Ray & Liz
Kimstim Films | Release Date: July 10, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
81
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 16 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
CineVueAlasdair BaymanMar 7, 2019
A symphony of cinema, Ray & Liz possesses an undeniable level of artistic expression on memory. Capturing space and time in a manner that only film can create in every single image there is a deep-rooted emotive quality. Read full review
100
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 2, 2018
Ray & Liz is formally arresting and rigorous, though not at the expense of its direct emotional force. Read full review
91
The Film StageRory O'ConnorSep 2, 2018
It’s an immersive poetic-realist dive into the artist’s fractured memories of his parents during the time he spent growing up in Birmingham in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Read full review
90
TheWrapDave WhiteJul 23, 2019
What Ray & Liz offers is the opposite of exploitive or vengeful enumeration of parental failure. Billingham finds grace for his ruined family, even if he refuses to save them, and it feels like an act of forgiveness. Read full review
90
Screen DailyAllan HunterSep 2, 2018
It is a striking, sustained artistic achievement, but one as painful and distressing to watch as it must have been to live through. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineCarson LundAug 31, 2018
Ray & Liz generates pathos through its detailed attention to its characters' attempts to find permanence and meaning in a fundamentally unstable reality. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJul 11, 2019
The film, like Billingham’s photography, is all the more powerful for its refusal to tidy up, explain itself, or try to glom some kind of retroactive grace onto an impoverished existence that was defined by boredom and neglect. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangJul 18, 2019
Bleak as it is, it’s remarkably devoid of bitterness or rancor, and even its most despairing passages are flecked with humor and hope. This is personal filmmaking with a diarist’s sense of detail and an artist’s generosity. Read full review
80
Time OutChris WayellMar 13, 2019
Artist-turned-filmmaker Richard Billingham soaks his terrific debut in bleak authenticity and some gorgeous cinematography. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerMar 8, 2019
Ray & Liz is undoubtedly a difficult watch, a searing portrait of a family that has come apart at the seams. But, creating an astute sense of atmosphere and detail that come together to make meaning, Richard Billingham marks himself out as a filmmaker to watch. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinSep 2, 2018
One senses that Billingham is not always at ease with the narrative demands of filmmaking. But his startling eye for the common made strange is very visible here, and hard not to hope that he’ll make further forays into filmmaking after this very auspicious debut with a work that feels so close and true to his earlier material. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 4, 2020
The cinematography darkens the tone, the performances — especially Smith, Way and young Millard-Lloyd, revel in reality. And if at the end we feel no more for “Ray & Liz” than they apparently did for their own kids, that’s a final, cruel endorsement of the truth acted-out by all involved. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubLawrence GarciaJul 9, 2019
What’s crucial is that although Ray & Liz certainly moves like a memory play, the director has chosen to recreate events that he himself could not have experienced. Read full review
70
The New York TimesGlenn KennyJul 9, 2019
Performed with absolute commitment by its cast (Justin Salinger and Ella Smith play the younger versions of the title characters), Ray & Liz is a quietly harrowing movie. Billingham risks tedium, though, in withholding anything like an inner life for any of its characters until the movie’s very end. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comNell MinowJul 10, 2019
Olds’ poem about her parents concludes: “Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.” That is what Bellingham does here, in a brutal film about brutality. With its very tamped-down emotion, Bellingham's decision not to attempt insight or empathy is the most telling display of the consequences of his story. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 18, 2018
The whole film is like an incomplete fragment, intriguing if frustrating. Read full review
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