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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Before Night Falls
Fine Line Features
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for strong sexual content, some language and brief violence
Starring
Javier Bardem,
Olivier Martinez,
Andrea Di Stefano,
Johnny Depp,
and
Sean Penn
A richly imagined joumey into the life and writings of the brilliant Cuban author and exile Reinaldo Arenas. (Fine Line Features)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Reynaldo Arenas (memoir)
Lázaro Gómez Carriles
Cunningham O'Keefe
Julian Schnabel
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Julian Schnabel
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: May 22, 2001
Video: May 22, 2001
Theatrical: December 22, 2000
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
125 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
English / Spanish |
Javier Bardem received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for his starring role.
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Newsweek
David Ansen
This powerful, lyrical meditation on Arenas's life achieves a kind of hallucinatory urgency as it leaps and twists through his life.
100
Film.com
Peter Brunette
With Before Night Falls, Schnabel has moved to an entirely new plane of cinematic achievement.
100
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
It's huge and bewildering and it hurts to watch, but it hurts so good it's gorgeous.
100
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
In uniting to honor Arenas, Bardem and Schnabel create something extraordinary.
100
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Arenas' life zigzags before us in a manner as heady and unpredictable as it must have felt to the man who lived it.
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Edward Guthmann
It's an horrific and tragic story, but somehow made beautiful through the care and attention of Schnabel's direction and Bardem's tender, unforgettable performance.
90
Variety
David Rooney
A dense, emotionally satisfying portrait of a man, a time and a place.
90
Village Voice
Dennis Lim
The film's ephemeral, semi-evasive lyricism ultimately works as a modest frame for Bardem's tender, deft portrait, which is in turn suitably expansive and rooted in the most concrete details -- Arenas's pride and anger, his unsentimental wit and defiant vitality.
88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
This is a sad, passionate, beautifully wrought story, and Bardem's portrait of Arenas is at once daring and deeply moving.
88
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
Most of all it's the emotional and spiritual arc of an exile, in all its terrible isolation, that gives ''Before Night Falls'' its power.
88
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
A dreamy, passionate ode to freedom -- of thought, of expression, of every person's innate right to simply be.
88
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
A thoughtful, bittersweet film biography of the Cuban writer that captures both his irrepressible spirit and his sometimes overwhelming melancholy.
88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
There is a little something of the spoiled masochist about Arenas. One would not say he seeks misery, but he wears it like a badge of honor, and we can see his mistakes approaching before he does. This is not a weakness in the film but one of its intriguing strengths
88
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
This is an art film in the true sense of the term, engaging the mind, senses and emotions in a way that only movies at their best can do.
80
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Bardem's performance is simply shattering.
80
Mr. Showbiz
Kevin Maynard
It's such a sensory experience; in its best moments, the film washes over you like a fever dream.
80
Dallas Observer
David Ehrenstein
Arenas' story is a downer that doesn't produce despair. That's because of the exceptional bravery of Arenas himself, and the understanding that both Schnabel and his extraordinary leading man, Javier Bardem, have of him, his world, and his time.
80
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
As good as it is, Before Night Falls might not work if Schnabel hadn't found a leading man to hold it together and the Spanish actor Javier Bardem has the understated charisma to pull it off.
80
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Anchored by a charismatic and accessible performance by Javier Bardem as star-crossed Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, this florid examination of an artist's coming of age, of cultures in collusion and conflict, is difficult to resist.
80
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Like a deathbed dream it leapfrogs through Arenas's life, reconstructing crucial moments as a succession of bright, feverish illuminations.
75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Politics and humanism find an engrossing balance in this ambitious drama based on the life of Reinaldo Arenas, a gay Cuban poet who was persecuted by the homophobic Castro regime.
75
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
A personal eulogy, from one artist to another, and an indictment of all systems of government that deny people the right to free expression and the full realization of their talent.
75
USA Today
Mike Clark
Plays like a labor of love.
70
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
An impressive piece of filmmaking, with lively and suggestive depictions of pre- and postrevolutionary Cuba (shot in Mexico).
63
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Anyone expecting a hard-hitting biography will be disappointed by Julian Schnabel's soft-edged, dreamy and relatively nonpolitical film.
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Under Schnabel's direction, it becomes stilted and static, if not simplistic.
 The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
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