Blue Valentine
Weinstein Company, The | Release Date: December 29, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
81
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
35
Mixed:
7
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJan 28, 2011
It is beautiful, and it is difficult to watch. It is heartwarming, and it is heart-wrenching. It is absorbing, and it's unsettling. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 27, 2011
Sounds depressing, but Blue Valentine is a reminder that well-measured and expertly acted pain is as thrilling to watch as 3-D spectacle. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 6, 2011
Extraordinary and beautiful. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanDec 29, 2010
Blue Valentine is lushly touching and gorgeously told. Read full review
100
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 29, 2010
Gosling and Williams have the most palpable chemistry of any screen couple this year, never striking a false note in this achingly tender tale of a love that implodes before our eyes. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDec 29, 2010
Halfway into Blue Valentine, a work so beautifully acted and emotionally honest it is my choice for best movie of the year, there's an amazing flashback scene you hope never ends. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinDec 28, 2010
It's an emotionally claustrophobic drama, played with frayed nerves and raw emotions, and it serves as an unrelenting glimpse into relationship hell. It could easily have devolved into sweaty, pretentious melodrama or ersatz John Cassavetes if Cianfrance and his actors didn't maintain perfect control over the material. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 22, 2010
Blue Valentine has a quiet, resigned wisdom to it. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedDec 20, 2010
Blue Valentine is about real life, warts and all, over narrative conventions like action and plot mechanics. It is brutal, compassionate, beautiful in its ugliness and one of the bravest films of the year. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 14, 2011
Once it's done, you feel terrible for these people, for their lives, for their daughter, especially. Is that entertainment? To each his own, but it is compelling and, yes, rewarding. Read full review
90
SlateDana StevensJan 6, 2011
Williams plays this tired, disillusioned, chronically angry woman without a trace of actorly vanity. It's a performance noteworthy not just for its intensity but for Williams' ability to communicate inner experience at a micro-level of detail. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 30, 2010
Here's one vote for the most affecting, anguishing, revealing and prophetic scene of the movie year-and yes, it's all of those things at once in a powerful film that alternates between moments of earlier happiness and later pain. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 30, 2010
An intimate, gorgeous and wrenching portrait of a working-class marriage in what may be a state of terminal decay. Read full review
90
NPRScott TobiasDec 28, 2010
Cianfrance and his actors, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, have not made a cold or schematic film. They aim instead for raw emotional experience, one that's full of insight into the ways a relationship can go astray, but mostly feels like a slow-motion punch to the gut. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenJan 28, 2011
Two superb actors etch an unflinching portrait of a young marriage doomed never to grow old. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 17, 2011
The cumulative experience leaves an aftertaste that, although not bitter, is too strong to be easily washed away. That's the mark of a worthwhile motion picture. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJan 14, 2011
It's true that the movie is both emotionally violent and sexually explicit. Yet these scenes from a marriage are crafted with such attention to detail and overarching honesty that Blue Valentine touches the heart. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJan 13, 2011
After 30 minutes, I wondered why I was watching a drama about a quarrelsome couple who seemed so obviously wrong for each other. After 60 minutes, I knew. After 90 minutes, I cared. By the end, I was riveted. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJan 12, 2011
There isn't a moment in the entire film that doesn't feel genuine. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJan 6, 2011
Derek Cianfrance, the film's writer and director, observes with great exactitude the birth and decay of a relationship. This film is alive in its details. Read full review
88
New York PostKyle SmithDec 29, 2010
A small but shattering film that marks its writer-director, Derek Cianfrance, as an artist of real depth, observes relationship dynamics at a molecular level, welling with as much understanding as Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage." Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 29, 2010
Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams give two of the most explosive and emotionally naked performances you will see anywhere. Just know you're in for a workout. Read full review
85
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 30, 2010
The faces of these performers - particularly Williams' - are the key to Blue Valentine. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesJan 11, 2011
The performances are so gripping that the movie works despite its diagrammatic structure, which focuses on ironic rhymes between past and present and leaves out the entirety of the couple's marriage. Read full review
80
EmpireNev PierceJan 3, 2011
A raw but beautiful picture of love uniting and dividing: tender, real and heartfelt. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyDec 29, 2010
That meandering dialogue can be difficult to control, and at times the film feels as if the director has stepped away from the vehicle, leaving it to veer off the path. Still, it's an experiment that works more than it fails by giving Gosling and Williams both the motive and the means to create something extraordinary, a valentine that actually says something true about being in love. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 28, 2010
Blue Valentine leaves you with the shattering vision of its truest victim-the one who'll someday look for safety in places it might not be. And the psychodrama will go on and on … Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 28, 2010
Nothing out of the ordinary happens in Blue Valentine, and that, together with the vital, untrammelled performances of the two leading actors, is the root of its power. Read full review
80
TimeMary PolsDec 21, 2010
The scenes cut so close to the emotional bone that you can understand why they might cause a panic amongst MPAA boardmembers, although of course, it's nothing to be afraid of: just the realism of love in its varied forms. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthyDec 20, 2010
On balance, this is a meaty, strongly realized dramatic work of considerable accomplishment. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayJan 6, 2011
Writer-director Derek Cianfrance, who with Blue Valentine makes an astonishing debut. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 6, 2011
It's Williams you never question, who makes every detail and close-up and impulse natural. She's spectacularly good. Read full review
75
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreDec 29, 2010
It's a gritty, almost ugly to look at film, and Cianfrance isn't shy about including a random blast of unwarranted shaky footage. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesJan 14, 2011
Those moments, as affecting as they are, can't surmount the overworkshopped feel of the whole film. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 21, 2010
There's a loose, vérité vibe here, and times when both Williams and Gosling root down deep to deliver something resonant and true. But this modern-day kitchen sink drama is ultimately too painful, too labored, to care much about at all. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineRay GreeneDec 20, 2010
The kind of grim, character-based movie that needs a strong performer to anchor it. Director Derek Cianfrance has been fortunate enough to land two: Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianMarc MohanJan 14, 2011
It wallows in misery so much that the two-hour experience ends up being about as much fun as a real divorce. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisJan 6, 2011
All the movie's good style goes to waste on a not terribly compelling conceit and loosely sketched characters. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 30, 2010
The film's time structure is splintered into shards of past and present, which is probably just as well – a strictly narrative chronology would make this wallow seem even sloggier. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 29, 2010
Cindy and Dean remain, for all their sustained agony and flickering joy, something less than completely realized human beings. Mr. Cianfrance's ingenious chronological gimmick, coupled with his anxious, clumsy plotting, leaves them without enough oxygen to burst into breathing, loving life. Read full review
50
Village VoiceKarina LongworthDec 28, 2010
Even when transparently plumbing for depth, Cianfrance's film is frustratingly surface-bound in ways that reflect, if not out-and-out misogyny, then at least a lack of interest in imbuing his female character with the rich interior life and complicated morality he gives his male lead. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterDuane ByrgeDec 21, 2010
Ultimately, the heavy-handed and annoyingly obvious aesthetic wears thin. Read full review
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