Goya's Ghosts Reviews

While there are probably computer-generated backgrounds and armies on screen, the movie still has the feel of an old-fashioned epic.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

The film's greatest moments of artistry are in the credits, which feature a breathtaking gallery of the painter's work.

| Original Score: 2/4

Feels like an unsatisfying outline for a bigger, better fil

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

he acting is rather good, but only Ms. Portman and Mr. Quaid really shine.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.7/5

...an involving soap opera with a terrific performance by Natalie Portman.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10

[Milos] Forman has long wanted to make a movie about the Spanish Inquisition that reflected his own dire experience under Nazi and Communist regimes. This is it. But in realizing his dream, he seems to have lost track of the film's central subject.

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Anytime you emerge from the theater praising the scenery more than the scenes, there's a serious problem with the picture.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10

Wrong, wrong, wrong, every step of the way.

But in the end Goya's Ghosts is a far riskier and more provocative film than others released this summer, less because it targets relevant issues than the fact it refuses to take a stance on them on one side or the other.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

Despite some unintentional laughs and the difficulties some actors have with the English language, 'Goya's Ghosts' is worth seeing for the color, the costumes, and an education into the perils of irrationality.

Full Review | Original Score: B

If Forman is trying to communicate that art isn't an effective way to change American society, he's proved his point neatly with this muddled, wandering dud.

Full Review | Original Score: C-

The film's seriousness of intent is unimpeachable but the execution borders on farce.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

It has grand scale and grand ambitions, and in the midst of our annual silly season at the movies I would like to suggest that, flawed as it is, the film does reward our serious attention.

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Ultimately Goya's Ghosts left me wanting to watch Amadeus again, for the pleasure of a story well told.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Rich in color and period detail, the film attempts an epic sprawl it never quite achieves, but the movie is always enjoyable and interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

The biggest problem with the movie isn't the actors or even the half-baked script; it is that it never successfully draws one into its world. Watching Goya's Ghosts, one begins to daydream about Michael Palin.

| Original Score: 2/4

An across-the-board disaster from one of my favorite directors, Milos Forman.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

Fascinating ideas do hover, like mournful specters, around the edges of this meticulously detailed movie. But then they disappear, leaving us vaguely sad and unsettled, with nothing solid to grasp.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

One of [Forman's] more fanciful [biopics], spinning a historical melodrama around the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya.

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An extraordinarily beautiful film that plays almost like an excuse to generate its images.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4