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Bright Leaves
Metascore
79 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 21 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 21
  3. Negative: 0 out of 21
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  1. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    100
    Deeply personal, morally alert, and highly entertaining.
  2. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Carla Meyer
    100
    Bright Leaves' takes on a sizable foe -- in this case, big tobacco -- but with such grace and wit that his message never seems medicinal.
  3. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    90
    While making his new film, he (McElwee) imagines that his boy is looking back at his screen image from some distant point in the future, when McElwee himself is gone. No child of a moviemaker could ask for a more beautiful bequest.
  4. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    90
    By the end of this reflective, wise, often hilarious movie, you feel as though he (McElwee) has slapped a huge chunk of raw, palpitating life onto the screen.
  5. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    90
    A brilliantly amusing couple of hours.
  6. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    88
    Another of Charlotte native Ross McElwee's musings about his family, history (this time the tobacco industry) and life. It may be his best.
  7. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    80
    This rich, complex and surprisingly entertaining film also becomes a meditation on filmmaking and the parallels McElwee finds between cinema and, of all things, smoking.
  8. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    80
    McElwee fans will welcome back the wonderful Charleen, his former teacher and lifelong friend, older and mellower but as beguiling and free-spirited as ever.
  9. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    80
    Inevitably poignant but also often amusing and always deeply touching.
  10. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    80
    Witty, thoughtful and illuminating.
  11. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    80
    We are hooked into a low-tech but compelling dynamic -- between relatively static images and McElwee's sensitive, connective narrative.
  12. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    Not a documentary about anything in particular. That is its charm. It's a meandering visit by a curious man with a quiet sense of humor, who pokes here and there in his family history, and the history of tobacco.
  13. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    75
    Another of his (McElwee) beguiling "personal chronicle" movies.
  14. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    75
    This might have come off as both self-indulgent and preachy if McElwee weren't so persuasively earnest. "Bright Leaves" becomes both a mystery and memoir in progress and though the filmmaker does not find the truth he is looking for, it was clearly a quest worth undertaking.
  15. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    75
    In a season of hyperven tilating political docu mentaries - witness Michael Moore and his imitators - Ross McElwee shows just how far subtlety can go with his latest charming effort, Bright Leaves.
  16. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    75
    It's a gently provocative film diary about tobacco and its mixed legacy.
  17. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    75
    Where most documentaries offer us facts to hold on to, his (McElwee's) are obsessed with the mystery of things we don't know and never will.
  18. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    70
    Under his (McElwee's) watch, the possibilities of a documentary seem to expand by the minute, incorporating not only journalistic truths, but also personal insights and philosophy, unique regional textures, and unexposed pockets of humanity.
  19. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    70
    Continuing the autobiographical torrent begun nearly 30 years ago, Bright Leaves is an utterly mundane miracle, a sampling of gentle insight and poetic retrospection quietly at odds with the exploitative culture around it.
  20. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    70
    One reason Bright Leaves is McElwee's best film since "Sherman's March" is the richness of his reflections on this multifaceted material.
  21. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Marta Barber
    50
    Results in a weightless film. Worse still, McElwee's languid tone makes his journey lack conviction.
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