Coppola’s self-involved family drama Tetro feels like an attempt by the filmmaker to recapture his youthful for appetite for moviemaking and art. Which makes Tetro sound a lot better than it is.
Comment
05/18/09
Tetro (2009)
68
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:69
Fresh:47
Rotten:22
Average Rating:6.2/10
Consensus: A complex meditation on family dynamics, Tetro's arresting visuals and emotional core compensate for its uneven narrative.
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Almost four decades after he wrote THE CONVERSATION, Francis Ford Coppola returns to original screenwriting with this personal drama about an Argentine-Italian family. TETRO stars Vincent Gallo and... [More]
Starring: Vincent Gallo, Alden Ehrenreich, Maribel Verdú, Klaus Maria Brandauer
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Reviews for Tetro
Forcefully acted and sumptuously shot in gleaming black and white, it is an artistic picture that occasionally – nay, frequently – strains too hard for credibility, as Coppola’s script shoots for nothing less than tragedy.
05/16/09
Tetro is huge in its ambition, frequently operatic in its style and, on balance, impressive in its achievement.
05/18/09
[Builds] towards a cathartic third-act sequence (set among the glaciers of Patagonia) which does, finally, possess a sort of weird power. But it’s a long stretch to get there.
05/14/09
It's not a catastrophe, but neither is it a classic, and a big problem is Coppola's self-penned script, an Oedipal drama that may as well be subtitled An Oedipal Drama, because subtlety is not its strongest suit.
05/15/09
Top CriticThe film's visual beauty is not enough to compensate for its somewhat static feel, though, or the unbelievability of several of the characters.
05/15/09
Tetro -- however slightly flawed -- is beautifully mounted and emotionally engaging, two factors that Coppola rarely gets together in one movie.
06/12/09
Tetro has no internal tension and should have been a comedy.
06/18/09
Even the most deftly executed scenes are smothered in the Oedipal weight of past betrayals while they struggle to support the operatic melodrama that unfolds.
06/18/09
The performances, particularly from relative newcomer Alden Ehrenreich, will keep you engaged.
08/14/09
Maddening and fascinating in a way that only a true artist could possibly manage, and piddling questions like whether or not the film "works" are completely beside the point.
06/27/09
A dazzling mess... it throbs with an excess of emotion and idealistic, cuckoo daring.
07/25/09
The acting is terrific.
08/07/09
There's still much to admire in the visual craft and offbeat cultural sampling Coppola heroically brings to a homogenized cinema, but Tetro rides off the rails.
07/03/09
While Coppola seems revitalized by quoting from movies he studied at UCLA film school, what ultimately makes Tetro so compelling is the filmmaker's return to the motifs that made his 1970s films powerful.
08/14/09
The movie plays not like an old man's film but like a promising, frustrating student effort.
06/12/09
Top CriticTetro percolates with energy and bawdy knockabout humor.
07/16/09
Tetro moves and startles
08/25/09
Youth Without Youth may have been messier and more risible (though the climactic twist here is pretty damn dumb), but I’ll take its dazzingly surreal middle third over this film’s endless declamatory hooey.
05/16/09
Tetro is a visually lush cinematic fugue about love, ambivalence and two brothers fleeing the dark shadow of their domineering father.
06/11/09
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