Critic Reviews
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Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail
Grace, the movie implies, is the genius behind what Vogue really sells, which is romantic aspirational fantasies for women.
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Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times
While it's fun for fashionholics just to watch a movie in which people say "It's a famine of beauty!" and "The jacket is the new coat," the film becomes more substantial as it narrows its focus to two people: an artist and a curator.
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Tom Long, Detroit News
A mesmerizing study of the tension between commerce and creativity.
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Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
Coddington, at least, gives us an appreciation of the talent seeing to it that the grandest fashion magazine of them all still sells the dream of glamour with style.
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Justin Lowe, Hollywood Reporter
An insider's view of high fashion's ultimate tastemakers proves it's not just for aficionados.
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Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle
[Cutler] worms his way into subcultures without judgment or probing, preferring to let group dynamics speak for themselves.
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Joshua Starnes, ComingSoon.net
The September Issue is like the world's most perfect accessory; pointless, but difficult not to look at. And look at it long enough, you might actually find you like it.
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Joseph Proimakis, Movies for the Masses
full review at Movies for the Masses
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Cris Kennedy, Screenwize
The War Room director R J Cutler is a serious filmmaker, and while some may think fashion is a less than serious subject (Wintour's daughter Bee being one of them, as we find out in one amusing scene), his film is a riveting insight.
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Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
A handsome DVD treatment of a useless, predictable documentary experience%u2014an assessment Anna Wintour would say points to my insecurity.
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Andrea Chase, Killer Movie Reviews
a more perfect representation of the eternal struggle, and even more eternal dependence, of art and commerce, there could not be.
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Liz Braun, Jam! Movies
R. J. Cutler's documentary appears to gloss over many pertinent details and the filmmaker has been accused of being too easy on Wintour, but The September Issue is incisive, detailed and somewhat cruel.
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James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk
sporadically successful, but mostly feels stranded at the surface, possibly because its insider-ism gets the best of the filmmakers by keeping them so trapped inside the Vogue universe that we never hear any outside voices
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Jeff Vice, Deseret News, Salt Lake City
For some, fashion might not seem like exciting material, but director R.J. Cutler is able to create some genuine suspense and tension, as the days and hours count down to the "close" of the issue.
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Rob Thomas, Capital Times (Madison, WI)
They say that when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you. Looking into the sunglasses of Vogue editor Anna Wintour must be kind of like that. Except that you never think to yourself, "I wonder if the abyss thinks I look fat in these jeans?"
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Justin Strout, Orlando Weekly
In its way, The September Issue is about expert craftsmen toiling away at a factory, albeit an unimaginably glamorous one.
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Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly
Cutler takes an often riveting nuts-and-bolts look at what goes into creating the Vogue September issue, and it's a shame that he isn't more focused on the procedural.
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Richard Knight, Windy City Times
Grace Coddington, Vogue's Creative Director, is the secret weapon the movie needs. One sits through all the Anna Wintour stuff just to get back to her.
Read all 18 critic reviews
Featured Audience Ratings
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Kind of interesting, and kind of everything you'd expect it to be. Wanted less of Wintour being bitchy and more of why she was being bitchy.
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You're screen will practically frost over from Anna Wintour's icy personality but this is an interesting inside look at the organization of Vogue's big issue.
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this is probably a special interest documentary. i know alot of people feel fashion is frivolous and it is of course. it's a kind of fantasy world that's fairly divorced from reality but for a small and elite crowd, it is a religion. the film shows us the people behind… More
this is probably a special interest documentary. i know alot of people feel fashion is frivolous and it is of course. it's a kind of fantasy world that's fairly divorced from reality but for a small and elite crowd, it is a religion. the film shows us the people behind the fashion bible, vogue's september issue, including the ice queen, anna wintour, played by meryl streep in the devil wears prada, her senior editor and former 60's model grace coddington, a true genius of fashion who steals the film from anna, the fabulous andre leon talley, photographers like mario testino and patrick demarchelier at work, various designers, etc. if none of this means anything to u, then u won't care about this film, but as someone who grew up with vogue, inspired by the fashion and especially the wonderful photography, all this was pretty fascinating. i don't read fashion magazines now but this one really opened my eyes as a kid until the edgier elle took over in the 90's
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If you LOVE fashion as I do, you will really appricaite this movie. It goes behind the sense of our favorite fashion magazine. You see all the work that really goes into making the september issue. It really is unbelieveable. I completely loved the shoots done by Grace...She is… More
If you LOVE fashion as I do, you will really appricaite this movie. It goes behind the sense of our favorite fashion magazine. You see all the work that really goes into making the september issue. It really is unbelieveable. I completely loved the shoots done by Grace...She is AMAZING! I loved all of them. She's genious. I didnt really see this movie as documentary, it was very amusing and jsut the right length. It could have gotten long and drawn out but it didnt. Very well made. See it.
