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63It has a sense of drift that both vexes and beguiles.
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88This performance, unlike anything Paul Dano has ever done, must have required some courage. It requires an actor to cast aside all conceits of performance, presence, charisma and even timing.
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58The drama is so minimalist that it's hard to glimpse the man behind the woe.
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91Nobody else could fit the role of a crestfallen rocker that Paul Dano embodies in director So Yong Kim's remarkable For Ellen.
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90A small but exquisite film, beautifully observed and impeccably executed. Written and directed by So Yong Kim, it shows a different side of an actor we thought we knew and reveals unexpected aspects of a character who turns out to be not as familiar as he seems.
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60In a film that deliberately recalls 1970's "Five Easy Pieces," Dano's performance as a lost dreamer running from adulthood resonates beautifully.
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25Sundance Mopey Alienation Flick No. 4,228 is For Ellen, an empty angst-athon that proves 90 minutes of close-ups of Paul Dano looking wounded can be even less interesting than it sounds.
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60By concentrating so intently on the psychically unattached Joby, Kim hinders dramatic and character development. Her "Treeless Mountain," the Korea-set saga of two young sisters, was also quiet and open-ended. But the interplay between the two girls provided warmth and depth. For Ellen feels both colder and slighter.
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Sep 1, 201263So Yong Kim's direction remains ruminative, even poetic, in its pacing, its sense of place, and its approach to intimacy, but this is her most unsuitable script.
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Sep 5, 201258The kind of film that rises or falls on the strength of its lead performance, given that its protagonist is in every scene, often alone. It's built around a strong turn by Dano, but one that feels studied and sometimes at odds with the naturalism the film aims for with its grubby settings, loose camerawork, and tendency toward inquisitive close-ups.
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Sep 1, 201250The scant character development is not enhanced by the film's directorial style.
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50Rather than finding an interesting, resonant ambiguity in his experience, Ms. Kim and Mr. Dano settle for a kind of suggestive vagueness, losing the thread of their character in the snow, steam and cigarette smoke that provide the film's main visual motif and perhaps also its dominant metaphor.
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60Unfortunately, Kim nearly wrecks the film's observational acuteness with a climax that shamelessly steals from Bob Rafelson's classic blue-collar drama "Five Easy Pieces," and this faux-gut-punch finale feels haphazardly sutured on rather than arrived at organically. Guess that ham-fisted opening shot was a sign of things to come.
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80As a struggling rocker making a last-ditch attempt to gain shared custody of his daughter, Paul Dano delivers a beautifully wrought performance in a different key from any of his previous roles.
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50Dano, with his remarkably guileless meta-teen puss, is thoroughly convincing, which is more than can be said for the film's shameless climactic steal from "Five Easy Pieces."