|
OFCS Rating: 80% Fresh |
|
| "[T]he movie plays like any soap opera about a love that cannot be--the weeper mechanism is entirely familiar from hetero movies.... Brokeback Mountain isn't a gay western, it's a gay Back Street." |
| Blogcritics.org |
| Alan Dale |
| "Because 'Brokeback Mountain' has made such a profound impact on so many viewers, I almost feel guilty that I can't rave about it." |
| ReelTalk Movie Reviews |
| Betty Jo Tucker |
A | "...a courageous, transcendent film that may prove to be a landmark down the line in the Hollywood landscape." |
| FromTheBalcony |
| Bill Clark |
| "Ang Lee's best film to date; career best performances of Ledger and Gyllenhaal, amazing score and cinematography and a heartbreaking love story to boot. One word: Wow." |
| european-films.net |
| Boyd van Hoeij |
9/10 | "It's such a slow burn that you likely won't even smell the fire until after it has surrounded you... measured subtlety makes this simple story an emotional masterpiece.
" |
| Freeze Dried Movies |
| Brian Juergens |
A | "Brokeback is an incredible piece of direction, even for Lee, who has made a career out of impressive cinema." |
| FilmJerk.com |
| Brian Orndorf |
B+ | "An introspective film, but not, thankfully, an inert film.
" |
| AboutFilm.com |
| Carlo Cavagna |
B- | "Ang Lee creates a compelling atmospheric film in spite of the story's obedient propagation of Hollywood's cliché myth that gay people must eventually be punished with lethal violence." |
| ColeSmithey.com |
| Cole Smithey |
| "Ennis' lack of language, initially seeming reduced in Ledger's performance to clench-jawed mumbling, is eventually subtler, especially in his relationship with his daughter." |
| PopMatters |
| Cynthia Fuchs |
2/5 | "It's a hackneyed, underdeveloped melodrama disguised as serious art house fare." |
| eFilmCritic.com |
| David Cornelius |
A+ | "The most important gay film in a decade - a must see." |
| EDGE Boston |
| David Foucher |
A | "Tells an emotionally powerful forbidden love story with taste and intelligence." |
| Ozus' World Movie Reviews |
| Dennis Schwartz |
4/4 | "Profound. Transcendent. Heartbreaking. Brokeback Mountain is a cinematic triumph of incendiary depth and poeticism." |
| DustinPutman.com |
| Dustin Putman |
2.5/4 | "So much for down and dirty." |
| Slant Magazine |
| Ed Gonzalez |
5/5 | "Una épica historia de amor narrada con profunda sensibilidad y maestría; gran actuación de Heath Ledger. Tal vez el primer gran clásico del siglo XXI." |
| Uruguay Total |
| Enrique Buchichio |
A | "Powerful and moving enough to be one of the best films of the year" |
| EricDSnider.com |
| Eric D. Snider |
3/4 | "By excessively compensating with how molds are being shattered, many viewers may overlook the fact that the same material could have made using heterosexual protagonists." |
| eFilmCritic.com |
| Erik Childress |
| "Lee can't tell the difference between criticizing oppression and turning out an oppressed work" |
| CinePassion |
| Fernando F. Croce |
3.5/4 | "Exquisitely shot and vast in its emotional take on forbidden love, Brokeback Mountain is compassionate and compelling in its risqué examination of perceived manhood." |
| Movie Eye |
| Frank Ochieng |
A | "This story of suppressed passion is, irrespective of gender considerations, a deeply moving, indeed lacerating, film." |
| One Guy's Opinion |
| Frank Swietek |
5/5 | "Explores the heartache of two gay cowboys who incarnate the basic human needs for wholeness, fulfillment, and a true love who accepts you as you really are.
