| 100 |
Boston Globe
Deeper and richer in humanity than all but a handful of the American films released this year.
|
| 100 |
Christian Science Monitor
The tale is simply told but stunningly photographed and superbly acted in the best tradition of modern Iranian cinema.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Presents us with characters of such humanity and dignity that it begins to seem obscene that until now we haven't exactly given all that much thought to the Kurds.
|
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
The nonprofessional cast of Bahman Ghobadi's remarkable, slow, rough edged feature reveals a simple, piercing grimness and determination framed by the gray, icy landscape of Iranian Kurdistan.
|
| 91 |
Portland Oregonian
A profoundly anxious picture that from its first frame holds you, clenched, never able to let go, even after its unresolved coda.
|
| 90 |
Dallas Observer
It's difficult to imagine a more eloquent tribute.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
It simultaneously wows you with the stark beauty of its images, a beauty that leads to another, related kind of truth that is equally crucial. It's not to be missed.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Showing us a world through a child's eyes, A Time for Drunken Horses speaks so truthfully and well that it breaks the heart and scars the conscience.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
A film of simplicity and power, beautifully shot and effortlessly acted by nonprofessionals.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Alissa Simon
More grim and less sentimental than other Iranian films featuring plucky children, this strikingly photographed work stresses the harshness of daily life in Iranian Kurdistan.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
A central work in the new, boldly politicized Iranian cinema.
|
| 80 |
Variety
It is all the more heart-wrenching for being realistic. Its portrait of child labor brooks no sentimentality and no cliches.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
A disturbing and forceful drama.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Brief, spare and heartbreaking.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
The real hero here is Ghobadi, whose love and respect for the culture in which he was raised shines through every frame.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
A wrenching film.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In its austere visual understatement rests a ton of emotional power.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
Truly in a class by itself.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
Because of its relentlessness, its crawling pace (the 77 minutes pass like 2 1/2 hours) and its sometimes confusing story, A Time for Drunken Horses may not be for every taste, but it's still an affecting, and in its way beautiful, movie.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Marrit Ingman
Ghobadi works squarely in the neorealist tradition of countrymen like former mentor Abbas Kiarostami, using nonprofessional actors and documentary technique to tell small, spare stories of the human condition through the eyes of children.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
Ghobadi (himself an Iranian Kurd) takes some gorgeous shots against the snow, but his storytelling is uneven and often slow.
|
| 63 |
San Francisco Examiner
The welcome hints at emotional excess are compromised by the blunt force of the movie's political point-making.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
Single-minded, sometimes harrowing.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
In Bahman Ghobadi's heart-tugger about Kurdish orphans, those wide eyes are too often used as a manipulative device.
|
