Requiem for a Dream Reviews

I'm not sure the meager insights in Requiem make it worth going there.

Unfortunately, once Requiem for a Dream accumulates all this elaborate and suggestive paraphernalia, it plummets in an inexorable, almost mechanical spiral.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

All smoke and mirrors disguising a great, vapid emptiness.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5

Unfortunately, I think Requiem for a Dream film fails to successfully meld style with substance.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

A slickly done, very depressive melodrama about those addicted to drugs and their dreams of happiness.

Full Review | Original Score: C

It's one of the most beautifully unpleasant movies ever made -- its reverse charge being that it is no fun at all.

[A] graphically depressing, downward spiral to hell.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5

One of the most nihilistic films I have ever seen.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

If this is the future of cinema, I'd rather be home watching television.

Translating this into a music video would make a lot more sense than the film does in present form

Full Review | Original Score: C-

A gut-wrenching, formally adventurous masterpiece or an ugly, flashy piece of empty-headed propaganda?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Unfortunately, about halfway through, the film takes a (deliberate) nosedive into the depths of human degradation from which it never emerges.

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... when the process of finding this meaning is mired in the storyteller's self-indulgent tendencies and harrowing repetitious visuals, the effort is rendered reprehensible.

Full Review | Original Score: 65/100

[Aronofsky] shoots himself in the foot repeatedly.

It's a downer -- and far more because of Aronofsky's vanity than because of Selby's brutally candid story.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

| Original Score: 2.5/4

Disappointingly, the furor over Requiem for a Dream's rating is considerably more compelling than the film itself.

Requiem wants to be about more than drug addiction ... Alas, Requiem is only about drug addiction.

Pounds like a jackhammer without letting up, making for a punishing experience with only a few narrative rewards along the way.

Full Review

Less filmed than assembled by an MTV task force committed to the final obliteration of subtlety.

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