| 100 |
Washington Post
A brilliant film--vivid, haunting, intelligent and in good taste, wonderfully acted, wonderfully written and directed.
|
| 100 |
Christian Science Monitor
Traveling from the tragic to the comic, this multifaceted film is richly acted and imaginatively directed.
|
| 88 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Thoughtfulness and artistry ...raise this small, quiet picture to moments of pure epiphany.
|
| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
If you can forgive some plot artifice and gloss, there's a seductively intuitive and resonant theme resting at the core of Jeremy Podeswa's haunting new film.
|
| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
It's a lovely film that suffers from an overdetermined structure and a reliance on a sensationalized plot line that, quixotically, is ignored for long periods of time.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
The story didn't fully answer all my queries about the characters, but did such a nice job of keeping me interested that I wound up appreciating the mysteries that remained.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
A story like Five Senses sounds like a gimmick, but Podeswa has a light touch when dealing with the senses and a sure one when telling his stories.
|
| 75 |
USA Today
The five stories in The Five Senses flawlessly and even artfully create a unified mood.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A lot more than the sum of its delicately balanced parts.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
A deft, elegant, melancholy tapestry of flawed outreach, and the big reason it succeeds is Podeswa's courage in dispensing with a lot of exposition and trusting the audience - and the faces of the actors - to fill a lot of what otherwise would be gaps.
|
| 70 |
Time
Manages to make its point--that we are all impaired, short on that rarest quality, common sense--without being imprisoned by its complex format.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Narratively club-footed but directorially assured.
|
| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
An elegant, deliberate film about loneliness and hope, connection and loss.
|
| 63 |
Charlotte Observer
It is a gimmick, rather than an idea worth exploring.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
Pseudo art can be fun, though, even if it doesn't quite awaken all your senses.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
Most of the film is so purposefully bound by its construct that it feels more like a creative-writing project (sure, give it an A) than a movie (B-).
|
| 60 |
Mr. Showbiz
Beautifully performed and filmed, but tiresomely schematic episodes like this one cause us to experience major sensory deprivation.
|
| 58 |
Entertainment Weekly
Our senses may be the stuff of drama, but not when they're treated as nice and neat as this.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
It manages just to be pleasant.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Examiner
Particularly anticlimactic - the film itself seems sprung from molting yuppie catalogs.
|
| 40 |
LA Weekly
Comes so freighted with tragedy and sensitivity that I left dreaming of converting the abject misery of one and all to everyday unhappiness with free drinks and a raucous sing-along down at the pub.
|
| 40 |
Dallas Observer
Don't expect to be wowed by a vast spectrum of delicacies, as the buffet here is composed of entirely obvious ingredients.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
It's like one of the baker's cakes, handsomely rendered on the outside but lacking flavor.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
The Five Senses, despite its good performances, is like looking through a filmmaker's sketchbook: strong outlines but little substance.
|
| 38 |
New York Post
Fake-sounding dialogue, some over-deliberate performances and five amazingly trite linked stories.
|
| 38 |
Baltimore Sun
There's less here than meets the eye, not to mention the ear, nose, tongue and fingertip.
|
| 30 |
The New York Times
By interweaving several stories, the movie suffers from a peculiar multiplier effect: it deepens its shallowness.
|
| 30 |
Film.com
It's all quite precious, just not in a good way: "Postmodern" to a fault, deeply shallow, infuriatingly trite.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
Beautifully shot and littered with disquieting character business, the film is hog-tied by its own bad Big Idea.
|
| 30 |
TV Guide
A self-consciously arty ensemble piece that's alternately exploitative, implausible and cliche ridden.
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