" |
| Spirituality and Practice |
| Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat |
75/100 | "A rich love poem with boundless soul, Brokeback Mountain is another wonderful gem to be placed atop Ang Lee's filmic mantle." |
| Film and Felt |
| Gabe Leibowitz |
A+ | "The Marlboro Man has reawakened as an archetype fully realized, brimming with ambivalence and complexity." |
| Mixed Reviews |
| Gabriel Shanks |
3/4 | "It's a brave and affecting effort from a director from whom we have come to expect worthwhile things." |
| ReelViews |
| James Berardinelli |
3.5/5 | "A genuinely moving story about repressed desire that transcends any boundaries the various cultural warriors will want to impose on it." |
| Q Network Film Desk |
| James Kendrick |
| "The first quarter of Brokeback Mountain plays like a silent movie version of Waiting of Godot, but starring two Marlboro Men instead of Vladimir and Estragon . . ." |
| SA Movie & DVD Magazine |
| James O'Ehley |
3.5/4 | "A gallery of worthy performances, crisp direction and a quietly graceful script make Brokeback Mountain something of a landmark in Hollywood's 2005 slate of movies." |
| Cinema Writer |
| Jay Antani |
4/4 | "A lyrical tone poem of a movie that's a haunting tribute to the great frontiers of love." |
| Palo Alto Weekly |
| Jeanne Aufmuth |
10/10 | "Foremost about a love that can never break out of its societal prison." |
| Window to the Movies |
| Jeffrey Chen |
7/10 | "Ultimately, a film such as this relies on its story and characters, and in that respect, it delivers..." |
| JoBlo's Movie Emporium |
| JoBlo |
4/5 | "Brokeback Mountain is about as close to perfection as it's possible to come in modern Hollywood." |
| FilmFocus |
| Joe Utichi |
A | "explores repressed feelings, loneliness, suffering, and alienation as adroitly as any film in recent memory" |
| Old School Reviews |
| John A. Nesbit |
| "Brokeback Mountain is about men and women, and how different they are from each other, and the ways in which they are different." |
| In the Dark |
| Jonathan F. Richards |
2/5 | "The pain and involvement for audiences experiencing forbidden love on screen rests entirely in the degree with which they can believe in that love in the first place" |
| Bangitout.com |
| Jordan Hiller |
3.5/5 | "it could have been real campy, if it weren't so well-crafted as to be Oscar material" |
| Movies for the Masses |
| Joseph Proimakis |
4.5/5 | "Men finding each other in a vast wilderness should be no big deal, but conservatives would have you believe it shakes the earth off its axis.* Lee makes their relationship epic in its reality and minuteness" |
| Cinerina |
| Karina Montgomery |
3.0/4.0 | "(The film's) edge is its same-sex controversy, but the cast is what keeps it sharp." |
| MovieCrypt.com |
| Kevin A. Ranson |
2.5/5 | "The hubbub seems more politically driven in the wake of the gay marriage debate. And an Oscar win will be pandering to that." |
| 7M Pictures |
| Kevin Carr |
2.5/4 | "I love gay people and I love a lot of gay movies - just not this one." |
| Montreal Film Journal |
| Kevin N. Laforest |
A | "certainly not what most would define as 'queer cinema,' but instead a most contemporary Western, a thing of raw, aching beauty." |
| Reeling Reviews |
| Laura Clifford |
3/4 | "Lee has managed to capture more than lavish backdrops and romantic sentimentalities and arrives at the end of the film with a sad reflection on love fought for and lost." |
| Mark Reviews Movies |
| Mark Dujsik |
| "Ledger is extraordinary here, so still and constant and beaten..." |
| Flick Filosopher |
| MaryAnn Johanson |
| "Film with much religious and mystical imagery." |
| Classic Film and Television |
| Michael E. Grost |
4.5/5 | "Ledger carries the film. His performance is a symphony of reserve ... he seems to be torn between exploding in anger and frustration and folding up into a fetal position." |
| Goatdog's Movies |
| Michael W. Phillips, Jr. |
4/4 | "The most beautiful thing about this film %u2013 which is full of beautiful things %u2013 is that it's a love story through and through. Humanity, not sexuality, is the heart of this tale." |
| Aisle Seat |
| Mike McGranaghan |
B+ | "The story-telling is so plain and straightforward that, like the characters' feelings for one another, at first you do not realize how powerful it is." |
| Movie Mom at Yahoo! Movies |
| Nell Minow |
C+ | "As regressively conservative as it is trailblazing." |
| Lessons of Darkness |
| Nick Schager |
5/5 | "Envolvendo o homossexualismo ou não, a história de amor narrada pelo filme é tocante por ser universal." |
| Cinema em Cena |
| Pablo Villaca |
2/5 | "An inert disappointment." |
| Film Threat |
| Phil Hall |
4/5 | "All four central cast members have moments of transparency that shake us to the core." |
| Shadows on the Wall |
| Rich Cline |
|
OFCS Rating: 80% Fresh |
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