Old Joy

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

It's in all the moments where little happens that Reichardt is most amazing, investing even a gas-station pit stop with perfect emotional pitch.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Old Joy is only 76 minutes long, but it has the contemplative power of Buddhist meditation. Reichardt gives us long, stoned takes of rural roads; shots of birds, insects and slugs in the spectacular Oregon rain forest; interludes with Mark's dog, Lucy. Some viewers may well be bored, or monumentally irritated, by this. I found it masterly, riveting.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The movie's scale is minuscule, but the physical and emotional landscapes it travels are as broad, deep and mysterious as the human psyche itself.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

A triumph of modesty and of seriousness that also happens to be one of the finest American films of the year.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

For all the ephemeral pleasure of the company of old friends, there is a chasm between them and the dynamics shift from moment to moment. The beauty of the film is how director Kelly Reichardt brilliantly captures those moments with lucid simplicity.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A spare, trembling lyric poem of a movie that uses stillness and facial blips the way melodramas use showdowns and action films big bangs.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Old Joy doesn't try for too much, but its subtle victories leave plenty to savor.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Miniaturist in its level of detail and evocatively abstract, Old Joy captures the weary mood of a generation that's crested its peak along with an era, quietly making a case for how well suited film can be to capturing the finer points of human interaction while preserving their mystery.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It feels so real it hurts, and it's the perfect antidote to all those movies where all sorts of stuff blows up.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This quiet, elegiac road movie hinges on a few beautifully underplayed scenes between Daniel London and Will Oldham.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

A good Listless Film carries a double melancholy for all: it makes us sad for its characters and sad for the world that has thus affected them. Old Joy is such a film.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason Anderson

A precise, subtle and emotionally affecting portrait of the fraying friendship between two men, director Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy is an increasingly rare sort of American independent film: It aspires to be something other than a Hollywood movie with less money.

TV Guide Staff (Not credited)

Without relying on dialogue, and once again making good but sparing use of Yo La Tengo's toasty guitar soundtrack, Reichardt proves herself a filmmaker with a masterful sense of the expressive purity of the passing moment.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Kurt and Mark's trip to those hot springs is a figurative return to Eden. Anyone who's had a disillusioning reunion with a moony old friend knows what Mark discovers: They're too old to stay that innocent. None of this hit me until after the movie ended. But it hit me hard: You can't go home again.

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

A superb exercise in economical filmmaking. Not only from a financial standpoint, as the film was shot in HD and on-location in gorgeous Portland, Oregon…but the story here is so subtle and well drawn, if you blink you might miss it.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Against a radiant backdrop of decay and rebirth, nothing needs to be said; everything in this lovely film is crystalline.

Variety Scott Foundas

A beautifully nuanced study in friendship and the irretrievability of the past.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

If Old Joy is more laid-back and contemplative than "Mutual Appreciation," it's because the characters are more weathered. Open-ended as it may appear, it has a crushing finality. For all the wool-gathering and guitar-noodling, this road movie is at least as tender as it is ironic.

Empire David Parkinson

Making exceptional use of stillness and silence, this is a rather sad study of the passing of traditional concepts of American masculinity along with the landscape that forged them.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Old Joy is an accurately observed slice of that moment between postadolescence and parenthood, when friends cling or scatter, and circumstances force buried feelings to the fore.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The movie has a large theme, even if it's unspoken. Old Joy is about a particular friendship, but it's also about how American society changed in the '90s and the new century.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

The result is a film that fails to completely involve you, even as you admire its artistry.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Features some of the year's most beautiful scenery and two of its most wooden characters.

New York Post Kyle Smith

You must lead a dull life if it would be enlivened by 76 minutes' worth of Old Joy.