Jauja 2014

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: It's a movie designed for maximum intellectual appeal, even if the emotional impact is slight. Read more

Scott Foundas, Variety: Those open to other possibilities in cinematic language may marvel at Alonso's ability to hold a viewer rapt through little more than landscape, movement and sound, and ideas that emerge implicitly rather than being directly stated. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: Mortensen injects the director's esoteric, anti-psychological themes with a psychological reality that makes them all the more tantalizing. Read more

Peter Keough, Boston Globe: Alonso sustains an atmosphere of otherworldly immanence in a vivid setting, with a style involving long takes with characters posed as if in tableaux vivants. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: This fifth feature by the brilliant Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso is his first with professional actors and a period setting, yet it meshes thematically with his other work. Read more

Joe McGovern, Entertainment Weekly: Even if director Lisandro Alonso meanders a bit, he pulls a rabbit hole out of his hat in the end ... Read more

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter: An extremely enigmatic work that dangles possible meanings before viewers, who are forced to put their thinking caps on. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: "Jauja" makes one cryptic leap too many at the end, but until then it evocatively confounds. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: Alonso's audacious leaps of time, his incisive view of the wiles of combat and the rigors of survival, and his ingenious reflection of present-day splendors in past plunder lend the visually sumptuous experience a haunting depth. Read more

Tomas Hachard, NPR: The film is expansive, pushing the ideas that Alonso has probed in the past further than he has ever taken them. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, New York Daily News: There's a line between artfully contemplative and just plain boring. This film eventually crosses it into Snoozeville. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: The rounded-off corners of the almost-square frames evoke early movies and antique photographs, and there is wit and mischief in the way Mr. Alonso plays with the relationship between what we see, what we don't see and what we expect to see. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: If you applauded the genre-tweaking twists of Gus Van Sant's "Gerry" and Kelly Reichardt's "Meek's Cutoff," you may have a good time (or at least an interesting one) at acclaimed Argentine director Lisandro Alonso's latest puzzler, "Jauja." Read more

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: Viewers who can accept a defiantly slow pace, a few loose plot threads and a directorial style that works by intimation, will be rewarded. Read more

Alex Dudok de Wit, Time Out: 'Jauja' is a film to make you wonder. Read more

Danny King, Village Voice: Alonso's most narratively knotty film yet ... Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: There's so much to take in here that at times I almost felt as if I were absorbing it through my skin. Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: I never once doubted that I was in the hands of a master filmmaker. Read more