Dawson City: Frozen Time
Kino Lorber | Release Date: June 9, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New YorkerRichard BrodyJul 4, 2017
The film locates extraordinary political and cultural tributaries, marked by archival footage, that arise from the history of Dawson City and the gold rush. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranJun 15, 2017
The thrilling documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time is indescribable not because it's ambiguous (it's totally straightforward) but because it does so many things so beautifully it is hard to know where to begin. Read full review
100
Village VoiceMichael AtkinsonJun 8, 2017
It’s an orgy for film geeks and history jonesers, to be sure, and the revelation of how exactly the prints got waylaid and then buried in the permafrost, saved by virtue of Dawson City’s fading away in the twentieth century, proves a sweet narrative reward. Read full review
100
The New York TimesGlenn KennyJun 8, 2017
Dawson City now enters that time line as an instantaneously recognizable masterpiece. Read full review
91
The Film StageJose SolísJul 4, 2017
Morrison proves that there is no better way to tell the story of movies than with movies, and it seems almost spooky how the Dawson City reels supplied him with the material he needed. Read full review
91
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJun 9, 2017
The rise and fall of Dawson City, intimately tied to the vagaries of climate and man’s greed, is heartbreakingly rendered. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comGodfrey CheshireJun 9, 2017
Dawson City: Frozen Time is a rather clunky and uninspiring title for a film that’s both revelatory and deeply fascinating. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineChuck BowenJun 6, 2017
Throughout, direcgor Bill Morrison mixes documentarian detail with an ecstatic sense of poetry. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineKenji FujishimaJun 8, 2017
As impressively exhaustive as it is as a work of history, Dawson City: Frozen Time plays even more affectingly as Morrison’s most direct love letter to cinema: as a tool not only for recording history, but also for capturing between-the-lines truths that history books can only graze. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJul 12, 2017
The music links it all together, creating the sense of some overarching, unseen logic connecting all human activity and making everything inevitable. Indeed, it’s that last impression that elevates Dawson City: Frozen Time to the level of poetry. The story of the town is interesting, without being scintillating. Read full review
75
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJun 8, 2017
As an act of preservation, Frozen Time is a marvel, a miracle, a complete good. As an act of storytelling, it’s still a bit too cold for the nitrate to catch fire. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckJul 4, 2017
Dawson City: Frozen Time could have benefited from judicious trimming of its two-hour running time, and there are times when its wandering focus proves irritating. But, at its best, the film represents a captivating time capsule that delivers a poignant paean to a long-gone cinematic era. Read full review
70
VarietyOwen GleibermanJul 4, 2017
The remarkable thing is that the movie acquires the quality of a time machine. You don’t just watch “Dawson City.” You step into it to and draw back a magical curtain on the past, entering a world of buried memory that’s the precursor to our own. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyJun 7, 2017
It’s much more involving as a work of pure and hypnotic collage than as a researched narrative of facts, dates, and names. Read full review
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