Goodbye Solo Reviews
June 6, 2019
An unforgettable mountaintop experience that touches the heart and makes the spirit soar.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
December 7, 2018
The young independent filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has crafted a careful and subtle movie about both the promise and despair of life that's told mainly in the faces of its two very different leads.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
August 9, 2018
Although there's a lot in this movie by which to be impressed, there is still something missing. The main trouble is that Solo was very hard to believe - maybe even too good to be true.
December 13, 2017
Goodbye Solo is Bahrani's best film so far, better even than Chop Shop. The images produced by Michael Simmonds, his regular cinematographer, are more definitive, more miniature.
September 29, 2015
Goodbye Solo feels lived-in rather than forced upon us. Bahrani, who is his own editor, and regular DP Michael Simmonds have a sad, solitary, streetlamp-lit feel for night-shift rhythms.
October 20, 2014
Goodbye Solo relies on forced character dynamics and two clunkily directed, monotonous turns, in a milieu...that fails to take satisfactory shape.
November 24, 2011
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
November 18, 2011
Original Score: 4/5
November 17, 2011
Original Score: 4/5
August 18, 2011
As a diary of travels in multiculti America, it's in the same bag as The Visitor, for better or worse.
November 6, 2010
A marvel of pathos and pace
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
October 7, 2010
Un entrañable y sutil retrato humano, sostenido por el choque y la complementariedad entre dos caracteres muy distintos. Excelente elección de actores que parecen interpretarse a sí mismos.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
January 28, 2010
Hopeful about the rewards that can be mined from the broadening of perspective that comes with getting to know someone outside of your usual social zone.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8/10
December 21, 2009
One of the year's best films!
Full Review
| Original Score: 88/100
December 16, 2009
An odd-couple relationship fuels a slow-burning but ultimately moving emotional and spiritual journey in Ramin Bahrani's third feature.
December 16, 2009
Utterly engrossing dual-character study, unfolding with a serene disregard for indie quirkiness, Goodbye Solo radiates authenticity.
November 29, 2009
The problem trying to deal with a self-destructive pessimist is you can never convince them that tomorrow might just be a better day.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
October 16, 2009
Goodbye Solo asks far more questions than it answers, yet there's something in the tender humanity of the journey that seems to matter much more.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
October 16, 2009
Working to a spare screenplay, Bahrani offers none of the usual clues about either the cabbie's surprising determination to prevent the tragedy or the old man's reasons for suicide. This doesn't always help the quiet drama.
Original Score: 3/5
October 15, 2009
The final sequence up in the mountains is particularly affecting.