Blue Valentine 2010

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Blue Valentine feels off-the-cuff and improvised, which adds to the charm of that first date and the danger of that "big fight." Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: It's not an easy movie, but it is a powerful, unforgettable experience. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: ... when you break it down, [it] largely feels genuinely honest, rather than aspiring to an obvious movie facsimile of "honest." Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Ms. Williams and Mr. Gosling are exemplars of New Method sincerity, able to be fully and achingly present every moment on screen together. Read more

David Germain, Associated Press: Agonizing to watch yet relentlessly compelling. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: If you care about the integrity of independent cinema, you'll steel your heart and go. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Blue Valentine leaves you with the shattering vision of its truest victim -- the one who'll someday look for safety in places it might not be. And the psychodrama will go on and on ... Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: "Blue Valentine" has a palpable air of claustrophobic danger; you constantly expect something terrible to be happening to these characters. And, indeed, something does. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: It could easily have devolved into sweaty, pretentious melodrama or ersatz John Cassavetes if Cianfrance and his actors didn't maintain perfect control over the material. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: A searing portrait of the disintegration of not just a marriage but, more importantly, the love that once fueled it. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: As the film, which Derek Cianfrance directed and co-wrote, makes its way to the end of its second hour, it becomes an acutely stylized, slow-motion marital accident. You either want to call AAA or roll your eyes. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling tear up the screen. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The best of it plays like an acting exercise that serves the intimate, often bruising relationship at the core. Gosling seems to be pulling from an impressive bag of performance tricks, Williams from a deeper well, drawn from life. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The film's time structure is splintered into shards of past and present, which is probably just as well -- a strictly narrative chronology would make this wallow seem even sloggier. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Blue Valentine comes on like a bittersweet cautionary tale. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Blue Valentine wrenches us with its painful and tender understanding of how people with even this tattered a connection can lunge for love as if it were air. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: An intensely intimate rendering of love that limits itself to that first falling in and that last falling out. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: You are witnessing the implosion of a marriage, and it's a sad, discomfiting thing to behold. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Blue Valentine has a rare emotional intensity. There is no way to prepare for its final frames, inevitable as they are. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: Nothing out of the ordinary happens in Blue Valentine, and that, together with the vital, untrammelled performances of the two leading actors, is the root of its power. Read more

Scott Tobias, NPR: Blue Valentine sets past and present on course for a collision, and measures the full weight of its impact. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: A work so beautifully acted and emotionally honest it is my choice for best movie of the year. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: A small but shattering film that marks its writer-director, Derek Cianfrance, as an artist of real depth. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Movie intimacy reaches groundbreaking new heights in this shocking story of a young marriage on the rocks. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Ultimately too painful, too labored, to care much about at all. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: An autopsy of a failed marriage, it contrasts the giddy honeymoon beginning with the sad denouement after dysfunction has devastated the groundwork of hope and newness. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Flashes of brilliance, but the lead performances were mannered and the script overwritten. Too self-consciously indie-hipster. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Derek Cianfrance, the film's writer and director, observes with great exactitude the birth and decay of a relationship. This film is alive in its details. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams give two of the most explosive and emotionally naked performances you will see anywhere. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: What do we expect of a spouse? "Blue Valentine" makes us ask that question. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: This is a marvel of a movie, but in the interest of perpetuating the human race, I'd counsel dewy young couples embarking on life's journey to check into a sex motel instead. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Bright-eyed youth and bedraggled adulthood alternate in a sad spectacle beautifully and sensitively portrayed. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: An almost unbearably bittersweet love story starring two of today's best actors and orchestrated by a director who's attuned to past masters. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: The performances are as raw as the characters. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: The ghost of John Cassavetes hovers over this tough-minded portrait of a working-class couple's marriage. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The film proceeds in what feels like real time, but with no obvious beginning or end. It's a latticework of moments happy and sad. Read more

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: The scenes cut so close to the emotional bone that you can understand why they might cause a panic amongst MPAA boardmembers, although of course, it's nothing to be afraid of: just the realism of love in its varied forms. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Gosling and Williams have the most palpable chemistry of any screen couple this year, never striking a false note in this achingly tender tale of a love that implodes before our eyes. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: An intensely acted, minutely observed attempt to convey the arc of a romantic involvement. Read more

Karina Longworth, Village Voice: Cianfrance's film is frustratingly surface-bound in ways that reflect, if not out-and-out misogyny, then at least a lack of interest in imbuing his female character with the rich interior life and complicated morality he gives his male lead. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Almost unbearably harrowing but also deeply cathartic, as viewers create their own meanings within Dean and Cindy's singular downward spiral. Read more