Starting Out in the Evening

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Above all is Langella, achingly vulnerable under layers of flesh. In one scene, alone, he eats peanut butter intensely, thoughtfully, and nothing he could do as Hamlet would seem deeper or more poetic.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Intelligent, involving and conspicuously adult, Starting Out in the Evening is almost shocking in its distinctiveness, its ability to create high drama from an unlikely source.

The Hollywood Reporter James Greenberg

Succeeds so beautifully because of a compelling story, great acting, intelligent writing and sensitive direction.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie is carefully modulated to draw us deeper and deeper into the situation, and uses no contrived plot devices to superimpose plot jolts on what is, after all, a story involving four civilized people who are only trying, each in a different way, to find happiness.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A rapturous, ruefully funny flight of sympathetic imagination. Featuring the first movie role for Frank Langella that ranks with his best stage parts, it's a rare kind of American movie.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Andrew Wagner has made a lovely comedy of death and rebirth.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

What is so remarkable about Mr. Langella is that he seems to hold Leonard’s intellectual cosmos inside him, to make it implicit in the man’s every gesture and pause.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It's rare to see a movie adaptation in which a filmmaker has taken so much care in translating the odd little qualities that make a particular novel special, to preserve the complex and fragile threads of feeling between characters that are often much easier to grasp on the page.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Whether this reserved, hypercautious widower can deal with the arousal she creates in him - let alone be physically able to act on it - is one of the many layers of tension that drive this unusual and absolutely riveting dance.

USA Today Claudia Puig

We are slowly and mightily drawn into this intimate story, which is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Director Andrew Wagner, adapting a novel by Brian Morton, is sometimes understated to a fault, but his work with the actors, who also include Lili Taylor as Leonard's daughter, is impeccable.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Movies about writers are almost always romanticized affairs but Starting Out in the Evening is the rare exception. It is at once an elegy for the vanishing generation of Bellow, Cheever, Mailer and Updike and a dead on indictment of our culture’s current state.

The New Yorker David Denby

Langella is superb, and Starting Out in the Evening is a classy film.

Newsweek David Ansen

Like most of this refreshingly subtle film, it's not what you expect, and it's not something you've seen before.

Variety Scott Foundas

Director Andrew Wagner draws topnotch work from a pro cast in Starting Out in the Evening, a wise, carefully observed chamber drama.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

This wise, observant, and exquisitely tacit chamber piece complicates every May-December, academic-novel cliché in the book.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Langella delivers a master class in acting. He's playing Leonard Schiller, an aging author aching from the loss of his wife, a weak heart and literary neglect.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It's a gentle, unhurried drama about how people can connect with each other through conversation, nonverbal gestures, and writing.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Taylor also makes an impressive comeback as the conflicted daughter who instinctively distrusts Heather, but Starting Out in the Evening is first and foremost a triumph by Frank Langella.

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

Because the characters are richly realized and their dialogue rings true, we stick around, rooting for something like a happy ending.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

If the film has a weakness, it's an ending that's so vague and open to interpretation that it's not at all clear how director Andrew Wagner ultimately wants us to feel about these self-absorbed characters and their precious literary concerns. But the performances carry the day.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It never commits the sin of sentimentalizing old age, as Hollywood usually does when it deigns to admit that people over 55 exist.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This is a human-sized drama about people with contradictory motives, trying to help or use each other.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Fact is, Starting Out is pretty dry stuff as a movie, even as it's enlivened by vivid acting.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A "small" movie. But in its keenly observed examination of strangers who become intimates - and of family members who remain, in part, strangers - it has big things to say.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Part of Morton's achievement is to present all four people through the viewpoints of the other three; Wagner can't do that, but the performances are so nuanced that the characters remain multilayered, and they're not the sort of people we're accustomed to finding in commercial films.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's also and most interestingly about the writing process itself, a difficult feat to pull off on film, which Wagner and co-screenwriter Fred Parnes manage to display with unvarnished realism.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Taylor is effective as a woman struggling to take control of her life, but Ambrose's work feels shallow in comparison.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A gentle collection of scenes that work and scenes that don't.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Intelligently acted but oddly stagnant adaptation of Brian Morton's acclaimed novel.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Starting Out never builds to the explosive climax it seems to be heading for, which I suppose is a good thing for its overall integrity, but maybe not so good for its motion-picture value.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Wagner and company fail to follow Langella's primary rule of storytelling: "Follow the characters around until they do something interesting."

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Wallows in bleakness and settles for sentimental gestures.