Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Strand Releasing | Release Date: March 4, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 21 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasMar 3, 2011
A moving, gently reassuring tale that softens the boundaries between humanity and nature, life and the afterlife. Read full review
100
IndieWireEric KohnMar 2, 2011
The magic of Uncle Boonmee is that it makes all viewers feel like the strange ones. Read full review
100
Time OutKeith UhlichFeb 28, 2011
What you see and hear always seems perfectly natural, even if you can't exactly say why. Who needs words when you have cinema? Read full review
95
MovielineStephanie ZacharekMar 1, 2011
If anything, Joe's sense of dream logic is more naturalistic than Lynch's, more grounded in the knowable world - as much, that is, as we can know about nature - and the luminous Uncle Boonmee is no exception. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumMar 2, 2011
Spirit, animal, and human worlds coexist in dreamy harmony in this remarkable drama. Read full review
90
VarietyJustin ChangMar 4, 2011
Animism, apparitions, out-of-body experiences, sex with a catfish -- there's all that and more in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's wonderfully nutty Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMar 4, 2011
Encountered in an appropriately exploratory frame of mind, it can produce something close to bliss. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMar 3, 2011
What is clear is that this is a director with a great sense of the magical and the mystical residing in the everyday. Read full review
90
NPRElla TaylorMar 3, 2011
You don't have to believe in the transmigration of souls to fall languorously in love with the Thai film that won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 3, 2011
I can't pretend to understand the intricacies of the Buddhist belief system that informs the surreal story, or the fantasy system in which Boonmee, embodying Thailand, recalls his nation's history and shimmering myths. Yet no effort of understanding is needed to be moved by Boonmee's descent into a limestone cave shaped like a womb. Read full review
90
Village VoiceJ. HobermanMar 1, 2011
A work of unostentatious beauty and uncloying sweetness, at once sophisticated and artless, mysterious and matter-of-fact, cosmic and humble, it asks only a measure of Boonmeevian acceptance: The movie doesn't mean anything-it simply is. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertApr 16, 2011
If you are open, even in fancy, to the idea of ghosts who visit the living, this film is likely to be a curious but rather bemusing experience. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisApr 7, 2011
As Apichatpong erases, once again, the barriers between the celestial and terrestrial, he also does away with the cordons between film genres - this is sci-firomancefamilyreligiousthrillercomedyporn. No video service has a section for that. The only suitable shelf is the one in your soul. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversFeb 28, 2011
As Joe blurs the line between reality and the supernatural, his haunting and hypnotic film exerts a hold you don't want to break. It's a beauty. Read full review
80
Boxoffice MagazineRichard MoweFeb 28, 2011
A whimsical essay about the final days of a villager suffering from kidney failure it is undoubtedly one of the filmmaker's most accessible works. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn LevyApr 29, 2011
It's clear that Weerasethakul knows exactly what he wants to do and that he does it in his own way. And that's why his film, even if it can't be recommended to everyone, blossoms inside you the longer you allow it to. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. MusettoMar 4, 2011
Perplexing but pleasing. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleDavid LewisMar 3, 2011
If you can weather some slow patches (and there are plenty), this boldly original, oddly affecting meditation on the afterlife will reward you with moments of profundity that will linger in your consciousness (or subconsciousness) for a lifetime (or lifetimes). Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinFeb 28, 2011
Uncle Boonmee is entrancing-and also, if you're not sufficiently steeped in its rhythms, narcotizing. Read full review
60
EmpireSimon CrookFeb 28, 2011
A gentle trance-out and the strangest Palme d'Or winner in a while. Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid DenbyMar 23, 2011
I'm more than ready to welcome a new style and a new metaphysic, but I still respond with skepticism and exasperation to Weerasethakul's work, which is sensuous and ruminative but also flat, almost affectless. [28 March 2011, p. 116]
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