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Dolls
Metascore
71 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 16 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 16
  3. Negative: 0 out of 16
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  1. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    100
    The overall mood is stately and melancholy, the selective use of color is ravishing, and some of the natural views are breathtaking.
  2. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    83
    As an exception to the norm, Kitano doesn't appear this time, confining himself merely to writing, directing, and editing.
  3. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Darrin Keene
    80
    The cinematography is stunning, particularly where Matsumoto and Sawoko walk through the four seasons of life.
  4. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    80
    Kitano's gentle side reigns in Dolls, a gorgeous meditation on love and devotion, but the film's hypnotic tone and beautifully formalized color scheme makes it unlike anything he's done to date.
  5. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    Dolls isn't a film for everybody, especially the impatient, but Kitano does succeed, I think, in drawing us into his tempo and his world, and slowing us down into the sadness of his characters.
  6. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    75
    A work both rigorously stylized and deeply personal. Devotees of Kitano and Japanese cinema will admire Dolls.
  7. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    75
    Lush and poetic, Dolls proves once again that Kitano is one of the world's most original filmmakers.
  8. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: G. Allen Johnson
    75
    Colorful and sweeping.
  9. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    75
    Dolls is an art film, and a languid, inexplicably haunting one at that.
  10. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Carina Chocano
    70
    The movie's pace is appropriate to its mood, which is crisp, melancholy and gently cruel.
  11. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    70
    With some staggeringly beautiful photography of cherry blossoms and scarlet autumn leaves, Dolls is so enthralled with its own cinematography that it can't bear to edit itself, and during the autumn and winter segments of the bound beggars' journey, it almost reaches a standstill.
  12. Variety
    Reviewed by: David Rooney
    70
    Despite an excessively meandering final act, the drama's three intertwined stories have a cumulative impact, their affecting sadness matched by meticulously composed visual poetry.
  13. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Robert Dominguez
    63
    Rife with beautiful imagery and loads of symbolism, though none of the stories is particularly compelling on its own.
  14. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    60
    Whether this measured exercise in romantic melancholy moves you to tears or bores you to them is probably a matter of personal susceptibility to the sting of bitter regret for love lost.
  15. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    50
    Dolls risks the bank on symbology as gaudy as teen anime and as heavy as a stone temple.
  16. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Richard James Havis
    40
    Dolls soon becomes overloaded with symbolism, and consequently suffocates the audience.
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