Disconnect 2013

Stephen Holden, New York Times: The film ominously conveys a world of too much information but too little communication, where people have become slaves to glowing hand-held devices that were designed to make life easier but have made it busier and more complicated. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Responsible, riveting and intense, it's a film about cybercrime that left me shaking-the movie equivalent of sticking a wet finger into a hot socket. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: A bleak vision of life in the Internet age as an asocial network where faceless predators abound, heedless kids live secret lives, everything is phishy until proven otherwise and quests for love or intimacy lead to loneliness or grief. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Worst-case scenarios for our forays into chat rooms and social network sites are laid bare, as are the illegal and immoral contours of the digital landscape in this well-acted dramatic thriller. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: It's left to the actors to make up for the gaffes, and they're definitely up to the task. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: As cautionary tales go, "Disconnect" is a pretty good one, but it's not really a whole lot more than that. Read more

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: The thematic points are made clearly, with well-sustained tension and no shortage of dramatic impact. It's just that it's all a bit obvious ... Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: "Disconnect" is far from a bad movie. It's just better at melodrama than drama. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: This dour would-be art movie posits that social media might be alienating people from each other rather than bringing them together. (Spoiler alert: the title is a metaphor.) Read more

Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: Built around several seemingly separate but ultimately interconnected stories, Disconnect will earn comparisons to Crash. Yet unlike Crash ... Disconnect tempers its more over-the-top moments with a real sense of tension and emotion. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: Not as bad as 'Crash,' but it sure as heck ain't good Read more

Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times: What works is the uncomfortable intimacy of peering over the shoulders of, say, Patton when she watches YouTube videos of her dead son, and the shudder of recognition that our hard drives are our external consciences. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: In the sobering drama Disconnect, technology is one of the culprits that separate people from each other - but not the only one. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Journalists lie, spouses stray and thieves steal, but "Disconnect" keeps trying, unsuccessfully, to pin the blame on technology rather than its users. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: There's a movie to be made, perhaps, about the way that electronic devices have created distance between us. But it'd be better if not every story revolved around a crime. Read more

Jeannette Catsoulis, NPR: Even in the heightened awareness of a post- age (and its ), Disconnect is naturally gripping. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: [An] unsubtle but unsettling assessment of contemporary technology. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Soulful though the film is, melodrama gradually sneaks in, and then it takes over. Read more

Michael Sragow, Orange County Register: Disconnect turns out to have a complicated view of life in the digital age. Rising to scenes of real intimacy and insight, the movie is stimulating, and, at times, touching. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Rubin, the award-winning documentary filmmaker of Murderball, working with a script by Andrew Stern, is good with the details, and he gets strong performances from his cast in this, his debut feature. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: A deeply flawed motion picture containing moments of brilliance that illustrate its strong thematic content. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: "There wasn't a moment during this movie when I was thinking about anything other than this movie" Read more

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: I believed the lives of these people. I believed they'd do the drastic things they do in the face of crisis. I ached for them when things went terribly wrong and rooted for them when there were glimmers of hope. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: How a new director works with actors is telling, and the performances in Disconnect are first-rate all the way. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: One of the rare films that directly responds to and expresses modern anxieties. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: I preferred "Disconnect" 10 years ago when it was called "Crash." Read more

David Fear, Time Out: All the hand-wringing tech paranoia is merely an excuse for a microversion of Babel-like melodrama, one in which the loosely interwoven stories, regrettably, never add up to the sum of their parts. Read more

Guy Lodge, Variety: Andrew Stern's overworked but oddly nonspecific script needs to be a lot savvier about contempo media culture to bear the didactic weight of its themes. Read more

Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice: While well-crafted and at times moving, screenwriter Andrew Stern's cautionary tales can't help but feel behind the curve, the news they're so urgently sharing already fully absorbed by the culture. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Handsomely shot and judiciously edited, the film benefits from a superlative cast ... Read more