Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 15 Ratings

  • Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Maribel VerdĂș, Vincent Gallo
  • Summary: Tetro is Francis Ford Coppola's first original screenplay since "The Conversation." It is his most personal film yet, arising from memories and emotions from his early life, though totally fictional. It is the bittersweet story of two brothers, of family lost and found and the conflicts and secrets within a highly creative Argentine-Italian family. (American Zoetrope Releasing) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 26
  2. Negative: 0 out of 26
  1. Shot mostly in black and white and imbued with a romanticism that's at once nostalgic and exhilarating, Tetro sneaks up on you. What threatens to be a mere exercise in style proves to be as involving as it is inventive.
  2. As with "Youth Without Youth," this new movie feels like a transitional work but also an inspired one, the creation of a director who, having recently turned 70, has set off on a new adventure that requires more from his audiences than some might be willing to give. Which is itself a sign of vigorous artistic renewal.
  3. 80
    Certainly it isn't the greatest of Coppola's pictures, or even of his independent productions, but those are pretty high standards. It has a verve and vitality that's been missing from his pictures for 25 years, and its various and visible flaws all result from too much of that verve rather than too little. I enjoyed it tremendously.
  4. Reviewed by: Betsy Sharkey
    60
    In Tetro, nearly every time Coppola should have clung to intimacy, he opts for excess. Especially tedious are the meta excerpts from staged productions -- overcompensation trying to masquerade as illumination. Regrettable since there is such fine work being done in the smaller moments.

See all 26 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 1 out of 4
  1. AlanY
    10
    Visually and dramatically spellbinding. The dramatic tension is perfectly paced, the principal actors are riveting, and I especially liked the cinematography. This is not a mass-market film, but the work of an artist. Collapse
  2. Drew
    10
    Coppola is back! I couldn't be happier with the film. It had a great story, great acting, it was beautiful to look at, and I was captivated by it the whole time. Bravo, Mr. Coppola. Expand
  3. CaroleG
    8
    It is very hard to have a successful story based solely on revelations of what happened in the past. Somehow, magically, Coppola pulled this off with "The Conversation," in which he held us fascinated, as the puzzle of what happened slowly gets solved. With "Tetro," there is no coherent story, i.e., a story that utterly coheres. I have to ascribe this to Coppola's using material that is very personal and then trying to make it interesting to the viewer; alas, he drags in whatever he thinks will work, even though the action-enhancing parts are not all of a piece. Because there is no story to follow, we are dependent on the two main characters, but I was unable to care about either of them. All this negativity aside, the film is gorgeous to watch, in its dramatic black and white, an occasionally unexpected angle, the way the camera can make us focus on a small area as though it were the entire world, reminiscent of old Japanese films such a "Tokyo Story." I wanted to love this film. I barely liked it. The very beginning held my interest, and then for a long time the grievances were played and re-played, which I found boring, and finally there were bursts of action that took the film to a level of improbability from which it was impossible to suspend disbelief. I heard Coppola on the radio recently talking about himself--it was utterly fascinating. Great talkers and great directors are not necessarily great writers. I wish someone else had written "Tetro." Expand
  4. amk76mak
    0
    Just want to say that i love the Dracula and Apocalypse But..... You everyone begging for FFC and don/t see that whole 15 years he shot holy crap.

Trailers