The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada 2005

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: [A] long, kooky, immensely absorbing picture, which forges the elegiac cruelty of a Cormac McCarthy novel with the two-fisted machismo of a Sam Peckinpah movie, and comes up with an altogether new brand of Western mythology. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Jones, directing his first feature, finds the right note in every scene, bringing Arriaga's elegant cipher to life. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The acting is so good throughout, and Texas native Jones does such a sharp, unforced job of directing a story dear to his geographical and spiritual heart, The Three Burials is the rare film that gets better and better as it goes. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: As satire, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada isn't funny or illuminating, and as a drama it has only a few scattered moments. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: Tommy Lee Jones makes a sure-handed feature directing debut and gives one of the best performances of his career. Read more

Bob Longino, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Tommy Lee Jones' big-screen directorial debut might not be the easiest film to watch, but its payoff makes it one of the better trips to the movies of the past year. Read more

Richard Nilsen, Arizona Republic: Few films have ever captured the feel of the desert Southwest better than Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Tommy Lee Jones makes his feature directing debut here, and the film is as weathered, subtle, and sympathetic as the actor's own face. Read more

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: Incisive yet supple, wrenching yet deeply pleasurable, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada easily ranks among the year's best pictures. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: All this edginess, combined with the grandeur and sweep of a classic western, demonstrates that Jones clearly knows how to tell a story -- and how to confound us at the same time. Read more

Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle: Behind the hype lies a banal morality tale told in needlessly jumbled flashbacks and gorged with gruesome atrocities out of a Sam Peckinpah flick. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Worth seeing as a hickory-smoke tale of contrition and redemption. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Jones, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and a crew blessed with pristine vision have delivered a tale of friendship and ethics worthy of Greek tragedy. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Funny, tough, filled with cut-to-the-bone moments and bleached in the heat of the Texas sun, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a movie that sears itself into the viewer with uncompromising vision and stark approach. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: A smug lesson posing as a Peckinpah deathfest. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: It boasts genuinely and uniformly fine performances -- a credit to Jones the director and the actor, as well as his costars -- some stunning cinematography by the great Chris Menges and a uncompromising script by [Guillermo] Arriaga. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Three Burials still reaches the kind of pungency it seems to be seeking, and it touches on issues of alienation and distance very relevant to the reality of countless migrants. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada may not be a love story per se, but it is, for my money, the most deeply affecting portrait of cowboy camaraderie to be found on movie screens this season. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: A small movie that plays like a Western epic. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: A literally slow-moving western that plays out as laboriously as its title. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: With all due respect to that important, quasi-controversial, most-honored film of last year, this is the best Western of 2005. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada tells the kind of story that John Huston or Sam Peckinpah might have wanted to film. Read more

Stephen Metcalf, Slate: For a movie about the policing of borders, couldn't this one have maintained a firmer one, between credulity and incredulity? Between seriousness and self-seriousness? Read more

Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: [Jones has made] a rugged modern-day Western that evokes the spirit of Sam Peckinpah -- and reinvents it through his own perspective. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: This isn't a film that demands to be enjoyed in order to be remembered -- one way or the other, it will stick with you. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Read more

TIME Magazine: It's worth a wary look before it attains midnight cult-movie status. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Tommy Lee Jones' bracing bigscreen directorial debut, which copped acting and writing awards from the Cannes Film Festival jury, connects with both the head and the heart. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Three Burials is finally a little smug -- Jones, despite a Best Actor nod at Cannes, undergoes no Ethan Edwards corruption-of-the-soul, no ambivalence, no ordeal by rectitude. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: Without the wise and well-crafted words of screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, it's just so much posturing. Read more