Blue Jasmine
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: July 26, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 47 Critic Reviews
Positive:
42
Mixed:
4
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 26, 2013
After all those false dawns, non-comebacks and semi-successful Euro jeux d'esprit, Allen has produced an outstanding movie, immensely satisfying and absorbing, and set squarely on American turf: that is, partly in San Francisco and partly in New York. Read full review
100
EmpireSimon BraundSep 23, 2013
Allen’s best film in years, astute, humane and shot through with keen observations on the state of the world. It may also, in its pondering the price of deceit and the pain of rebuilding a life from nothing, count as broad social allegory. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallAug 19, 2013
Blue Jasmine is Allen's 44th movie in 47 years, an amazing run with storied highs and notorious lows along the way. This one ranks among his finest dramas, his best since "Match Point." Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 3, 2013
Blanchett in Blue Jasmine is beyond brilliant, beyond analysis. This is jaw-dropping work, what we go to the movies hoping to see, and we do. Every few years. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJul 25, 2013
Cate Blanchett tops anything she's done in the past with her portrait of a fallen woman who's a hoot, a horror, a heartbreaker and a wonder. The mystery of the movie as a whole is that it depicts a bleak world of pervasive rapacity, deceit and self-delusion, yet keeps us rapt with delight. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisJul 25, 2013
[Allen's] most sustained, satisfying and resonant film since “Match Point.” Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanJul 24, 2013
The movie is rich with class tension, and if Allen nails the moods of the wealthy, he also gets surprising, dynamic performances from Hawkins, Cannavale, and Andrew Dice Clay as the folks who have no money but may have a fuller sense of what life is. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedJul 23, 2013
Richly chronicled characters, sharp dialogue and that stupendous centerpiece performance by Cate Blanchett are contributing factors in the best summer movie of 2013 and one of the most memorable Woody Allen movies ever. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJul 21, 2013
It’s real Streetcar Named Desire territory as the fights pile up, and if you think that doesn’t sound entertaining, know that it is, in a hypnotically catastrophic way. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianMarc MohanAug 8, 2013
Even the finest troupe of thespians would be wasted without Allen's guiding hand as writer and director. But Blue Jasmine, which might rank among Allen's 10 best films, shows what can happen when it all comes together. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezAug 8, 2013
Blue Jasmine, which is easily Allen’s best and most powerful movie since 2005’s "Match Point", is filled with terrific performances, including Hawkins as the sweet-natured Ginger. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 5, 2013
Woody is still capable of writing and directing one of the liveliest, funniest and sharpest movies of the year. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigJul 25, 2013
It's one of the year's finest, most complex portrayals, in one of Allen's best films in years. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversJul 25, 2013
Want to see great acting, from comic to tragic and every electrifying stop in between? See Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine. Read full review
85
Film.comDavid EhrlichJul 22, 2013
When Allen conceives of a character this great, it’s hard not to wish for him to slow down and maybe write that extra draft to refine his creation, but Blanchett – at once both repellant and eminently relatable – uses the casual tone to her advantage, the same way that monster movies use miniatures for scale. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubBen KenigsbergJul 24, 2013
Unlikely as it may seem, though, Blue Jasmine finds Allen charting bona fide new territory. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnJul 19, 2013
Blue Jasmine belongs to Blanchett, who appears in almost every scene and frees it from the limitations of Allen's style, pushing it to far sharper results than any of the more traditional movies, good and bad, that he's churned out in the past dozen or so years. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJul 18, 2013
It’s part raw and ugly character study, part ensemble comedy, but it’s that first element that is so striking, bold and unnerving, while the latter element is sometimes amusing, but familiar. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyOct 4, 2013
Allen’s ambitions with this taut, tart character study might not be stratospheric, but they’re at least moderate-to-high, and his degree of success is exciting. Read full review
80
Total FilmJamie GrahamSep 26, 2013
The one-liners are in evidence but this is more abrasive than you might expect. Blends rigour and vigour to join "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" and "Midnight In Paris" as the best of late-period Woody. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonDave CalhounSep 18, 2013
One of the most pleasing things about Blue Jasmine is that it feels truly knotty and never obvious in how it unfolds. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 1, 2013
It’s Allen’s best film in years, an authentic-feeling deconstruction of a life. It isn’t always easy to watch. It isn’t exactly fun (although parts are funny). Blanchett’s performance sometimes overpowers the story. But it’s an essential work in Allen’s later canon. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyJul 25, 2013
The movie is among the filmmaker's most emotionally affecting. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJul 25, 2013
The way she (Blanchette) anchors this superb dramedy is a thing of beauty. Read full review
80
The DissolveKeith PhippsJul 25, 2013
For all the memorable dialogue and elegant camerawork (courtesy of Javier Aguirresarobe), it’s Blanchett’s movie, and her performance tells yet another story, that of a woman losing control. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid DenbyJul 22, 2013
