Despite noteworthy attention to period detail in production and costume design, these are not enough to carry the film's confused plot.
Comment
05/04/07
Goya's Ghosts (2007)
29
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:83
Fresh:24
Rotten:59
Average Rating:4.8/10
Consensus: Ornate costumes and a talented cast can't make up for Ghosts' glacial pace and confused plot.
Theatrical Release:04-05-2007
Synopsis: From two-time Academy Award® winning director Milos Forman and three-time Academy Award® winning producer Saul Zaentz, GOYA'S GHOSTS is a sweeping historical epic, told through the eyes of... [More]
Starring: Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgaard, Randy Quaid
Director: Milos Forman
Reviews for Goya's Ghosts
Top CriticSumptuously filmed, but so lacking in a central narrative focal point that for all its pretences, Goya's Ghosts succeeds in saying nothing at all.
05/04/07
Top CriticClose to a disaster.
05/04/07
Top CriticThis is a set of footnotes rather than a fully achieved film — but it’s so packed with tidbits of interest it can’t fail to be intermittently diverting.
05/04/07
Top CriticThe idea and presence of Goya himself is somehow off-centre and off-balance throughout this directionless movie.
05/04/07
Top CriticAny film that sets its vision of Spain in the era of Inquisition and Napoleon against Goya's needs to have something pretty special to offer; this one doesn't.
05/04/07
Top CriticThe cast is rather too eclectic for its own good. These are superior actors, but thrown together like this they all stick out like sore thumbs.
05/03/07
Classy cinematography and powerful performances by all.
05/04/07
It’s as dull as the proverbial ditchwater.
05/04/07
The whole thing creaks along like an anaemic snail.
05/04/07
With its riffs on art, its split-in-half story and Goya-esque production design, you can see it reaching for grand ideas about actions and their reverberations, but it merely rumbles on, illuminating neither the artist nor his tumultuous times.
05/03/07
Top CriticIt’s never entirely clear who or what the film is about.
05/04/07
Top CriticImpressively made, watchable costume drama with strong performances from its three leads, despite the unusual casting.
05/04/07
Goya's Ghosts is a smart, darkly funny and deeply pessimistic film. It looks good and features wonderful performances.
08/18/07
It's a richly seen and felt movie, but not one with a feel-good message.
08/09/07
Goya's Ghosts uses the lives of artists and historical figures to show us the best and the worst of our human impulses.
08/10/07
If Forman is trying to communicate that art isn't an effective way to change American society, he's proved his point neatly with this muddled, wandering dud.
07/20/07
Goya gets lost as the filmmakers turn Spanish history into a chronicle of easy contemporary targets. They don't just hit the social-political bull's-eye -- they obliterate it with a cannon and inadvertently scorch the dramatic landscape all around it.
09/07/07
An overstuffed turkey that's entertaining for all the wrong reasons. It may in fact be the comedy of the summer, a melodramatic folly whose ambitions consistently curdle into camp.
07/20/07
One of [Forman's] more fanciful [biopics], spinning a historical melodrama around the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
07/20/07
Latest News for Goya's Ghosts
June 29, 2007:
The ultimate accidental insight provided by the film is that history may be recorded by the victors, but it is far less amenable to being smoothly scripted or orchestrated, either by foreign empires or filmmakers. 
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June 04, 2007:
Trailer & Poster review
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March 31, 2007:
european-films.net's preview & trailer
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March 23, 2007:
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