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<i>"Fashion is a religion. This is the bible."</i>
A documentary chronicling Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's preparations for the 2007 fall-fashion issue.
<center><font size=+2 face="Century… More
<i>"Fashion is a religion. This is the bible."</i>
A documentary chronicling Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's preparations for the 2007 fall-fashion issue.
<center><font size=+2 face="Century Schoolbook"><b><u>REVIEW</u></b></font></center>
How can one woman hold so much power in a multi-billion dollar industry? The September Issue shows all the mind-blowing meticulous and uncompromising work that went behind the biggest issue of American Vogue, the September 2007 840-page phone book-thick fall fashion bible. If you thought Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada was, well, a devil, then the real-life pope of international fashion whose word on all things sartorial is doctrine and canon will leave you speechless as she makes the most famous and esteemed designers nervous like little girls who doubt that they know even a single thing about clothes, puts into trash $ 50,000 worth of fashion editorial work, and dictates to major retailers what the rest of us are going to wear.
However, the more profound aspects of this documentary are the less notorious driving or hindering forces of multi-million-copy-selling Vogue. Anna Wintour, aka "nuclear Wintour," has chinks in her armor. After all, every deity is a human first, and Anna is a mother to a daughter who thinks that the fashion industry is "amusing," a sentiment shared by Anna's three other siblings. To the commander-in-chief of couture and prêt-a-porter, this seems to send an unwelcoming weakness. Juxtaposed with Anna is creative director Grace Coddington, the apparent warmness to Anna's iciness. Pushing each other has been the norm for their 20 years of working close together. The dynamic between the two is exciting, frustrating, and a necessary endeavor to produce the pages of fashion's most revered reference.
Fashion people will eat up this film. However, normal people/fashion outsiders will not regret seeing this insightful piece about how it is to be supremely powerful, what it takes to be at the pinnacle, and the costs of this might and glory.
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While certainly an entertaining and fascinating movie, I don't really leave The September Issue feeling any more enlightened about Vogue than I already was. This just confirms the shroud of mystery that encircles Wintour and her legion of skinny, perfectly coiffed robots. The… More
While certainly an entertaining and fascinating movie, I don't really leave The September Issue feeling any more enlightened about Vogue than I already was. This just confirms the shroud of mystery that encircles Wintour and her legion of skinny, perfectly coiffed robots. The fashion is beautiful yet inaccessible. Even the presence of Grace Coddington doesn't temper Wintour's trademark ice face.
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"The September Issue" is a surprisingly good, crisp documentary about the senior team at American Vogue, chiefly Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington. Filmmaker R.J. Cutler followed Wintour and Coddington (both British women of a certain age) around in the early part of 2007 as… More
"The September Issue" is a surprisingly good, crisp documentary about the senior team at American Vogue, chiefly Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington. Filmmaker R.J. Cutler followed Wintour and Coddington (both British women of a certain age) around in the early part of 2007 as preparations were made for the September issue of the magazine, which is always the most-read issue of the year and is considered a bellwether for the fashion world at the start of its all-important fall season. Coddington is so interesting and unique that she almost steals the movie from Wintour.
I suppose that Vogue felt it needed to make its own film after the huge success of "The Devil Wears Prada," a brilliant parody written by one of Wintour's former assistants. In "The September Issue," Wintour emerges as imperious but hardly a terror. She is extremely decisive and has a very assured eye. She knows what she likes and what she doesn't. Her creative staff get upset when she rejects something they find beautiful, but that of course occurs everywhere in the fashion world. Beauty (like all art) is highly subjective. What makes one person swoon makes another person wince.
The film is not interested in the personal lives of its subjects. Wintour's daughter is interviewed briefly, but the overwhelming focus is on what goes on within the Vogue office. It's all about the work they do in the day, not their fuller lives as people.
One intriguing absence in the film is any discussion of where magazine-publishing is going. Everyone else in the magazine world in 2007 was talking about the decline of print media and its replacement by the Web. But at Vogue no one seemed to know these discussions were going on. Or was Cutler simply not interested in this topic? Cutler and Wintour seem oddly oblivious to the real story of the day, which is, How will Vogue transition to the 21st century? Is it a woolly mammoth headed for extinction? A woolly mammoth with Prada sunglasses on is still a woolly mammoth. The fashion industry will survive of course, but will fashion magazines? Some discussion of this would have strengthened "The September Issue" and made it seem less clueless about which century we're in.
