Critic Reviews
| 100 |
The New York Times
As fascinating as it is freakish. It confirms Mr. Lynch's stature as an innovator, a superb technician, and someone best not encountered in a dak alley. [19 September 1986]
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| 100 |
Los Angeles Times
The most brilliantly disturbing film ever to have its roots in small-town American life. [19 September 1986, Calendar, p.6-1]
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| 100 |
ReelViews
Blue Velvet is David Lynch in peak form, and represents (to date) his most accomplished motion picture. It is a work of fascinating scope and power that rivals any of the most subversive films to reach the screens during the '80s.
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| 100 |
Village Voice
Guy Maddin
The last real earthquake to hit cinema was David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" -- I'm sure directors throughout the film world felt the earth move beneath their feet and couldn't sleep the night of their first encounter with it back in 1986. (Review of 20th Anniversary Re-Release)
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| 90 |
LA Weekly
What dazzles still about David Lynch's Blue Velvet is its total authority: Not a single false gesture. No shock delivered solely for its own sake.
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| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
One powerful, mesmerizing thriller, a masterful exercise in controlling an audience's attention. [19 September 1986, Friday, p.A]
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| 80 |
Variety
Staff (Not credited)
Hopper creates a flabbergasting portrait of unrepentent, irredeemable evil.
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| 80 |
Film.com
An exhilarating piece of popular entertainment.
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| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
You either think it's dementedly wild at heart or a lost highway to nowhere.
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| 60 |
Time
Lynch and his film will surely be reviled, but as an experiment in expanding cinema's dramatic and technical vocabulary, Blue Velvet demands respect. [Sept. 22, 1986]
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| 50 |
Chicago Reader
Pat Graham
It's mostly fascinating, though the unconverted may be in for a rough two hours.
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| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Gerald Nachman
Dark, menacing and sexual, with satanic overtones, like a Black Sabbath song, with many moments of genuine fright and harsh eroticism. [19 September 1986, Daily Notebook, p.76]
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| 30 |
Washington Post
Paul Attanasio
Doesn't progress or deepen, it just gets weirder, and to no good end.
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| 25 |
Chicago Sun-Times
So strong, so shocking and yet so audacious that people walk out shaking their heads; they don't know quite what to make of it.
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