Visitors 2013

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: Many of the children whose faces are shown in the film were shot as they looked at video games; their expressions suggest that whatever they were watching was a lot more fascinating than this. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: We see unadorned faces staring at the camera; afternoon shadows moving across a large, institutional-looking building; forlorn images of an abandoned amusement park; the misty, magical quiet of a swamp. Read more

Alissa Simon, Variety: Walkouts and snores are to be expected, although those on the film's meditative wavelength will be held rapt. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, AV Club: A tedious Rorschach test whose novelty depends on discounting much of the history of photographic, cinematic, and gallery art. Read more

Barbara VanDenburgh, Arizona Republic: This is a dialogue-free documentary composed of beautiful black-and-white photography set to an atmospheric Philip Glass score, and it's a patience-straining exercise in narrative asceticism. Read more

Peter Keough, Boston Globe: We get the point, and have gotten it since 1982. And aestheticizing it in this way doesn't make the message any more convincing or urgent. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: For better or worse, I've never seen anything quite like it. Read more

John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter: Entrancing images will awe some viewers and leave others scratching their heads. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: It all sounds quite convincing in theory, but in practice this melange of imagery is aimed more at the inside of Reggio's head than anywhere else. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: A calculated philosophical emptiness pervades the solemnly contemplative, minutely gliding, powdery-matte images of this visual symphony by the director Godfrey Reggio. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, New York Daily News: Godfrey Reggio's latest movie, "Visitors," has all of the pretensions and none of the pop of his earlier work. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: The word for the film is transfixing. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Godfrey Reggio's Visitors is as much a Zen experience as it is a movie, although as the latter it can be quite astonishing, too - cinema that envelops and enthralls. Read more

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: Reggio has talked about his movies as attempts to bypass the intellect, a "visceral form of cinema" that's "aimed at your solar plexus." But you may experience "Visitors" as more of a sedative than a punch in the guts. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The "oh, come off it" art movie of 2014. Read more

Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun-Times: Non-narrative films can be opaque in deep ways. Visitors slips into pseudo-profundity. That said, I'd see it again. Read more

Adam Nayman, Globe and Mail: As it glides along from one pretty picture to the next, Visitors starts to feel less like a singular artistic gesture than a compendium of quasi-experimental film cliches. Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: With only 74 slowly unfolding shots, it's closer to gallery installation than conventional cinema, but for audiences open to the experience, it's inexplicably compelling. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: [Reggio's] formal devices haven't changed in 30 years, and the po-faced presentation, once hypnotically strange and cosmic, now feels like an overused gimmick. Read more

Calum Marsh, Village Voice: Watching a Godfrey Reggio movie is like hearing somebody brag about not owning a TV -- it's insufferable as much for being sanctimonious as for being utterly cliched. Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: Visitors is far from the master's best film, but I know I'll be haunted by it for a while. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: "Visitors" restores a sense of monumentality to a medium that has seemed so diminished by recent technological and commercial imperatives ... Read more