Somewhere 2010

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: The nearly silent first half plays like Nanook of the North, only the ladies are wearing a lot less clothes. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: There's no denying Coppola displays great understanding of wealthy ennui in Somewhere. And as a film stylist, she hits some fine grace notes. Still, she and we have been here before, and empty hotel life does have its limits. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Both Dorff and 12-year-old Elle Fanning give lovely, unforced performances. You can feel a tenderness building between them, and also a vast, upwelling reservoir of things they can't or won't talk about. Read more

Kathleen Murphy, MSN Movies: Too often, [it] rubs our noses in what it means -- and its soooooo all about meaninglessness. Film-school cliches and pretentious tedium don't deliver sharp, spanking-new insights... Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Exquisite, melancholy and formally audacious. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Coppola's poor-rich-girl vision is certainly consistent, although you sometimes wonder if she knows that hers is not the universal human condition. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The movie stands on its own terms as a slow-burning drama of life in a Hollywood purgatory where you can not only check out but leave. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: There's something mesmerizing and special about "Somewhere," for those willing to wait and let the movie cast its spell. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: Somewhere has strong echoes of Lost In Translation in particular, from the luxury hotels to an encounter with another country's bizarre television, but the style breaks rewardingly with what she's done before. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: It's the kind of thing some people will appreciate and embrace, while others will flee in a fit of frustrated boredom. My advice: Stick around. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: What a flat movie for Coppola to have made four films into her otherwise remarkable directing career. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: If you're impressed by the fact that this won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, go look up the price of a flight to Venice. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: A small but, in its way, daring picture set largely within the confines of the Chateau Marmont just above Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Sometimes empty is just empty. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: The writer-director of "Lost in Translation" and "Marie Antoinette" has made the malaise of the privileged her special turf. Ennui is her milieu. And Coppola has a talent for revealing its existential and cultural dimensions. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Coppola is a true filmmaker, and in Somewhere she pierces the Hollywood bubble from the inside. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: Coppola is brilliant at capturing mood: With cinematographer Harris Savides, her languid camera depicts California melancholy. But substance isn't her game. Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: That the movie is able to make us care is a testament to Coppola's prodigious gifts. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: The latest calcified bore by Sofia Coppola is less pretentious than Marie Antoinette but every bit as inertly stupefying as Lost in Translation. Read more

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter: Despite its subject, Coppola seems to be exercising more of her European than American sensibility in the small-scale intimacy of this portrait. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: It's a film in which doing less on screen is more and doing more is less, and if that sounds kind of Delphic, that suits the situation precisely. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The best movie directors aren't just masters of technical craft: They also are artists capable of showing you the world through their eyes -- of making you see and feel exactly what they do. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: It seems impossible that this heavy-handed, self-serious movie comes from writer-director Sofia Coppola. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Casting the less-than-charismatic Dorff may bolster Coppola's thesis, but it's dramatically self-defeating. How can we feel for Johnny, when there's no there there? Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: The movie is funny in a dryly sardonic way about movie-colony rituals and easy sex, but the funk of a noodling movie star is hardly a revelation of the absurdity of the human condition -- or whatever Coppola was getting at. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It's been interesting watching Sofia Coppola turn into an artful filmmaker. Waiting for her to become an exciting storyteller, though, just gets more frustrating. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: "Somewhere" is an undeniably minor film. But if you"re willing to be indulgent, you"ll find surprising pleasures hidden within. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: This isn't an artistic effort, it's a vacant lot whose signpost reads: "Space available. Movie can be made here. Or not. Whatever." Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Ultimately, Somewhere may be too static, too minimalist a tale. But there's grace here, in its aching assessment of loneliness, in its examination of connections and family... Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Sofia Coppola has strayed into an area of pretentiousness that we have rarely seen since the height of the French New Wave. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Coppola is a fascinating director. She sees, and we see exactly what she sees. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: As in Lost in Translation, Coppola keeps an eye out for the broken places. That's when Somewhere is really something. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: "Somewhere," in its odd, detached way, is compelling viewing. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: The precise contours of Johnny and Cleo's relationship never emerge from the aesthetic fog. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Another "woe is me, I'm famous" wallow. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Somewhere" is a distinctly European exercise in observational nuance and tonal restraint in which Coppola stretches static images to the breaking point. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Throughout, Dorff is doggedly credible as an obtuse actor, but the richer performance here is from Fanning, and it might have been a stronger movie told from her character's point of view. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It's the singular achievement of Sofia Coppola's affecting new film that she manages to make us care for a dissolute movie star, his angry ex-wife and their indulged daughter. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Bless Coppola for keeping her camera still, but she goes to the other extreme, of European minimalism. Like Johnny, the movie is an object in stasis. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: Coppola again shows how keen she is to show cosseted young girls and women struggling with their place in the world. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Somewhere is a perceptive look at celebrity culture even if it sometimes feels more like a collection of scenes, a character piece in search of a larger, overarching story. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: A quiet heartbreaker. Read more

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: Those who groan that the writer-director has made another indulgent film about the obscenely privileged have overlooked Coppola's redoubtable gifts at capturing milieu, languor, and exacting details. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: "Don't tell, show" has been the writer's imperative for generations; Coppola takes that edict to its most visual and satisfying extremes. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Sofia Coppola returns to movie star/hotel/ennui territory in a film nearly as strong as Lost in Translation. Read more