Popular reviews

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  Review by BRAT ★★★★ 35

  i totally get the criticisms for this, since the whole movie basically hinges on whether or not you believe in the incredulous love that julie has for anthony, but also ... and i wish i had a more articulate way to say this .... sometimes it’s just ... like that? sometimes it’s just like that. irrational to everyone but you. 

  joanna hogg based this off of an actual experience that she had at film school, and with this semi-fictionalization she’s choosing to retake her own narrative. she knows this relationship doesn’t logically make sense, so it’s her version of her truth. i think it’s bold as hell to do that, knowing that some members of the audience are going to see your very…

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  Review by Sean Baker 17

  I knew the second I saw the poor Rotten Tomatoes audience rating of 33 that I was going to enjoy this film. It simply means that the film isn't mainstream audience friendly. I read a few of the reviews which were basically complaints of the film's pace and lack of conventional plot. So I was excited.

  Not sure if it'll be in my 2019 top ten but as of now it is. Enjoyed the journey and for those pre-digital film school grads... there is some nice film school detail in here. Honor Swinton Byrne is quite good and carries the film.

  Thank you Cineplex Odeon for putting films like this in multiplexes. There was a healthy audience (for this sort of film) at the Monday night show which shows that there are audiences (at least in Canada) for more challenging films.

  Watched at Cineplex Odeon Intl. Village Vancouver

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½ 7

  There isn’t much of a story in Joanna Hogg’s heartfelt and searingly honest “The Souvenir” — the British filmmaker, somehow a breakthrough talent for the last 30 years, has always been less interested in plot than condition — and so this romantic drama about a young woman’s doomed first love might just as well be summarized by a poem from the late Mary Oliver:

  “Someone I loved once gave me
  a box full of darkness.

  It took me years to understand
  that this, too, was a gift.”

  Set in the early 1980s, shot with the gauzy harshness of “Phantom Thread,” and named after an 18th century rococo painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, “The Souvenir” finds Hogg reaching into her own past…

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★ 3

  a stunning but slow-burning entry in the annals of "i get it, and can sort of relate, but for the love of god please dump him" cinema

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  Review by Jay 5

  cant believe tilda swintons daughter grew up to be greta gerwig

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  Review by kevinyang ★★ 12

  Sadly a massive chore to sit through. This may be a very personal film, but it’s personal to a fault. It’s overly internalized and obfuscated, presented in the most drab of ways and lacking any justification for its disjointed, distancing nature. The two leads are great, but there needs to be considerably more behind the characters and relationship - otherwise it’s just watching an unpleasant, toxic relationship be unpleasant and toxic. There’s absolutely nothing here distinguishing this from the rest of those *artsy films about art* with terrible men at their center. Enough already.

  GRADE: C-

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  Review by maria ★★★ 3

  the souvenir        phantom thread
                          🤝
  me screaming at the screen:
  MEN AIN'T SHIT

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  Review by karsten ★★★★★ 8

  masterpiece

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  Review by Patrick Willems ★★★★ 4

  Not sure I’ve ever wanted a character to break up with their boyfriend this much before

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  Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★ 12

  genuinely so proud of myself for making it through this entire movie

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★ 1

  vividly renders the bizarre comfort of even the incredibly painful memories of people you miss.

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  Review by Tasha Robinson ★★ 15

  I will admit to being extremely sleep-dapped and a little dozy during my Sundance screening of this low-key drama, so maybe I missed the scene where the protagonist, a shy but lovely young wannabe-filmmaker, explains why she's so willing to upend her life to maintain a romance with a condescending, mooching drug addict who steals from her, lies to her, is not particularly charming or good-looking, and disappears from her life seemingly whenever he has something better going on. I spent most of the movie thinking "Girl, why?" Which I don't think is what the director was going for exactly.