| 90 |
Film.com
Not a film for everyone. And though I deeply admire it, it's not a film that even I want to see again in the immediate future.
|
| 88 |
San Francisco Examiner
Feels like it could go blow up at any time. It implodes instead, and the meltdown, though visible in one of the final sequences, is still corrosive.
|
| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
Korine remains unnecessarily smitten with sordidness, and there's plenty of it here.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
A film of piercing beauty and pain.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
The movie is truly an open text--its generous poetry inspires free association rather than predictable emotion.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
Korine confirms his reputation as one of today's most experimentally minded filmmakers, helped by an inventive cast including German director Herzog in a surprisingly strong performance as the father.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
It seems at first to be merely a jumble of discordant images ("Freaks" shot by the "Blair Witch" crew) but then, if you stay with it, the pattern emerges from the jumble.
|
| 70 |
LA Weekly
Looks like no other recent release...certainly rich enough to warrant more than one viewing.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
I'd never seen anything like it, and can say that I hope to never see anything like it again.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
At its best, it will impale you on its raw urgency. At other times, it's a slog through long improvisations that never achieve dramatic liftoff.
|
| 60 |
Dallas Observer
Undeniably interesting, but not entirely successful.
|
| 60 |
Washington Post
The stranger and more unusual the characters, and the less they're explained, the better.
|
| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Often unsettlingly funny, though it ultimately recedes into a dark womb of despair.
|
| 55 |
Mr. Showbiz
Writer-director Harmony Korine seems more interested in churning your stomach than in warming your heart.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
In his quest to capture truth and honesty, (Korine) has made a movie that is practically impossible to like.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
The territory where the circus sideshow meets the avant-garde...visually arresting, dramatically blurry.
|
| 40 |
Salon.com
Ana Marie Cox
The filmmaker brings the audience to a precipice of discomfort, implying that the discomfort is itself the point.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
Julien may be a donkey-boy but it's Harmony Korine, this film's director, who is a horse's ass.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
Rung with numb inarticulateness.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
A handheld and grainy exercise in cine-stupefaction...too spastic to connect...the movie just flails the air.
|
| 25 |
New York Post
Sucker bait for the sort of credulous cinast who'll buy anything ugly and boring that looks like it's avant-garde...rancid stew of cheap shocks, sleaze and phony artiness.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A self-indulgent mess.
|
| 20 |
TV Guide
Juvenile and pointless.
|
