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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Tetro

EMAILPRINTAmerican Zoetrope Releasing

Tetro reviews
65
7.5 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 8 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama

Written by: Francis Ford Coppola

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola

Release Date:
Theatrical: June 11, 2009
DVD: May 4, 2010

Running Time: 127 minutes, Color

Origin: USA | Italy | Spain | Argentina

Language(s): English | Spanish

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Carmen Maura, Maribel Verdu, Vincent Gallo, Alden Ehrenreich, and Klaus Maria Brandauer

Tetro is Francis Ford Coppola's first original screenplay since "The Conversation." It is his most personal film yet, arising from memories and emotions from his early life, though totally fictional. It is the bittersweet story of two brothers, of family lost and found and the conflicts and secrets within a highly creative Argentine-Italian family. (American Zoetrope Releasing)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Calvin Wilson

Shot mostly in black and white and imbued with a romanticism that's at once nostalgic and exhilarating, Tetro sneaks up on you. What threatens to be a mere exercise in style proves to be as involving as it is inventive.

Read Full Review >
88

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A delirious surprise .

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80

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

As with "Youth Without Youth," this new movie feels like a transitional work but also an inspired one, the creation of a director who, having recently turned 70, has set off on a new adventure that requires more from his audiences than some might be willing to give. Which is itself a sign of vigorous artistic renewal.

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80

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Certainly it isn't the greatest of Coppola's pictures, or even of his independent productions, but those are pretty high standards. It has a verve and vitality that's been missing from his pictures for 25 years, and its various and visible flaws all result from too much of that verve rather than too little. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Read Full Review >
75

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It's the product of a great dreamer and aesthete, rather than an authentic emotional experience--a gorgeous, crystalline bauble that really catches the light.

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75

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Here is a film that, for all of its plot, depends on characters in service of their emotional turmoil. It feels good to see Coppola back in form.

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75

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A family melodrama with charm.

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75

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Unabashedly theatrical and richly cinematic, even when it's falling apart.

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75

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The movie is alive from beginning to end, and it's a pleasure to see at least one big-name director get out of the prison of his own reputation.

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75

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

What a grand and dazzling route Coppola takes.

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75

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

The result is visually inventive, narratively edgy, and unlike anything else.

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75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

Tetro is Coppola's best film since Apocalypse Now because the filmmaker has abandoned conventional drama – what for him had become a straightjacket – indulging in a collage style that allows him to honour favourite filmmakers.

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70

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Coppola's fondness for the operatic gets the better of him as the action approaches a climax, but the movie is girded by a sense of knotty family history.

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70

Village Voice J. Hoberman

For writer-director Coppola, Tetro is a cri de coeur, one more from the heart.

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70

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Tetro turns out to be not one movie but, at the very least, two--a Fellini-esque (or Coppola-esque) concatenation of drama, dance and opera (with a nod to Alphonse Daudet), and a modest, appealing coming-of-age story that involves Maribel Verdú (from “Y Tu Mamá También”) as Tetro’s girlfriend.

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70

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

It has style to burn, eye-catching acting by an international cast and a story that harkens back to many literary classic with its themes of a family torn apart, brothers in conflict and a son's rivalry with a towering father figure.

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67

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Like Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola has gone from being the filmmaker of his time to becoming a make-it-up-as-you-go-along indie free-shooter.

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67

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The increasingly crude plotting and stock dialogue are killers. All the beauty the eye can hold can't, in this case, fool the ear and brain into falling for Coppola's strained tale.

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60

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

In Tetro, nearly every time Coppola should have clung to intimacy, he opts for excess. Especially tedious are the meta excerpts from staged productions -- overcompensation trying to masquerade as illumination. Regrettable since there is such fine work being done in the smaller moments.

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50

Variety Todd McCarthy

When Coppola finds creative nirvana, he frequently has trouble delivering the full goods. Tetro represents something of a middle ground in that respect.

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50

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

An inchoate mass of half-baked (and sometimes blackened) Oedipal dramaturgy. Coppola has made some of the greatest films ever made in traditional narrative mode, but whenever he goes into his indie-outsider dance, he stumbles badly.

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50

New York Post Kyle Smith

The more dramatic revelations and tragic inevitabilities that turn up, the harder it is not to laugh. Give credit to its maker for directing with an earnestness suggesting a pretentious 22-year-old. Having passed through the phases of Interesting Apprentice, Mad Genius, Chastened Bankrupt and Shameless Wage Slave, Coppola at 70 may be the world's oldest student filmmaker.

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50

Washington Post John Anderson

Tetro has no internal tension and should have been a comedy.

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50

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Coppola’s rejuvenated sense of career is a welcome addition to the world of filmmaking, even if the two films he’s made in the new millennium (2007’s "Youth Without Youth" and now this) are not up to his own self-set high standards.

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40

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Despite the overwrought plot and unabashed pretension, there's something admirable about the fact that Coppola clearly made this movie for himself. But he shouldn't be surprised if few others join him in watching it.

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40

Time Richard Corliss

Alas, in Tetro he (Coppola) has made a movie in which plenty happens but nothing rings true.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Alan Y gave it a10:
Visually and dramatically spellbinding. The dramatic tension is perfectly paced, the principal actors are riveting, and I especially liked the cinematography. This is not a mass-market film, but the work of an artist.

Carole G gave it an8:
It is very hard to have a successful story based solely on revelations of what happened in the past. Somehow, magically, Coppola pulled this off with "The Conversation," in which he held us fascinated, as the puzzle of what happened slowly gets solved. With "Tetro," there is no coherent story, i.e., a story that utterly coheres. I have to ascribe this to Coppola's using material that is very personal and then trying to make it interesting to the viewer; alas, he drags in whatever he thinks will work, even though the action-enhancing parts are not all of a piece. Because there is no story to follow, we are dependent on the two main characters, but I was unable to care about either of them. All this negativity aside, the film is gorgeous to watch, in its dramatic black and white, an occasionally unexpected angle, the way the camera can make us focus on a small area as though it were the entire world, reminiscent of old Japanese films such a "Tokyo Story." I wanted to love this film. I barely liked it. The very beginning held my interest, and then for a long time the grievances were played and re-played, which I found boring, and finally there were bursts of action that took the film to a level of improbability from which it was impossible to suspend disbelief. I heard Coppola on the radio recently talking about himself--it was utterly fascinating. Great talkers and great directors are not necessarily great writers. I wish someone else had written "Tetro."

amk76 mak gave it a0:
Just want to say that i love the Dracula and Apocalypse But..... You everyone begging for FFC and don/t see that whole 15 years he shot holy crap.

Drew gave it a10:
Coppola is back! I couldn't be happier with the film. It had a great story, great acting, it was beautiful to look at, and I was captivated by it the whole time. Bravo, Mr. Coppola.

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