The Song of Sway Lake
The Orchard | Release Date: September 21, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
51
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
6
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Film ThreatAnthony Ray BenchSep 20, 2018
The film’s absurdly strong performances, music, and aesthetics all bring to life a wonderful film you won’t want to miss. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 20, 2018
Bit actor and sometime director Ari Gold and his co-writer/collaborator Elizabeth Bull conjure up a warm, wistful movie about nostalgia itself — its traps, and its rewards. Read full review
70
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergSep 20, 2018
The film seems unclear on how to unpack all its baggage, but the sense of detail and place carry the day. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 21, 2018
Narratively, The Song of Sway Lake doesn’t have much going for it but when it comes to capturing the tone of a specific locale, the approach of director Ari Gold is without peer. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennySep 21, 2018
The attractiveness of the scenery, and a quiet, dignified performance by Ms. Peña in what could now be her last movie appearance, wind up being the main redeeming values here. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesNoel MurraySep 20, 2018
Gold does an excellent job of evoking the past. But there’s nothing really holding the film’s most poignant moments together: no narrative drive, and no sense of a larger world. This song has a catchy melody, but the arrangement is a mess. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoSep 19, 2018
Ari Gold’s The Song of Sway Lake is saturated with a kind of melancholy nostalgia, and viewers who can accept that will find other virtues as well in this flawed film. It’s a story of familial unhappiness passing down through generations, impressive before it begins to lose focus. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenSep 19, 2018
While not always dramatically successful, The Song of Sway Lake earns big points for originality. The film has a distinctive tone, look, and setting, which are supported by strong performances (one of them by the greatly missed Elizabeth Peña, who died in 2014, making this her final film appearance – somehow appropriate to this movie about how the past can impinge on the present). Read full review
50
Slant MagazineDerek SmithSep 14, 2018
Despite Ari Gold’s knack for visual flourishes that capture a sense of place seemingly outside of time, The Song of Sway Lake plays like several disparate melodies overlapping one another. Read full review
40
VarietyNick SchagerSep 20, 2018
The Song of Sway Lake never finds a thematic center around which to pivot its action. Read full review
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