Ask the Dust
Paramount Vantage | Release Date: March 10, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
14
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Ask the Dust is more than an amorous period piece. It's a strongly bitter, strongly sweet poem in prose and motion. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
More than anything else, Ask the Dust feels like a compendium of desires - for a city, for a woman, for youth. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Ask The Dust may find Towne a little past his prime, but after so much time in the Hollywood wilderness, it's good to see him trying again. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Ask the Dust does manage to cast a spell. The film is not only an evocation of a bygone era but an emanation of it as well. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Occasionally overrated as a writer but consistently underrated as a director, Towne does a marvelous job resurrecting all the seedy jumble of the long-gone Bunker Hill neighborhood. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
At a time when juvenile movies often dominate theaters, this is an adult movie through-and-through, and evidence that there are filmmakers who care about entertaining a more mature audience. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Ask the Dust requires an audience with a special love for film noir, with a feeling for the loneliness and misery of the writer. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Eccentric, miscast (though stimulatingly so), not for all tastes but far from flavorless. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Its portrait of an artist hungry for experience is as timely today as when it was written. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterSheri Linden
The film is faithful to the book's tone of dark ache and much of its detail and for the most part terrifically cast. But Towne can't overcome an essential challenge of the material: Arturo and Camilla are constructs and ciphers as much as they are vivid characters -- difficult roles, to be sure. Neither the screenplay nor the actors manage to get far under their skin. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
What seduces most about Ask the Dust isn't its verisimilitude, but its gloriously old-fashioned backlot sheen - the L.A. of old Hollywood movies and of our collective fantasies. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKevin Crust
Thirty years of gestation have produced a film of great beauty with unfulfilled promise - a disappointment, but with much to recommend and be glad about. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
To Towne's credit, he's a thoughtful and conscientious romantic. He skillfully makes the two main characters a hot, volatile couple, deftly staging their courtship as if it were an erotic grudge match. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The film, which is literary to a fault, includes an earthquake, but if the earth moves at all, thank Hayek, who gives the tale a smoldering life that finally lifts it from the page. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
The sepia-tinted palette of Ask the Dust drips, reeks and creaks of the seamy side of a city that takes more often than it gives. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
After an hour or so, Ask the Dust seems to have said everything, and the air starts to seep out of its hermetic atmosphere. Read full review
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