- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100Hoffman's acting is poignant and compassionate, etching a profoundly sad character with no trace of compromise, and Bates gives one of her most controlled performances ever.
-
80Provides Hoffman with what he's long deserved: a movie of his own.
-
80Hoffman's touchingly fractured performance gives the picture a warm dimension.
-
78Me, I’ve now seen the movie three times and I’ve laughed and I’ve cried. It comes the closest to any movie experience I’ve had in re-creating the aftermath of unexplained suicide. Sometimes there just aren’t any answers.
-
75The movie proceeds with a hypnotic relentlessness that hesitates between horror and black comedy.
-
75An oddly endearing little chamber piece that provides a terrific showcase for Hoffman, surely the best actor who has never been nominated for an Oscar.
-
75A downbeat but oddly affectionate tale.
-
70May frustrate as many viewers as it delights (if not more) and it is almost relentlessly depressing, but it's also a principled, sharply realistic film that captures a highly convincing vision of Middle America.
-
70Quirkily sad, unexpectedly funny -- and just a tad repetitive.
-
70"Dark and demanding" doesn't begin to describe this devastating film -- It is not too much to say that without its splendid use of music Love Liza might not be bearable.
-
70Todd Louiso's directorial debut emerges at once as compelling and as a bit of a specimen due to the entirely singular nature of the protagonist's behavior.
-
67Less a story than a film of emotional textures, this is a study in stasis.
-
63Louiso has a confident touch and a good eye, and there isn't a scene in the film that wasn't intelligently done. Besides Hoffman's near-great performance as Joel, there isn't a bad or mediocre acting job on view either.
-
63It's a great performance that's a horror to watch. Of all the bleak year-end movies, Love Liza is the bleakest; of all the sad characters you've seen lately, Hoffman's Wilson Joel is the saddest. And he goes home with you.
-
60Love Liza needs more than mood on its side. A moment of recognizable human behavior would have been a fine place to start.
-
60The movie is so small and emotionally constricted that it gives Hoffman too little room to explore his range.
-
50The misery is there, all right, in every woozy, spaced-out shot of Hoffman clutching his gas-soaked rag. But in the end, do we really care?
-
50Because the movie is about addictive behavior dulling the pain of grief rather than in the larger drama of dealing with grief, the movie reduces the scope of Hoffman's performance.
-
50Hoffman stores the plane fuel in his house and even enjoys sniffing it. The movie might be a lot more fun as a suspense pic were he to take on a roommate who chained-smoked.
-
50Does have the enclosed, slightly overheated feel of a family theatrical.
-
50In its component parts, then, Love Liza is essentially a battle between opposing clichés.
-
50Hoffman acts the hell out of the role.
-
50Everyone's work is heartfelt, heaven knows, but the script, by Mr. Hoffman's brother, Gordy Hoffman, gives the movie's star little but lugubriousness to play...eventually the whole thing seems to be running on fumes.
-
50I've heard it said that Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the most talented character actors currently working, can't carry a film himself, and unfortunately this indie feature isn't meaty enough to prove otherwise.
-
40The tone is inconsistent -- sometimes it seems to be straining for black comedy, other times it seems dead serious.
-
30Sadly, the filmmakers haven't given viewers enough context or information about their protagonist to know whether he's utterly free or utterly unmoored -– or to care very much either way.
-
20What should have been an idiosyncratic 20-minute short is distended by repetition and loads of standard indie-film time-killers.