| 100 |
Film Threat
Jeremy Knox
Gozu is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a cow's head. If you think that this last statement doesn't make any sense, just watch the movie.
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| 88 |
New York Post
The film is less violent and bloody than much of the director's work, but the absurdity level is sky high. Takashi Miike is at the top of his game, loving every minute of his surreal visit to the twilight zone.
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| 80 |
Village Voice
Splendidly entertaining.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
The latest and most creatively unhinged film from director Takashi Miike.
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| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
The film unfolds as if it were a dream in which taboo subconscious urges surface symbolically as in a Dali painting, yet everything takes place in everyday settings.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
It somehow feels richly, hilariously real, even -- at its most bizarre -- familiar.
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| 70 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Although most definitely an acquired taste, the David Lynchian Gozu delivers the goods in dripping, gooey gobs.
|
| 70 |
Variety
Unclassifiable cult figure Takashi Miike's films invariably have their share of weirdness and perversity, but Gozu arguably outweirds all previous efforts in the prolific Japanese director's eclectic canon.
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| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Gozu is prime evidence in the argument that gonzo gangster movie maverick Takashi Miike is a major director goofing on minor works.
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| 60 |
Empire
Will Lawrence
If "Ichi The Killer" stressed the extreme natureof Takashi Miike's cinematic sensibility, Gozu hammers it home… with a blood-spattered mallet.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
Mr. Miike is best known in the United States for horror films like "Audition" and "Ichi the Killer." Gozu, for all its extremity, is a more relaxed, less disturbing picture. Its dreamy disconnection is reminiscent of David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," but it is, if anything, even more hermetic and dissociated.
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| 50 |
New York Daily News
There are some genuinely funny moments amid the gore, but who knew this famously edgy director would find bathroom humor to be such a knee-slapper?
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| 50 |
Entertainment Weekly
Not until the last 20 minutes does Gozu come fully alive. A man has sex with a seductive beauty, who then gives birth to...well, let's just say it's a sight that may take time to fight its way out of your head.
|
| 50 |
LA Weekly
The various disruptions Miike visits upon his stories, and upon his audience, serve mainly to focus attention on the manipulating intelligence behind the scenes. They're a fancy way of yelling, "Look at me!"
|
| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
Miike's film is a cunning little comedy of manners gone mad. Even when you feel you have to turn away from the screen or lose your lunch, Miike has something interesting to say. I'm not entirely sure what it is but his lips are moving and something horrific is definitely coming out.
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| 50 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Miike has served up some of the most dumbfounding images in contemporary cinema.
|
| 50 |
Washington Post
Miike's fans, those used to his strange ways, will certainly find Gozu an amusing addition to the oeuvre. All others will be bewildered beyond expression.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
The homoerotic twists and gender-shifting turns are fun, but they can't hide the fact that the film is little more than a tedious shaggy-dog story with oblique mythological references.
|
| 0 |
San Francisco Chronicle
G. Allen Johnson
Stay far, far away.
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