Midnight Family
1091 Media | Release Date: December 6, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
81
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzDec 6, 2019
This is one of the great contemporary films about the look and feel of a big city after dark, luxuriating in the vastness of almost-empty avenues lit by buzzing streetlamps. It's a real-life answer to fiction movies like "Taxi Driver," "Bringing Out the Dead," "Collateral," "Nightcrawler" and "The Sweet Smell of Success." Read full review
100
TheWrapMonica CastilloFeb 1, 2019
Midnight Family is both a compassionate portrait of a working-class family and a frightening ride through a broken healthcare system that risks the lives of both patients and providers like the Ochoa family. Read full review
90
VarietyNick SchagerFeb 1, 2019
Portraits of institutional dysfunction don’t come much more urgent, and quietly bleak, than this. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubVikram MurthiDec 3, 2019
To his credit, Lorentzen never guides the audience’s moral response, allowing us to make up our minds about the Ochoas on a scene-by-scene basis. He also provides ample rationale for their actions by depicting their hand-to-mouth lifestyle alongside the on-the-job drudgery. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawFeb 26, 2020
Somehow Lorentzen shows that it is not the Ochoa family who are the bad guys, but the whole rotten system. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeFeb 26, 2020
Captured by a camera that frequently rattles against the sides of the hurtling ambulance, the Ochoas’ night-time escapades are electrifying and urgent, doused in strobing emergency lights and powered by adrenaline. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleFeb 26, 2020
An acutely observed and frequently heartbreaking documentary. Read full review
80
Film ThreatLorry KiktaFeb 1, 2019
It’s a very exciting, sad, yet extremely funny film. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 3, 2019
Director Luke Lorentzen (“New York Cuts”) puts us in the front seat of the Med Care van staffed by the men of the Ochoa family, freelance entrepreneurs trying to feed and care for a big family from inside an ambulance. Their story has thrills and compassion, hard luck and grief. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChuck BowenDec 2, 2019
It’s the mix of the humane and the calculating that gives the film its empathetic power. Read full review
75
The PlaylistChristian GallichioFeb 1, 2019
A thrilling, subjective, portrait of one family’s attempts to navigate the corrupt economy of emergency health care while, also, providing much-needed services for a city desperately in need of EMTs. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesCarlos AguilarDec 12, 2019
What’s indelible in this visceral chronicle is that more than profiting from human suffering, the Ochoas fill the gaps of economic inequality while doing good without reservation. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeFeb 13, 2019
Though its micro view limits its usefulness in big discussions of public policy — it's easy to imagine American partisans using it as evidence both for and against government-run health care — it is a vivid reminder that all such policies are lived out by millions of individuals, who die every day when things aren't well run. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerJan 8, 2020
By telling a Mexican story, Lorentzen arguably speaks more directly to an American audience. Read full review
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