On the Beach at Night Alone
Cinema Guild, The | Release Date: November 17, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New YorkerRichard BrodyNov 16, 2017
For all its intimacy, the drama has a vast scope, a fierce intensity, and an element of metaphysical whimsy (including one of the great recent dream sequences), which all come to life in the indelibly expressive spontaneity of Kim’s performance. Read full review
91
The Film StageRory O'ConnorFeb 17, 2017
On the Beach at Night Alone, a bittersweet tone poem from South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo, thinks many a thought about the universe and the future, mostly expressed through nature and the characters’ anxieties about growing old. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJessica KiangFeb 17, 2017
whether because of its personal nature, its occasional ferocity, its unusually dark undercurrents, its audacious defiance of expectation and explanation or Kim Min-hee’s essential performance, On The Beach At Night Alone feels like it will be exceptional even for longtime diehard Hong fans. Read full review
90
Village VoiceBilge EbiriNov 14, 2017
Knowing the real-life inspiration for On the Beach at Night Alone may help one appreciate the film’s moral trajectory a bit better. But the movie’s charms work on a much more immediate level, in the way it captures the ever-shifting dynamic between men and women, and the difficulty of matching one’s feelings to one’s words. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 17, 2017
On the Beach at Night Alone is a fascinating sublimation of autobiography into Hong’s precise creative terms, a bittersweet character study as poignant, witty and deceptively slight as much of his work that also refurbishes it with a unique personal dimension. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangNov 20, 2017
On the Beach at Night Alone isn’t as accomplished as Hong’s 2015 collaboration with Kim, the masterfully bifurcated “Right Now, Wrong Then.” But it’s more than worth seeing for Kim’s exposed nerve endings alone, and also for the way in which Hong’s typically playful sensibility seems to tilt at times into a surreal, menacing strangeness. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottNov 16, 2017
Ms. Kim is simultaneously an ordinary woman and a melodramatic heroine, her performance made more layered and intriguing by the intimation that she may be playing herself. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungFeb 17, 2017
The story is scarce to non-existent, but Kim Min-hee in the main role keeps the audience awake, waiting for her next socially uncensored outburst of truth. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJason BechervaiseFeb 17, 2017
Kim Min-hee, especially, gives another stellar performance. Read full review
80
VarietyGuy LodgeFeb 17, 2017
Unfussy in form, open in expression and gentle in reach as its maker revisits such recurring preoccupations as loneliness, regret and the value of love in life and art. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonNov 29, 2017
On the Beach at Night Alone is really Kim’s film. Her performance won her the best actress award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and she is in every scene, warts and all. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloNov 15, 2017
It’s also somehow simultaneously one of his (Hong Sang-soo) most straightforward, emotionally direct movies and the weirdest damn thing he’s ever made. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChuck Bowen
Hong Sang-soo simultaneously positions filmmaking as the ultimate act of atonement and evasion, eviscerating himself so that he may live to stage several more films about the futility of getting hammered and worshipping and bedding gorgeous young women. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsNov 17, 2017
A typical Hong character performs the same actions over and over again, with minor, but noticeably different results. Read full review
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