Northfork 2003

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: You may resist Northfork, but I doubt you'll be able to forget it. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Though the Polish brothers are saying good-bye to the heartland with the conclusion of Northfork, you may feel as if you've beat them out of town. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: An insufferably artsy, pretentious work, the sort of picture that gives art films a bad name. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: It does look good, I just didn't feel like it had a story that moved me. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: A dreamy saga with a fantastical feel, epic sweep and a star cast headed by James Woods, Nick Nolte and Daryl Hannah. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: At a moment when so many films strive to be obvious and interchangeable as possible, it is gratifying to find one that is puzzling, subtle and handmade. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: For those on its peculiar wavelength, everything fits. For those who aren't, it's a painful piece of self-impressed drivel. Either way, you'll know you've been to the movies. Read more

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: An enigmatic yet seductive film that presents a challenge to the viewer even as it evokes a mystical feeling of transcendence. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: A story so tender, so achingly sweet, you'll forgive the rest of the film its amorphousness. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: It is impossible to describe all the rich layers of Northfork, clearly an exhausting labor of love for the Polish brothers who wrote, produced, directed and star in the mystical movie. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: It has that vintage Polish pace, their signature arch pomposity and rhythmless weirdness, only this time the brothers had to go and make a cosmic allegory of American dreams. Read more

Gary Dowell, Dallas Morning News: A powerful, surreal fable, one that requires a small amount of patience from the viewer in exchange for a moving experience. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: So stuck is the movie inside the heads and hearts of its indisputably gifted makers, it never quite makes the leap into ours. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: The movie is as much a triumph of production design as any popcorn blockbuster -- and just as shallow on the inside. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: A drearily pretentious allegory. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: In devoting all of their efforts towards the film's look and feel, co-creators Mark and Michael Polish have crafted a motion picture that is static, occasionally opaque, and, worst of all, boring. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The movie is visionary and elegiac, more a fable than a story, and frame by frame, it looks like a portfolio of spaces so wide, so open, that men must wonder if they have a role beneath such indifferent skies. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Northfork just about gets us off the ground on its dreamy, feathery angel wings; it just doesn't have the strength or the stamina to keep us aloft. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Numbing and inert. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Weighed down, if not sunk, by an anchor of ponderousness. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Northfork feels like the unedited dream sequence from the movie it might have been, if only there'd been someone to wake up from it. Read more

Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The cinematic equivalent of an elaborate and poetically constructed non sequitur. Read more

Scott Foundas, Variety: Like the best work of David Lynch, Northfork is that rare movie that draws you in more (rather than alienating you) at precisely those moments when you least understand it. Read more

Laura Sinagra, Village Voice: This last of the brothers' American heartland trilogy suffers from their trademark self-satisfaction, but as with Idaho, a suffused empathy nearly makes up for the belaboring of key messages. Read more