Fish Tank 2009

Michael Phillips, At the Movies: This is disturbing stuff, [but] unexpectedly hopeful in its outlook. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The final scenes have a transcendent mixture of hope and sadness. I've never seen anything like Mia's final dance, or the leave-taking with her little sister that follows. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Fish Tank is a coming-of-age story for Mia, who will at least have a shot at happiness, and a coming-into-mastery story for the writer-director, Ms. Arnold, whose prospects seem limitless. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: In the film's dark final third, it's as if we've entered a waking nightmare, with stop-and-start rhythms as Mia takes one wrong step after another. Read more

Mike D'Angelo, AV Club: I'm just having trouble comprehending the fuss being made in other quarters, because this film is awfully familiar-basically just a contemporary gloss on the classic British kitchen sink/angry young (wo)man drama. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: The movie is unusually sensitive to the ways young people pick up their cues on how to act like adults, and how awkwardly they practice what they've learned. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: With a bare minimum of dialogue - none of which I can print - Arnold establishes Mia's barren environment and the hope and fury that war beneath the surface of the girl's skin. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: The brilliant power of the film comes from the gritty reality Arnold creates. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Unfolds as a conventional coming-of-age story, yet Andrea Arnold hasn't altered her persuasively jaundiced view of men, who seem as pitifully helpless against their horndog urges as the women foolish enough to care for them. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: A remarkable downer-upper paradox: a bruising tale of teenage resilience, honest and emotionally complicated and alive. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Fish Tank, which won the 2009 Jury Prize in Cannes, has moments when Mia's tribulations really hit home. Read more

Cary Darling, Dallas Morning News: The film has won a theater full of awards overseas, including Outstanding British Film at the BAFTA Film Awards and the Jury Prize at Cannes. Fish Tank deserves to do equally as well on this side of the pond. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: The film swims in an anguish not solely the result of Mia's coming of age -- and yet, it surfaces for air in ways compelling and uncompromising. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Writer-director Andrea Arnold, working in British lower-class realism, still finds wondrous moments of connection in Mia's life. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: In freeing her young star's physicality in Fish Tank, Arnold also demonstrates one way a girl might learn to swim up and out. Read more

David Germain, Associated Press: Writer-director Andrea Arnold has created something so real and raw, you may come away with a twinge of guilty voyeurism, a sense of peering too closely and impolitely into other people's lives. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: Fish Tank may begin as a patch of lower-class chaos, but it turns into a commanding, emotionally satisfying movie, comparable to such youth-in-trouble classics as The 400 Blows. Read more

Ian Buckwalter, NPR: A bold new entry in the long-standing British tradition of disquieting social realism. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: Fish Tank is grim, to be sure, but it leaves us with a feeling of hopefulness. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Ms. Arnold's chief talent is the way she makes us understand and even sympathize with both their flaws and attributes. The people in Fish Tank are neither good nor bad, but merely human, with elements of both. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Fish Tank digs around in its protagonist's psyche, unafraid to explore. It's oppressive and claustrophobic, confused and scary in there. But it's also compellingly real. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Watching Fish Tank is, as the title implies, like gazing through the glass of an aquarium at the lives of those trapped within, whose only chance of escape would seem to be through death and the indignity of being flushed down a toilet. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Arnold sees everything through Mia's eyes and never steps outside to explain things from any other point of view. She knows who the young girl is, and we are left to assume. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Katie Jarvis, 18, hits you like a shot in the heart with her sensational breakout performance. And cheers to director Andrea Arnold, who flies on her own unerring instincts. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: I'm telling you here and now to seek out Fish Tank, either at a big-city theater or via VOD, because it's absolute dynamite. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: As it stands, Fish Tank is a valuable movie, though it aspires to a social insight it doesn't attain and a psychological penetration it won't maintain. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Instead of shutting down the film's meaning, the sex scenes open it up -- a gambit that will no doubt offend some viewers with its unsentimental candor. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The characters are guarded, and as we come to understand them scene by scene, they become ever harder to sort into convenient categories of hero and villain. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Katie Jarvis has a natural presence that matches the unsentimental minimalism of the film. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: To the script's credit, when the climax comes it feels inevitable yet surprising too -- that ideal combination. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: In a year less crowded with new young talent, Katie Jarvis might now be getting fittings for her Oscar nomination dress. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: A film that brilliantly and sensitively buzzes with life and offers its very own take on our world and our city. It delivers in spades attitude, humour, sadness, love, anger and hope. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Jarvis' debut performance is a bracingly authentic revelation. She was discovered by filmmakers in a train station as she fought with her boyfriend, and brings just the right blend of feisty forcefulness and awkward tenderness to the part. Read more

Leslie Felperin, Variety: What makes pic feel special is its unflinching honesty and lack of sentimentality or moralizing, along with assured direction and excellent perfs. Read more

Ella Taylor, Village Voice: The movie turns stiff and pat, leaving us manipulated by Arnold's desire to give her hapless heroine the worst life she can think of, followed by a great escape. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Jarvis, whom the director reportedly discovered at an Essex train station, is nothing less than a revelation in a performance that is tender, spiky and utterly fearless in its physical and emotional range. Read more