Tetro 2009

Amy Nicholson, Boxoffice Magazine: Coppola extends a timeless magic to the film, which is perfectly set in the cobblestone metropolis of Buenos Aires. Read more

Ben Mankiewicz, At the Movies: It is long and slow and, most importantly, lacking in dramatic tension. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Unabashedly theatrical and richly cinematic, even when it's falling apart... Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: [An] extravagant, and eventually lurid, tale of a tortured family. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: For beauty, vision and the palpable sense of a veteran filmmaker still reveling in possibility, it's something to see. Read more

Mike D'Angelo, AV Club: Youth Without Youth may have been messier and more risible (though the climactic twist here is pretty damn dumb), but I'll take its dazzingly surreal middle third over this film's endless declamatory hooey. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: It's the product of a great dreamer and aesthete, rather than an authentic emotional experience -- a gorgeous, crystalline bauble that really catches the light. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Coppola is still very much alive. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: With Tetro, it feels as if the director is regaining his footing, figuring out which parts of his past to hold on to and which to let go. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: The heavy symbolism of binding family ties becomes too much to bear. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Coppola has made some of the greatest films ever made in traditional narrative mode, but whenever he goes into his indie-outsider dance, he stumbles badly. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: It is interesting. Better, it is quite possibly great. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Tetro fuses the awkward and the ripely operatic. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Despite the overwrought plot and unabashed pretension, there's something admirable about the fact that Coppola clearly made this movie for himself. But he shouldn't be surprised if few others join him in watching it. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Tetro, the second in Coppola's new line of low-budget art films (following last year's headache factory Youth Without Youth), is hard to take seriously. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Despite all its longueurs and extreme aggravations, Tetro deserves to be seen as the late work of one of the cinema's most accomplished masters of mise-en-scene. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Visually inventive, narratively edgy, and unlike anything else. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Here is a film that, for all of its plot, depends on characters in service of their emotional turmoil. It feels good to see Coppola back in form. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: It has a verve and vitality that's been missing from [Coppola's] pictures for 25 years, and its various and visible flaws all result from too much of that verve rather than too little. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The movie is alive from beginning to end, and it's a pleasure to see at least one big-name director get out of the prison of his own reputation. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Tetro percolates with energy and bawdy knockabout humor. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: What threatens to be a mere exercise in style proves to be as involving as it is inventive. Read more

Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail: While Coppola seems revitalized by quoting from movies he studied at UCLA film school, what ultimately makes Tetro so compelling is the filmmaker's return to the motifs that made his 1970s films powerful. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: What makes it eminently watchable is the craft. Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. films in luscious widescreen monochrome that looks almost wet. Osvaldo Golijov's score is another pleasure. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: The movie plays not like an old man's film but like a promising, frustrating student effort. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: Tetro is a movie filled with splashes of brilliance rather than being a plain brilliant movie. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: The angst-ridden treatment of Oedipal issues makes the picture play out like a passably talented imitation of O'Neill, Williams, Miller and Inge, and thus it feels like the pale product of an over-tilled field. Read more

Aaron Hillis, Village Voice: Francis Ford Coppola returns to form with his richest, most enrapturing film since Apocalypse Now. The black-and-white cinematography alone is as intoxicating as a bottle of the director's finest red. Read more

John Anderson, Washington Post: Tetro has no internal tension and should have been a comedy. Read more