Somewhere
Focus Features | Release Date: December 22, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
67
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
8
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 23, 2010
A fascinating, mature, beautifully crafted work of art, from a director who continues to surprise us. Sofia Coppola has absorbed the Italian avant-garde more completely than her father ever did, and has made a film about celebrity in the vein of Antonioni and Bertolucci, a film about Hollywood in which she turns her back on it, possibly forever. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 22, 2010
Coppola is a fascinating director. She sees, and we see exactly what she sees. There is little attempt here to observe a plot. All the attention is on the handful of characters, on Johnny. Read full review
100
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 22, 2010
Coppola is a filmmaker who fills up a big canvas with small moments: That's the opposite of working in miniature, even though she's attuned to the tiniest details. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 21, 2010
The opening shot of Somewhere, Sofia Coppola's exquisite, melancholy and formally audacious fourth feature, prepares you for what is to follow in a characteristically oblique and subtle manner. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJan 20, 2011
This is an intentionally fanciful, gossamer movie, extremely personal and heartfelt, influenced in equal parts by Michelangelo Antonioni (although never so elusive) and Gus Van Sant (just not quite so self-conscious). Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJan 14, 2011
A distinctly European exercise in observational nuance and tonal restraint in which Coppola stretches static images to the breaking point. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanDec 30, 2010
The movie's redemptive structure is a bit routine, yet I watched nearly every scene with a sense of discovery. Coppola is a true filmmaker, and in Somewhere she pierces the Hollywood bubble from the inside. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 6, 2011
Coppola's audacity in not only portraying the unmoored nature of Marco's life but immersing the audience in it proves satisfying over time. Read full review
80
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonDec 23, 2010
Those who groan that the writer-director has made another indulgent film about the obscenely privileged have overlooked Coppola's redoubtable gifts at capturing milieu, languor, and exacting details. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerDec 11, 2010
It may not have Lost In Translation's reach, but it's original and smartly funny with top performances. Read full review
80
VarietyJustin ChangDec 11, 2010
The ever-perceptive writer-director further hones her gifts for ruefully funny observation and understated melancholy with this low-key portrait of a burned-out screen actor. Read full review
79
NPRElla TaylorDec 22, 2010
By the end of Somewhere, all I could summon up was a fervent wish-you-well - not for him, but for his beguiling elf of a child. Read full review
75
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottFeb 25, 2011
Slowly becomes a thoughtful and interesting deconstruction and demythologizing of American celebrity. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJan 13, 2011
Ultimately, Somewhere may be too static, too minimalist a tale. But there's grace here. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyJan 6, 2011
Throughout, Dorff is doggedly credible as an obtuse actor, but the richer performance here is from Fanning, and it might have been a stronger movie told from her character's point of view. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 23, 2010
"Don't tell, show" has been the writer's imperative for generations; Coppola takes that edict to its most visual and satisfying extremes. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 22, 2010
Whatever the intention, Somewhere, in its odd, detached way, is compelling viewing. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsDec 22, 2010
It's all so uneasily compelling and quietly moving, it might be too much to ask her to sustain it through the conclusion. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 22, 2010
Some could find the story verging on self-indulgence, and indeed there are patches that teeter perilously close. But we care about the two main characters, and we root for them to reconnect as father and daughter. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 21, 2010
As in "Lost in Translation," Coppola keeps an eye out for the broken places. That's when Somewhere is really something. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 21, 2010
A small but, in its way, daring picture. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 28, 2010
This is a mood piece, shapeless but often lyric. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 23, 2010
It's easy to speculate that the loving Cleo and the frequently absent Johnny are stand-ins for Ms. Coppola and her own famous father, but Somewhere needn't be seen as a film à clef. The movie stands on its own terms as a slow-burning drama of life in a Hollywood purgatory where you can not only check out but leave. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 21, 2010
Slight but often seductive and so deliberately not in a hurry it periodically threatens to dissolve right in front of our eyes, Somewhere is more successful in creating ambience and visual imagery than it is in telling its story of a movie star bonding with his 11-year-old daughter. Read full review
70
Boxoffice MagazineSara Maria VizcarrondoDec 11, 2010
A clearly personal effort, Somewhere demonstrates Coppola's featherweight touch with big subjects like identity and human connection. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungDec 11, 2010
After her foray into historical costumers with "Marie Antoinette," Sofia Coppola makes a happy return to "Lost in Translation" territory in the cutback charmer Somewhere, which illuminates the emptiness of a movie star's life in Los Angeles through close observation and gentle irony. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn LevyJan 14, 2011
The result imparts something of the emptiness of Johnny's existence and, if you're not partial to either the fellow or the technique, might very well drive you up a tree. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesDec 24, 2010
Fans of Coppola's movies (and/or perfume ads) will find this free of the absurd pop-rock flourishes in "Antoinette" and more consistent with the skilled tonality and narrative ambiguity of "Translation." Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 22, 2010
Dorff and Fanning are perfect in their roles, and Coppola captures the draining narcissism of celebrity culture with the understanding of someone who"s witnessed it all her life. Read full review
60
Time OutDavid FearDec 14, 2010
The difference between a movie about emptiness and an empty movie becomes abundantly clear. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisDec 21, 2010
I can't say why Coppola wanted to spend time with this man. It's like following someone on Twitter who fails to generate many compelling tweets. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 30, 2010
Sometimes empty is just empty. What Gertrude Stein said about Oakland can also apply to Somewhere: "There is no there there." Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovJan 21, 2011
Oh, the ennui. In Somewhere, it's so thick you could cut it with Stephen Dorff's chiseled cheekbones. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid DenbyDec 13, 2010
The futility of a noodling movie star is hardly a revelation of the absurdity of the human condition, or whatever this movie is supposed to be about. [20 & 27 Dec. 2010, p. 146]
40
TimeRichard CorlissDec 11, 2010
Somewhere has a lot of good impulses, and a salutary faith in an audience's patience; but the film's tone, in its script, performances and visual style, is studiously uninflected. It's a document of people seen remotely, maybe from outer space. Read full review
38
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreJan 19, 2011
Somewhere is a triumph of tedium, banality passing for depth, a vacuous embrace of nothing. Read full review
38
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 22, 2010
This movie works best as a sleep tonic. Somewhere isn't just frustratingly slow-moving; it's inert. Read full review
30
SlateDana StevensDec 23, 2010
Where are we? What is this empty, science-fiction-like space in which luxury goods and women who resemble them are ceaselessly rotated in front of our eyes? Oh, it's Hollywood. Read full review
25
New York PostKyle SmithDec 22, 2010
To compete with the quintessence of nullity that is Sofia Coppola's insufferable Somewhere, imagine a film called "Wanna See Me Crack My Knuckles?" or possibly "Let's Learn How Long It Takes This Shallow Dish of Liquid To Evaporate." Read full review
12
ObserverRex ReedDec 20, 2010
The latest calcified bore by Sofia Coppola is less pretentious than "Marie Antoinette" but every bit as inertly stupefying as "Lost in Translation." Read full review
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