Notable for its visual beauty, its melancholic Yo La Tengo score and its subtle performances, it's an impressively understated and sensitively observed work.
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01/26/07
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Old Joy (2006)
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Reviews Counted:82
Fresh:69
Rotten:13
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: A serene, melancholy beauty permeates this meditative portrait of deep friendship and faded glory.
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Reviews for Old Joy
Such watchful reticence takes a bold, confident filmmaker.
01/26/07
Making exceptional use of stillness and silence, this is a rather sad study of the passing of traditional concepts of American masculinity along with the landscape that forged them.
01/25/07
At just 76 minutes, Old Joy is a minimalist film, but illuminating, bittersweet, gentle and deeply alive.
01/18/07
Old Joy, a reticent, delicate film, is riveting because not much happens.
01/13/07
The meditative and absorbing real-time pace suggests, and perhaps was inspired by, the cinema of Iran, and its hardscrabble aesthetic and minimalist production values.
01/12/07
The characters stayed with me, and I'm glad I took a second look now that it's opening for a two-week run at Northwest Film Forum. This time around, its sense of humor seemed much more effective -- as did its less-is-more style.
01/05/07
Although there's not much in the way of traditional drama in Old Joy, there's always something going on, if you're willing to pay close attention to the film's delicate details.
01/04/07
As your experience may diverge from theirs, the film offers a metaphor for reading, as the environment becomes at once a projection, frame, and mirror for subjective states.
12/21/06
Though it's well-intentioned and runs barely more than an hour, this slowly paced character study gets tiresome in a hurry.
12/08/06
The movie captures gorgeous mountain scenery with the simplicity of an Ozu film. It also benefits from the naturalistic performances.
12/01/06
It plays for a scant 73 minutes, but if feels as long as a Wagner opera.
11/30/06
Top CriticOld Joy is as dull and doomed as the men's friendship.
11/30/06
A worthy attempt at a worthy topic.
11/28/06
The real resonance of Reichardt's at once lean and profound little movie is that, without saying anything directly, it can seem to say so much.
11/24/06
Top CriticWise, resonant and genuinely special.
11/24/06
Top CriticOld Joy is an accurately observed slice of that moment between postadolescence and parenthood, when friends cling or scatter, and circumstances force buried feelings to the fore.
11/11/06
The closely observed exchanges, which are so rambling and yet leave so much unstated, make the silences between Mark and Kurt echo with regret, longing, hope.
11/11/06
Old Joy's not-going- anywhere-ness is a big part of its charm.
11/10/06
Like a great jazz musician, Reichart understands that striking a single, well-placed note can resonate more profoundly than playing a splashy cascade of noise just because you can.
11/03/06
Latest News for Old Joy
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August 24, 2006:
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