72
Metascore
7 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleLos Angeles TimesRobert AbeleThe combination of archival bounty with Salles' touching analysis has a hypnotic effect, serving up the past plus reflection, garnished with a resonant melancholy about the ebb and flow of uprisings.
- 83Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerChristian Science MonitorPeter RainerIt takes a while to get into the ruminative rhythm of this film. But it’s worth it.
- 80The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottThose dreading 50th-anniversary greatest-hits medleys will find solace, enlightenment and surprise in João Moreira Salles’s In the Intense Now, a bittersweet, ruminative documentary essay composed of footage from the era accompanied by thoughtful, disarmingly personal voice-over narration.
- 75Boston GlobeMark FeeneyBoston GlobeMark FeeneyHolding it all together is his voice-over narration: always intelligent and thoughtful, sometimes wistful, occasionally navel-gazing annoying. Even when annoying, the narration sounds great, thanks to the murmury musicality of Salles’s Portuguese.
- 70Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlVillage VoiceAlan ScherstuhlImmersive, involving, sometimes revelatory, sometimes curiously naive, and on occasion thuddingly obvious, João Moreira Salles’s found-footage study of revolutionaries in the streets of Paris, Prague, and other countries in 1968 would stand as an invaluable assemblage simply on the basis of its archival finds alone.
- 70Screen DailySarah WardScreen DailySarah WardFlitting between demonstrations, recorded addresses and interviews from both sides gives rise to highly relevant observations and intriguing asides — and even when they’re obvious, they’re astute.
- 38Slant MagazineDiego SemereneSlant MagazineDiego SemereneAlthough João Moreira Salles tries to tap into the pleasurable elements inherent to the essayistic as a cinematic form, such as making the merging of intimate and social reality poetically visible, his storylines never quite gel.