Also odd is the question of why the film took two years to be released. Filming completed in the summer of 2007, and the film opened in New York in August of 2009. Presumably there were financial difficulties. I'm pleased that a distributor finally was found. It's surprising to me that it had to be micro-mini Roadside Attractions. But at least the film is being shown.
This makes two quite good documentaries this summer about the fashion world. In addition to "The September Issue," there was "Valentino: The Last Emperor," a witty portrait of the personal life as well as the career of legendary Italian designer Valentino Garavani, who generally is known only by his first name.
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After several years of watching Project Runway I can now say it out loud: I don't get high fashion. I don't get it at all. But that doesn't keep me from being entertained by those larger-than-life people hard at work at it. And if VALENTINO was the deep exploration… More
After several years of watching Project Runway I can now say it out loud: I don't get high fashion. I don't get it at all. But that doesn't keep me from being entertained by those larger-than-life people hard at work at it. And if VALENTINO was the deep exploration of it, this breezy and completely delightful portrait of one mad issue of Vogue being put together is the candy colored companion piece I didn't know I was waiting for. Anna Wintour is as fascinating as you might imagine, but the real star of the film is her fashion director Gale Coddington and the incredibly complex relationship between the two of them as they gracefully spat their way towards getting the issue out. If that doesn't sound entertaining, it's because it's impossible to describe the dishy, catty joy of this film. I may not get it, but I sure enjoy trying!
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Ah, it's great to see the claws of Anna Wintour. She can't reign in the drama and haughtiness, even when she's not expressly directing it at anyone. A cold smirk, a blank stare, a slight eyeroll... these are the things that apparently make fashionistas both swoon over… More
Ah, it's great to see the claws of Anna Wintour. She can't reign in the drama and haughtiness, even when she's not expressly directing it at anyone. A cold smirk, a blank stare, a slight eyeroll... these are the things that apparently make fashionistas both swoon over her and fear her.
"The September Issue" is great viewing -- it's like Bravo on the big screen. You get the viewpoints of Wintour and her underlings as they put together the famed and collossal September issue of "Vogue" magazine and do other fashiony things. As an editor (uh, NOT at "Vogue"), I loved watching their process and comparing it to my own work.
The best thing about the whole damn movie, though, is creative director Grace Coddington. She whips her long red hair around like nobody's business AND she stands up to and sasses Wintour when she needs it. No one else quite gives Wintour the smackdown when it's warranted, and believe me, it was warranted in many of the situations.
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Pretty interesting. Anna Wintour is kinda fabulous.
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A great documentary about the biggest and most influential fashion magazine in the world, Vogue.
We get to follow the editor-in-cheif Anna Wintour and the creative director Grace Coddington as they put together The September Issue.
A fascinating insight into the world of fashion… More
A great documentary about the biggest and most influential fashion magazine in the world, Vogue.
We get to follow the editor-in-cheif Anna Wintour and the creative director Grace Coddington as they put together The September Issue.
A fascinating insight into the world of fashion through The September Issue.
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The Devil Wears....Fur.....
Anna Wintour's fur obsession was the only downside to this documentary which takes us into the privileged world of fashion and provides a fascinating insight into the behind the scenes workings of Vogue magazine's famous 'September… More
The Devil Wears....Fur.....
Anna Wintour's fur obsession was the only downside to this documentary which takes us into the privileged world of fashion and provides a fascinating insight into the behind the scenes workings of Vogue magazine's famous 'September Issue'. The documentary has an interesting cast of characters, some of whom are very self-involved. This makes for some hilarious soundbites - 'September is the January in fashion' , for example, and 'the jacket is the new coat'. Amazing!
I am a big fan of fashion, so I found all of this very entertaining. The glamour and excess of the fashion shoots - Raquel Zimmerman shot by David Sims at Versailles is wonderfully glamorous - and of course, this is a unparalleled glimpse into the world of Wintour, who is capable of more than a few soundbites of her own. In one scene she states of Jennifer Garner that she 'needs to be fixed. She looks pregnant'.
As fascinating as Wintour is, for me, Creative Director Grace Coddington was the star of the show, and a refreshing contrast to the aloof Wintour. Coddington is the only person at Vogue, it seems, ready to defy Wintour, and this definitely makes for interesting watching. A must see for Fashion fans!
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What emerged most strongly for me was the sheer beauty of what was being created in fashion and in the photographs that presented it.
Read all 13 featured audience ratings
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