The Loneliest PlanetMovie Reviews



Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    Entertainment Weekly | Lisa Schwarzbaum

    One of the year's most original and emotionally profound movies masquerades as the tiny story of a young couple who take a backpacking trip in the Caucasus Mountains the summer before their wedding. Read full review

  • 95
    Movieline |

    One of the finest of the year, The Loneliest Planet is based on a short story by Tom Bissell that's itself inspired by a famous Hemingway work, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." Read full review

  • 88
    Boston Globe | Wesley Morris

    The movie captures a kind of tragedy of self. Read full review

  • 80
    Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern

    Blink your eyes and you've lost track of them, but one of the interesting things about the experience is that you don't want to lose track; though the film moves as slowly as its hikers, it demands, and deserves, to be watched closely. (The cinematographer was Inti Briones.) Read full review

  • 70
    NPR | Mark Jenkins

    The story is carefully constructed, with moments that seem offhand initially, but are later revealed as crucial. Read full review

  • 63
    Slant Magazine | Andrew Schenker

    Much of the film's final act is given to alienated walking, which too often plays as an abstract study of triangular arrangements in which non-speaking figures move across a barren terrain. Read full review

  • 60
    New York Daily News | Joe Neumaier

    Writer-director Julia Loktev sustains the tension for long, Antonioni-esque passages that portend something momentous. The film delivers in unexpected ways, and then ponders what it means. Read full review

  • 50
    New York Post | Farran Smith Nehme

    Gorgeous surroundings don't make up for sulky, feuding travel companions. Read full review

  • 50
    San Francisco Chronicle | Walter Addiego

    There's no getting around it. Though it's not without virtues, The Loneliest Planet may try the patience of even the most dedicated lovers of art film. Read full review

  • 50
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    All of this grows tiresome. We're given no particular reason at the outset of The Loneliest Planet to care about these people, our interest doesn't grow along the way, the landscape grows repetitive, the director's approach is aggressively minimalist, and if you ask me, this romance was not made in heaven. Read full review

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