33
What’s really been withheld, in this dreary drag of a movie, is a reason to care.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
20
Llosa shoots for the stars with her oblique pseudo-think piece, but unfortunately ends up dragging her latest offering down to the bottom of the coldest, darkest abyss of cod spirituality imaginable.
38
Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo
The film's images, so continually heartrending so as to never become redundant, effectively function as visual proselytizing.
58
Aloft and its icy landscapes and feel of gently dropping barometric pressure can only distract so far from what is essentially an overwrought melodrama that here and there tips over into heavy-handedness despite the restrained beauty of its images.
40
Village Voice by Michael Nordine
The writer-director's ideas about our connection to the land and the many other animals roaming it may well be profound, but they're buried under layers of superfluous storytelling devices. A better title would have been Adrift.
50
In the end, everything fits together rather ingeniously, though it’s clear that in orchestrating her needlessly complicated nonlinear narrative, Llosa has mistaken confusion for suspense.
38
The falcon metaphor is clumsy and ill-defined, and Aloft is never much more than a lovely, dull cheat.
38
Aloft is less like a story than a dream, populated with gorgeous people and symbolism you can interpret any way you like.
30
There are reasons why everyone on screen looks as unhappy as they do, but Llosa puts viewers in a place where they can’t understand precisely why, so the only choice is to sit there marinating in misery and boredom.
40
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton
Strip away its gorgeous wintry landscapes and we are left with a symphony of ponderous New Age mumbo-jumbo masquerading as philosophical wisdom.