Force Majeure Reviews
October 17, 2018
Rarely has a film taken men to the woodshed for their failings with such a mix of disgust, pity, and wit, the last of which is the key ingredient that helps make Force Majeure such a unique high-wire balancing act.
April 21, 2015
If anything undermines this knowing comedy of manners, it is the sense that it prides itself on being a knowing comedy of manners.
April 12, 2015
The acting is impeccably controlled, with leads Kuhnke and Kongsli sympathetically establishing the genteel, only slightly self-satisfied blandness of their characters, then tracing the cracks that spread in their makeup.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 10, 2015
We say thriller: but don't expect The French Connection.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
April 10, 2015
Östlund and his superb cast have made an odd, gripping movie. Let it rock your world.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 9, 2015
Ruben Ostlund's subtle and probing drama lays bare the tensions and misunderstandings in a seemingly happy marriage over the course of a week's skiing holiday.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 9, 2015
[A] superb black comedy.
Original Score: 5/5
April 9, 2015
We shouldn't relish others' misery this much.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 9, 2015
An essentially hollow contrivance, more concerned with pushing hot buttons and sparking discussion than organically developing characters or probing complex issues.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
April 9, 2015
Ruben Östlund's icily disturbing family drama, set in an upscale ski resort in the French Alps, is a disaster movie without a disaster.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
April 6, 2015
A brittle black comedy that has plenty to say about modern manhood and the human survival instinct.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
November 21, 2014
For a comedy about emotional pain, this is neither discomforting nor terribly funny, and the satire of bourgeois complacency doesn't cut very deep.
November 20, 2014
Ultimately, "Force Majeure" becomes a thoughtful examination, through Tomas and Ebba, of the person who lives inside each of us, emerging only in the most unguarded moments - and not always a person we want to acknowledge.
Original Score: 3/4
November 20, 2014
"Force Majeure" is both funny and sad, often in the same glance-averted instant. See it with someone you'd trust to stick around in an avalanche. It's one of the highlights of 2014.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
November 17, 2014
[A] confident and provocative piece that, as I'm hardly the first critic to point out, you should think twice about choosing as a date movie.
November 7, 2014
Östlund has an exquisite eye for the intimate, nonverbal communication between couples through their posture, gestures, their eyes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
November 6, 2014
The film gets its biggest laughs -- and there truly are some grandly bleak belly-shakers here -- by upsetting the apple cart on traditional gender roles.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
November 6, 2014
"Force Majeure" leaves the audience squirming - in all the very best ways.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
November 6, 2014
Ostlund has a keen eye for human behavior that exacerbates marital discord and dysfunction.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
November 3, 2014
Little but the children's fear of their parents' separation has any dramatic weight.