When Will I Be Loved 2004

Erik Lundegaard, Seattle Times: Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: Toback's tangled noirish plot, with Vera as a post-feminist femme fatale, isn't particularly clever or original. Nor is its feminist slant totally convincing. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: The slapdash plot, paper-thin characters, misogynist undertones, and mechanical crosscutting are all soft-core standbys. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: Another art film that's more pretentious than it needs to be. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: Neve Campbell is amazing in this film to be able to handle that dialogue. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Most atrocious movies build into their badness, as lacks of talent, ideas, self-confidence, or a total hatred of an audience, are revealed. This one gets it out of the way up front and never looks back. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: With its improvisatory tone and loose, rambling structure, which often approaches a total breakdown of coherence, the story takes about half an hour to emerge. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: Weller has a bright future; he's compelling and funny as Ford. Campbell, with her little-girl voice and easy, guileless smile, is the perfect choice for the role of a woman everyone underestimates. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: A ripe psychosexual compost heap of a drama that emits a provocative scent of rot and nonsense. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Once you get past the sleazy residue of the borderline soft-core porn scenes, When Will I Be Loved gets into a kind of low-rent Cassavetes groove. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: At its best, the movie is a reminder that, among contemporary filmmakers, Toback is perhaps the most keenly perceptive about the way sex can alternately (or sometimes all at once) be used as a gift, a toy and a weapon. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: Toback's been known to get windy and heavy-handed with a setup like this. His films tend to get sticky from their overheated yearnings. Yet When Will I Be Loved has a surprisingly airy feel compared to his previous work. Read more

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: The (inadvertent) question we are left with is, How much is there to know about [Vera] anyway? Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: When Will I be Loved isn't a great leap forward for Toback, but it certainly is a step up from the noxious delirium of his last effort, Harvard Man. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: You won't like anyone you meet in this trifle, nor care whether anyone gets any bang for his buck. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Those who fret that Woody Allen's finger is no longer on the pulse of New York City can take cold comfort in James Toback's smudged postcard of a city in thrall to sex and money. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Mr. Weller's Ford Welles attains a new extreme of self-loathing on Mr. Toback's part: This compulsive chain-talker has even less charm, substance, dignity or wit than any of his self-hating predecessors. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Like a jazz solo that touches familiar themes on its way to a triumphant and unexpected conclusion. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: The whole picture seems coated with a slimy sheen of drool. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: It offers no new insights into the corrupting effects of money and erotic power. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: This is far from a coherent picture, but it does contain a complete performance. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Toback makes it perfectly clear that this is a woman making the best out of a man's world that has hemmed her in. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Not in the foreseeable future, that's when, assuming your name is James Toback and you insist on making phonily provocative movies. Read more

Robert Koehler, Variety: The faux-feminist streak that has run through Toback's recent work feels no less inauthentic this time. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: More wacky than wack. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: Collapses under the weight of its own pretension, a victim of misogyny trying to pass itself off as female sexual empowerment. Read more