Aurora 2011

Critics score:
75 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: It's Puiu's talent to transform it all into a highly disturbing portrait - both of an individual and a society. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: A quiet, steady burn filled with stretches of unsettlingly reverberant silence cleaved in half by a midpoint eruption of violence. Here there is before, and then there is after. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Define the movies however you want -- escapist bits of fun, illuminations of the human condition, comforts or challenges -- and Aurora would still fail miserably. Read more

AV Club: Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Aurora fully explores the time before and after a killer strikes, and it has the cumulative effect of making what passes for a "motive" seem absurdly simplistic. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: While Aurora is a formal triumph, it's less resonant than either 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days or The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Puiu, who also directed, goes too far in making the movie's violent undertone feel like just one more bit of modern malaise. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: "Aurora" proves that Puiu is no one-hit wonder. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Puiu's special approach to the realist aesthetic ensures that 'Aurora' rings unusually true. Superb stuff. Read more

Jay Weissberg, Variety: Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Aurora is not a movie to make you glad that you exist; it's a movie that makes you aware that you do. Read more