Museum Hours 2012

A.O. Scott, New York Times: This movie is rigorously and intensely lifelike, which is to say that it's also a strange and moving work of art. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: An enthralling and sometimes droll meditation on life, art and mortality, not to mention Internet porn and its influence on modern art. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: Museum Hours is less interested in plot than in using its characters as a way to give ideas shape and voice; however, because their performances are natural and improvisatory, the movie never seems didactic. Read more

Mark Feeney, Boston Globe: One of the world's great art museums, the Kunsthistoriches is the true star of the movie "Museum Hours." Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The two leads contribute fresh, genuine performances, and what might have been a musty academic exercise gains in tension from Cohen's deft juxtaposing of vocal narration, character detail, and majestic artwork. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Sommer is perfect. So is O'Hara. This is the "Before Sunrise" for a very different (and platonic) pair of individuals. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: A lot of it works, some of it doesn't. Read more

Wesley Morris, Grantland: Amid all the looking and dissection, Cohen demonstrates an understanding of the individual need for increasingly elusive privacy that feels urgent, wistful, and quaint. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Difficult to describe but not to enjoy. Read more

Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic: It's as if Cohen had lived for centuries among these places, and sometimes with art that encapsulates these centuries, and is pleasantly imprisoned within its strength. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: It finds the time to look at looking, and to offer a slow revelation: to the lonely and the stranded, it is art that feels like home. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: Ultimately, the movie's easygoing narrative turns to loss, but without melodrama. An awareness of life and art offers perspective, and perhaps a measure of consolation. Read more

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: The film shows how quiet exteriors can mask deep interior lives, and how art feeds those lives. Read more

Leba Hertz, San Francisco Chronicle: It has its tedium, but it's not bad. At times, it's actually quite good. Read more

Rob Nelson, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Cohen's spare but spectacularly visualized film follows a pair of middle-aged strangers who meet in a Viennese art museum and proceed to walk and talk. Read more

Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun-Times: The quiet time that Johann and Anne spend during museum hours -- and after his shifts on trips around the city -- offer solace in their mutual solitude. Museum Hours is an introverted companion for its viewers. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: It's a hybrid drama/art-history essay about how looking at art recasts our experience of looking at the world. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: The languid pace, long silences and lack of purpose and dramatic tension will leave some looking at their watches. Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: Its encouragement to let ourselves be captivated by everyday humanity as well as the old masters is both richly illuminating and quirkily endearing. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: The real strength of Cohen's occasionally didactic drama ... is in the way the film redirects your focus to the periphery and reminds you of the richness that resides there. Read more

Calum Marsh, Village Voice: Museum Hours, despite that almost documentary-like distance, in fact expresses a thoroughly subjective experience ... Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: "Museum Hours" is every bit as masterfully conceived and executed as the art works that serve as the film's lively cast of supporting characters. Read more