Love Is Strange
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: August 22, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
38
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirAug 22, 2014
You need to give Love Is Strange your eyes and ears and attention, let it work its effects on you gradually, like the lovely Chopin piano music that forms the spine of its soundtrack. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyAug 21, 2014
In the hands of two of the craft's best, the most ordinary of moments become illuminating, penetrating. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyAug 21, 2014
It's a courageous film that's willing to sit in those moments instead of underlining them or hurrying past them, hoping we get the shorthand. Love is Strange is a patient film. The emotions it unleashes are enormous. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottAug 21, 2014
By the time the movie is over, you feel as if the people in it were friends you know well enough to tire of, and to miss terribly when they go away. Read full review
100
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekAug 19, 2014
Sachs and his performers know that the perfect marriage is a thing of phantom beauty — it doesn't exist, yet we persist in believing that someone out there must have it. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyJoe McGovernAug 13, 2014
Sachs, Molina, and Lithgow have given adult moviegoers a perfect piece of summer counterprogramming — a warm, humane, resplendent romance to savor while our days are still long. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJan 27, 2014
Love Is Strange emerges as a total triumph for Sachs and his co-leads, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina, who, despite lengthy filmographies, turn in career-topping work. a sensitive domestic tragedy about the finite nature of any union. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnJan 27, 2014
Love Is Strange is a sophisticated take on contemporary urbanity infused with romantic ideals and the tragedy of their dissolution. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJames RocchiJan 20, 2014
Calling Love Is Strange a great gay love story is both precise and inaccurate; I doubt I’ll see a more finely performed and beautifully crafted love story, with or without any mere modifiers, up on the big screen this year. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 27, 2014
In addition to the performances — truly, everyone is good — what stands out is Sachs' direction. It's measured, patient. The scenes play out as one imagines the characters' lives would. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeJan 27, 2014
Love Is Strange never feels anything less than authentic, like a true story shared by close friends. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovSep 10, 2014
There are many questions raised and answered in this film, but one that isn’t is why on Earth it’s garnered an R rating. Love Is Strange is anything but. It’s a seriocomic romance of the most genteel sort, full of heartfelt “I love yous,” brief (and definitely unerotic) snuggling, and a wealth of tremendously fine acting from all involved. Read full review
89
Film.comJordan HoffmanJan 20, 2014
Throughout the picture you understand the miracle and good fortune of finding love, and recognize the great changes in tolerance American society is currently (albeit slowly) undergoing. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaSep 12, 2014
Love Is Strange has a gentleness about it, and an empathy, that inspire. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrSep 4, 2014
One of those lovely little movies that starts out being about a handful of people and ends up being about all of us. That’s a tricky act to pull off and the talented writer-director Ira Sachs stumbles occasionally over moments of self-conscious lyricism. But then the film recovers its balance, looks at its characters with fondness and with faith, and quietly soars. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 28, 2014
Do not expect dynamic filmmaking from Love Is Strange. It's about other things, and Lithgow and Molina are splendid, their eyes full of wisdom and experience. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 21, 2014
Love Is Strange is, above all, a triumph for Lithgow and Molina, two consummate actors who bring decades of experience to artful performances that are as emotionally expressive in silence as they are in words. Acting doesn’t get better than this. Want to know what love is? Watch Lithgow and Molina and learn. Read full review
83
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanSep 18, 2014
The movie ends so abruptly you might wonder if a piece is missing, and it relies on one extraordinary coincidence I couldn’t swallow. Yet scene by scene, I found people I knew or wish I knew: Ben’s romantic advice to the straight but awkward Joey would give any boy confidence about himself. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerAug 22, 2014
The living-apart scenario is contrived – there was no way for these men to share a space somewhere? – but the two actors are so good that it doesn’t much matter. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Aug 20, 2014
