Batalla en el cielo 2005

Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times: If you dare to see it, prepare for a challenge. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Mr. Reygadas has played the anti-narrative film-festival game with the most voyeuristic means at his disposal, and then stuck on a luridly melodramatic plot almost as an afterthought. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: It took four countries -- Mexico, France, Germany and Belgium -- to make a movie as bad as Carlos Reygadas' Battle in Heaven. They wasted a lot of tax-relief money in pesos, francs and marks, but you'd be a fool to waste any U.S. dollars. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: [Reygadas has] got an astonishing technique. Here's hoping that someday he'll use it to make a movie. Read more

Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic: Reygadas' gift for imagery is undeniable, but for most viewers, Battle in Heaven will offer not enlightenment but frustration. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: ... Reygadas has made a sensationalist picture in which all the sensation is willfully dulled. Read more

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: Not everyone is going to be willing or able to take this leap of faith, but those who do go along with Reygadas may well feel they have come away having undergone a stunning revelatory experience. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Since premiering at Cannes the movie has become notorious for its shocking, emphatically unerotic sex scenes, though it's equally notable for its striking visual conceits and small moments of intense feeling. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: Insufferably arty, polemic and winkingly provocative. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Battle in Heaven is less about heaven or battle, or hell on earth, or the soul of Mexico, and all too much about gawking. And so, for all the 'shock' of the movie's clinical carnality, this battle is lost. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Art with a capital A. Don't be afraid. OK, be a little afraid. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: Whereas Reygadas' first film felt like the unadulterated expression of a raw and original artistic voice, his second bears all the markings of a movie made for a constituency. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Fighting cliche, presenting the most flawed people as sympathetic and occasionally averting his camera eye as his characters neglect the saving of their own souls, Reygadas has made a movie that is itself an ethical dilemma. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Ambitious, challenging and exceedingly frustrating. Read more

G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: A spectacular failure, despite further evidence of the director's keen eye and bold cinematic ideas. Read more

Toronto Star: Read more

Time Out: Read more

Deborah Young, Variety: Both intensely exciting for its cinematic inventions and terribly uninvolving on emotional and dramatic levels. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Promiscuously inhabiting several planes at once, Reygadas's restless inquisition may already be this year's movie to beat. Read more