Moartea domnului Lazarescu 2005

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: There's something about Fiscuteanu's quietly desperate performance (with much of the emotion conveyed through his eyes), that gets under your skin. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: It takes a while to adjust to its rhythm, but the Romanian film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is a rich, strange and weirdly gratifying odyssey. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Both sad and darkly funny, the film is so sharply conceived and richly populated that it often registers like a Frederick Wiseman documentary, even though everything is scripted and every part played by a professional. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: The movie is a stunner, so hypnotic that the length hardly matters. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: An intoxicating performance piece in which skilled actors pinball off each other with such energy and nuance that the audience almost forgets about the dying man on the edge of the frame. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: As commentary, it's grim. As filmmaking, it's a powerfully disturbing odyssey through the Bucharest health care system. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: A mordant parable of and about our time as well as a poem of personal urban decay. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: A heartbreakingly powerful masterpiece that affected me far more deeply than any other film I've seen all year. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: A film of universal small human moments and big-system failure. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: A sly anti-ER infused with implacable existential clarity that will send shivers up your spine. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu takes aim at the grotesqueries of the hospital experience with killing accuracy, like a mallet blow to the knee that comes down harder than anticipated. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: This Romanian movie defies categorization -- it's halfway between a black comedy and a Fred Wiseman documentary. And it haunts you like the ghost of any dead person you've ever ignored. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu would seem to give its plot away with its title. But, as the movie itself demonstrates, not everything is as it first seems. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: ... dark and overlong drama ... Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Amid all the hospital byplay, there is a trenchant portrait of a people and their society. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: I suspect medical professionals would see much they recognize in this movie. The credits include a long list of technical advisers, but it doesn't take an adviser to convince you the movie is authentic. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Puiu maintains a strong current of suspense about the outcome -- despite the title, will this Lazarus be revived? --- and a bracingly cynical sense of humor that rescues the material from being a total downer. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: The film's real success is that Puiu impresses both with his compassion for human behaviour and his tight grip on realist, documentary-style filmmaking. Read more

Jay Weissberg, Variety: Two and a half hours of shaky handheld lensing about a man slowly expiring in a succession of hospitals becomes unexpectedly mesmerizing. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The most remarkable new movie to open in New York this spring. Read more

Philip Kennicott, Washington Post: A tour de force of cinema verite with astonishing performances by a huge cast of small players. Read more