Setting several scenes to the famously poignant plinks of pianist Frédéric Chopin, Love Is Strange never achieves the sheer emotional resonance of "Make Way For Tomorrow"; it’s gently affecting, not deeply heartbreaking — in part because Sachs builds to a less devastating punctuation than McCarey did. Read full review
80
Total FilmKate StablesFeb 2, 2015
Molina and Lithgow shine as newlywed grumpy old men in a moving love story that’s also a masterclass in emotional subtlety. Read full review
80
EmpireAngie ErrigoFeb 2, 2015
Elevated from nice to beautifully memorable by wonderful performances and thoughtful direction of perfect small moments. Read full review
80
CineVueEd FranklSep 22, 2014
Sachs and Love Is Strange co-writer Mauricio Zacharias craft an intergenerational love story believably told and immaculately acted. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensAug 22, 2014
Lithgow and Molina play Ben and George with such depth, tenderness, and history that their affection for one another’s bodies (there’s no sex, but loads of snuggling) seems like a natural extension of their pleasure in being together. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinAug 21, 2014
I think this tale of woe can principally be seen as a plea for a heightened sense of community. It takes a village to keep us all afloat. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierAug 21, 2014
After a summer of robots, mutants and explosions, the beautifully honest, grownup Love is Strange is a treat. Read full review
80
The DissolveKeith PhippsAug 19, 2014
Neither Molina nor Lithgow are stranger to big performances, but here, they offer studies in restraint, underplaying dramatic moments in ways that make them all the more powerful. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneAug 18, 2014
Love Is Strange, however, is not about gay marriage. It is about a marriage that happens to be gay. If the film grows slightly boring, even that can be construed as an advance. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijJan 27, 2014
This is a sprawling yet intimate narrative, constructed almost entirely of in-between moments rather than the big turning points and tragedies. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Nathalie AtkinsonSep 18, 2014
Throughout, Sachs is quietly observational – the film’s emotional power coming from its rich but unshowy performances. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsSep 18, 2014
What makes Love Is Strange so special is that the challenges the couple face are more mundane than menacing. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezSep 4, 2014
Sometimes, love can feel like hate or annoyance — it is, as the title states, strange. But sometimes, more often than not, it can be a wonderful thing. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 28, 2014
Attention is duly paid in this tender and touching film; the strangest thing about Love Is Strange is how completely un-strange it is, from its familiar family dynamics to its exquisite honesty and compassion. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoAug 28, 2014
See Love Is Strange for its sensitivity and understated jokes, but mainly for Lithgow and Molina's expertly modulated work, which pulls the movie back when it threatens to stray into melodrama or heavy-handedness. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickAug 20, 2014
Love is Strange is very well worth seeing for its two stars, who acutely convey the pain their characters feel over their separation as well as displaying their considerable comic chops to keep things from getting too grim. Read full review
75
ObserverMatthew KasselAug 20, 2014
The most striking thing about the love between Ben and George, the two men the movie focuses on, is how natural it seems. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreSep 16, 2014
None of it adds up to much more than a chuckle or two, a smile or three and a lot of slow, poetically drawn-out moments of mild anguish or the simple delight of walking through Greenwich Village in the spring. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoAug 18, 2014
Ira Sachs's push for heartrending poetry makes it clear that the film is putting too fine a gloss on the acute pains of one small tragedy. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinFeb 18, 2015
[Sachs'] subtle, often quite special film shows us a shared life as a series of impositions: sometimes we’re imposed upon, and sometimes we do the imposing, and love is the net result. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternAug 21, 2014
What's on screen, though, is a peculiar clutter of gentle sentiment, awkward dialogue, shaky contrivance — especially the resolution of Joey's feelings — and monotonous performances from a supporting cast that includes Marisa Tomei and Darren Burrows. Read full review
50
TheWrapInkoo KangAug 19, 2014
Love is Strange boasts an abundance of patience and kindness — but not much of a pulse. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottOct 3, 2014
Love is Strange doesn't really have any sort of sense of urgency about it. To the contrary, it feels rather mundane, as their problems -- while both unfortunate and unfair -- feel relatively small when put in perspective. Read full review
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