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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
[Milos] Forman has long wanted to make a movie about the Spanish Inquisition that reflected his own dire experience under Nazi and Communist regimes. This is it. But in realizing his dream, he seems to have lost track of the film's central subject.
Anytime you emerge from the theater praising the scenery more than the scenes, there's a serious problem with the picture.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, every step of the way.
But in the end Goya's Ghosts is a far riskier and more provocative film than others released this summer, less because it targets relevant issues than the fact it refuses to take a stance on them on one side or the other.
Despite some unintentional laughs and the difficulties some actors have with the English language, 'Goya's Ghosts' is worth seeing for the color, the costumes, and an education into the perils of irrationality.
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.
The film's seriousness of intent is unimpeachable but the execution borders on farce.
It has grand scale and grand ambitions, and in the midst of our annual silly season at the movies I would like to suggest that, flawed as it is, the film does reward our serious attention.
Top CriticUltimately Goya's Ghosts left me wanting to watch Amadeus again, for the pleasure of a story well told.
Rich in color and period detail, the film attempts an epic sprawl it never quite achieves, but the movie is always enjoyable and interesting.
The biggest problem with the movie isn't the actors or even the half-baked script; it is that it never successfully draws one into its world. Watching Goya's Ghosts, one begins to daydream about Michael Palin.
An across-the-board disaster from one of my favorite directors, Milos Forman.
Fascinating ideas do hover, like mournful specters, around the edges of this meticulously detailed movie. But then they disappear, leaving us vaguely sad and unsettled, with nothing solid to grasp.
One of [Forman's] more fanciful [biopics], spinning a historical melodrama around the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
An extraordinarily beautiful film that plays almost like an excuse to generate its images.
Top CriticAn 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.
Goya’s Ghosts, the new feature from the director Milos Forman, is an unwieldy mix of political satire and lavish period soap opera.
Top Critic[Forman] merely gives it a high polish, with lots of beautiful costumes, makeup and set designs, hoping that the Academy will remember him once more.
...only captivates when Forman and his production designers echo some of the painter's more famous tableaus.
However, something must have gone terribly wrong on its journey from the page to the screen because the resulting film is perhaps the biggest and most mystifying waste of talent and subject matter since that misbegotten remake of "All The King's Men."
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:
The Weekly Ketchup: "Pirates 3" Trailer, Natalie Portman In The Buff, "300" Sequel Talk, And More!
In this week's Ketchup, the first trailer for "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" appears on RT, Natalie Portman delights many by showing her stuff in... More...
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