with Greenaway for the first time) ... but the film is ultimately too meandering and unfocused for me. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Read all reviews
A Zed & Two Noughts

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Movie Info

Synopsis Identical twins lose their wives in a car crash caused by a white swan. Both brothers are zoologists and become obsessed with the death and decay of animals. They develop a strange and unusual relationship with the woman driving the car, who is now an amputee.
Director
Peter Greenaway
Producer
Kees Kasander, Peter Sainsbury
Screenwriter
Peter Greenaway
Distributor
Skouras Pictures
Production Co
Channel Four Films, British Film Institute, Artificial Eye Film, Allarts Enterprises
Genre
Fantasy
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
May 25, 1990, Wide
Release Date (Streaming)
Apr 17, 2020
Runtime
1h 55m
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