Stray Dogs
Cinema Guild | Release Date: September 12, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
84
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerAug 24, 2014
Tsai isn't making a social-problem film here, and his critique of patriarchal control is secondary to his portrait of unbearable psychic conditions. Read full review
100
CineVuePatrick GambleAug 24, 2014
Tsai's Stray Dogs is a masterpiece of social-realism, a distinctive and beguiling study of society's displaced and marginalised that plays to the beat of its own drum and refuses to conform to cinema's own commodification. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 16, 2013
Every shot of Stray Dogs has been built with utter formal mastery; every sequence exerts an almost telepathic grip. Read full review
95
Film.comJake ColeAug 24, 2014
Stray Dogs pushes Tsai’s cinema of laissez-faire long takes, performative observation and pangs of regret and loss to their extreme. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 10, 2014
The plight of this struggling family unit weighs more heavily on the heart with each passing minute, making Stray Dogs the rare marathon-length art film that seems to grow less oppressive the longer it goes on. Read full review
91
The PlaylistOliver LytteltonSep 16, 2013
The filmmaking here is almost impossibly well-realized, right down to the evocative sound design, adding up to an fairly unforgettable experience. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 15, 2014
This amazing, maddening film presents a series of extended, mostly static, terrifying tableaux of despair, poverty, and decay. Read full review
90
The DissolveScott TobiasSep 9, 2014
Stray Dogs evokes the whole of Tsai’s filmography, but also pays off his collaboration with Lee, who shows a side of himself that’s been hidden away for all these years. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzSep 12, 2014
It asks a lot of us. In fact it asks us to set aside everything we've been conditioned to think movies are, and roll with a different way of seeing and hearing things, and connect. Read full review
80
Time OutKeith UhlichSep 9, 2014
The lengthy final two shots (each running more than ten minutes) rank among the best work this inimitable artist has ever done. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 16, 2013
The director’s austere minimalism has always been suspended between the mesmerizing and the distancing, and in his latest feature, the concentration on elliptical observation, mood and texture signals an almost complete rejection of narrative. Read full review
70
Village VoiceDanny KingSep 9, 2014
An extreme, compassionate magnification of the minutiae of second-to-second existence (brushing teeth, counting money). Read full review
60
The New York TimesStephen HoldenSep 11, 2014
Until it goes haywire with the cabbage scene, Stray Dogs sustains a hypnotic intensity anchored in exquisite cinematography that portrays the modern industrial cityscape as a chilly wasteland. Read full review
60
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 16, 2013
Tsai here seems to be stripping his ornately eccentric style down to formal fundamentals. A certain pictorial grace remains; his sense of humor, sadly, appears to have been largely tossed out with the bathwater. Read full review
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