Cate Blanchett, who played Blanche on Broadway only a few years ago, gives the most complicated and demanding performance of her movie career. The actress, like her character, is out on a limb much of the time, but there’s humor in Blanchett’s work, and a touch of self-mockery as well as an eloquent sadness. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJul 18, 2013
Although marred by a couple of too-convenient plot contrivances, this often humorous drama lands firmly in the plus column among the Woodman's recent works. Read full review
80
VarietyJustin ChangJul 18, 2013
Blanchett’s performance is so dominant in terms of screentime and emotional impact that the film succeeds as not only a virtuoso ensemble piece, but also an unflinchingly intimate study of the character in the title. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAug 7, 2013
The saga unfolds in a fairly charming fashion, and only Allen’s abrupt ending breaks the spell. Clearly, the filmmaker has no more ideas than Jasmine about how to resolve her predicament. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliAug 9, 2013
Blue Jasmine is an exercise in examining the lead character's mental degeneration. The end result, a performance-driven character study, offers an experience more akin to what one might expect from the late John Cassavetes than from the still very much alive Woody Allen. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrAug 9, 2013
Jasmine is a creation to stand with this filmmaker’s best, but Blanchett makes it better. She finds the grace notes in a disgraceful woman and leaves us stranded between horror and pity. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaAug 8, 2013
The scene when she's (Blanchette) babysitting Ginger's boys and takes them to a diner - and confides about her electric shock treatments ("Edison's medicine"), her breakdowns, about the side effects of Prozac and Lithium . . .. it's genius. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsAug 8, 2013
As the wife to a wolf of Wall Street, Blanchett shows us a lost sheep both before and after the slaughter. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s twitching with life. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Geoff PevereAug 1, 2013
Woody Allen’s first Stateside production in nearly a decade is a sharply observed, post-economic crash comedy-drama that boasts a formidable performance by Cate Blanchett and addresses such pertinent real-world concerns as class, gender and corporate criminality in urban America. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 1, 2013
Blue Jasmine may not be a comeback in any aesthetic or professional sense, but it nevertheless feels like Allen has come back: to the psychic space and collective anxieties of the country of his birth and a real world that, for a while there, he seemed to have left behind. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickJul 26, 2013
Blue Jasmine may sound like a topical satire, but it isn’t really. It’s a character study of an obnoxious, selfish and supremely self-absorbed woman oblivious to the pain she inflicts on others. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comSusan WloszczynaJul 26, 2013
A good Woody Allen flick is a thing of joy these days and, at times, Blue Jasmine is even a great one, close to being an equal to 2005's "Match Point." Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJul 26, 2013
Allen is content to have Jasmine, babbling to herself, waft into a psychoneurotic, Antonioni-esque haze that seems preordained by her class and her predicament. Her cry for help, if you wipe away all the artifice, resembles nothing so much as a plea for her charge cards to be reinstated. Read full review
75
NPRElla TaylorJul 26, 2013
As written, Jasmine is a hopeless neurotic, trapped in a perpetual panic. As played, she has a wicked hint of Scarlett O'Hara. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 22, 2013
It’s amazing how skilled he (Allen) is in making his old ideas seem fresh, lively, even urgent. His new drama Blue ­Jasmine comes this close to being a wheeze. But he sells it beautifully. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreJul 22, 2013
The reason to fall into Blue Jasmine is Blanchett’s cagey, broken turn. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineNick McCarthyJul 21, 2013
One of Woody Allen's strongest and most pointed films in over a decade despite mildly falling victim to his recent propensity for clunky narrative development, cynicism, and stereotypical characterizations. Read full review
50
SlateDana StevensJul 25, 2013
Jasmine attains the paradoxical state of being fascinatingly tiresome. The same pair of words might be used to describe Blue Jasmine, which, whether you like it or not, surely counts as one of Allen’s more unexpected films of the past decade Read full review
50
TimeRichard CorlissJul 25, 2013
Blue Jasmine is the 77-year-old auteur’s first flat-out non-comedy in a quarter century — since "Another Woman" and "September" in the late ’80s, and back to "Interiors" in 1978. Like those more somber studies, this is a portrait of a woman in extremis. But a view from afar: Allen observes Jasmine’s allure and disease without penetrating her soul. That makes for a movie that is both intimate and disinterested, as if Jasmine were a flailing insect in a barren terrarium. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'HehirJul 25, 2013
The whole experience of watching casts of talented and over-eager actors try to make sense of his (Allen) nonsensical scripts becomes increasingly strained and bizarre. I’ve felt that way about recent Allen movies I mostly enjoyed, like “Midnight in Paris” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” and it goes double or triple for Blue Jasmine. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 23, 2013
It's that end -- the film's final sobering five minutes -- in which Blue Jasmine is at its most effective. Credit is due there to Blanchett's table-setting performance in it and in the hour and half preceding it. It's also due to the courage Allen displays as a storyteller in ending this particular story in the way it has to end. Read full review
30
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekJul 23, 2013
Blue Jasmine is so relentlessly clueless about the ways real human beings live, and so eager to make the same points about human nature that Allen has made dozens of times before, that it seems like a movie beamed from another planet. Read full review
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