Les salauds 2013

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: There's nothing wrong with dealing out a dense, noir-like plot in tiny scraps - unless, like "Bastards," the film remains flaccid and tensionless. Read more

Scott Foundas, Variety: An insidious web of money, sex and power entangles all the characters in Claire Denis' hypnotic nocturnal thriller. Read more

A.A. Dowd, AV Club: One of the director's most pitiless visions-a drama as pitch black as the night that envelops its characters. Read more

Mike D'Angelo, AV Club: While Bastards is never less than enthralling while it unravels, its resolution feels shallowly sordid, as if the entire movie was really just a prolonged moralistic scold cleverly disguised as something richer and more mysterious. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: Simultaneously surprising and inevitable, all doled out in a dreamlike nature. Read more

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: A stylishly made but unyielding drama that will consolidate more than expand director Claire Denis' devoted fan base. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: "Bastards" is a thriller truly etched in darkness, pools of black broken mostly by the stricken yet soldiering faces of her main characters, like ships in a sea of stormy nights. Read more

David Thomson, The New Republic: This is a film so anxious to be taken seriously that it has evaded seriousness itself. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: The movie ends where it might have begun, and merely states mysteries that remain unexplored. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: An oblique, by-design and frustrating drama ... Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: [A] grimly beautiful and somewhat unhinged film ... Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Bastards skillfully deploys noir tropes-the alienated hero, the two-timing femme fatale, the ever-widening web of deceit-in the service of a larger political vision. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: An imperfect film but a perfectly mesmerizing one. Read more

Adam Nayman, Globe and Mail: As black and sticky and inescapable as a tar pit - a movie whose darkness swallows its characters and the audience whole. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The most noteworthy thing isn't the pictures but rather the hypnotic soundtrack, a vibrant club mix. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Like Denis' sublimely impenetrable The Intruder (2004), the point is to get hopelessly lost in the film's eerie, unsettling flow. Read more

Nick Schager, Village Voice: Themes resonate passionately in the moment, but as answers pile up, so too do the cracks in Denis' atmosphere-over-all-else plotting ... Read more