Ten

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Iran's greatest filmmaker is fond of stripping personalities bare through conversations they have while riding in cars. Here he pushes his favorite dramatic device to its limit.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

The ultimate lesson in less-is-more cinema, an intimate and revelatory character study as well as a brilliant, almost symphonic rendering of the distracted, anxious, half-alienated and half-meditative state in which we spend vast amounts of our lives.

San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel

A minimalist film, Ten looks and feels like a documentary. At the end, there is no big denouement, but a profound realization that the people we see on camera are all aching for answers -- and struggling to come to terms with their lives.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The new Abbas Kiarostami film is called Ten, and in it something amazing happens: nothing.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

There's no doubt that Kiarostami is giving us a lesson in social politics, but the education lies in the mosaic pieced together from conversations and situations.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Nobody handles unvarnished interactions quite the way Kiarostami does, and for much of Ten, it's a kind of austere thrill to watch him focus so intently on one aspect of his craft.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Kiarostami has been hailed as the premier humanist filmmaker at work in a larger Iranian cinematic renaissance, and all his formal signatures are on view here -- the small, intimate canvas, the loose, improvised air of the performances, the absence of an authoritarian directorial hand.

Variety Deborah Young

10 dazzling and perceptive snapshots of women with which femmes everywhere can identify.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

A work of inspired simplicity.

LA Weekly John Powers

One of the year's finest movies, it's not quite the masterpiece that some of Kiarostami's cultists want it to be.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Shows us, in an extraordinarily simple way, the hopes and frustrations of one woman's life.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Conceptually rigorous, splendidly economical, and radically Bazinian.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The film offers a fascinating glimpse of the Iranian urban middle class, and though it eschews most of the pleasures of composition and landscape found in other Kiarostami films, it's never less than riveting.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A film made by a master, with a simplicity that is really revolutionary. It's a work capable of changing the ways you look at the movies - and at life.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A glimpse into a society that has grown more open, more free, and also more casually selfish in its interpersonal aggression.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Inexpensively shot on digital video, it's an invaluable work of art.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

One of the best films to open so far this year, but greeting each new work from a favored director as if it were equally brilliant can't be good for anyone, the director included.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Ten may strain your patience but that's the high-stakes gamble of this provocative project.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Breezy, entertaining and enlightening.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The already minimalist filmmaker has gone positively threadbare with Ten, a movie that feels as if there was no director on the set. For the most part, there wasn't.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The shame is that more accessible Iranian directors are being neglected in the overpraise of Kiarostami.