Variety by Peter Debruge

For all the tyrannical disdain he's shown other filmmakers over the years, von Trier once again demonstrates a mastery of classical technique, extracting incredibly strong performances from his cast while serving up a sturdy blend of fly-on-the-wall naturalism and jaw-dropping visual effects.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

The vision is as hateful as it is hate-filled, but the fusion of form and content is so perfect that it borders on the sublime.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

Melancholia hovers in ambiguity with riveting aesthetic prowess.

Variety

For all the tyrannical disdain he's shown other filmmakers over the years, von Trier once again demonstrates a mastery of classical technique, extracting incredibly strong performances from his cast while serving up a sturdy blend of fly-on-the-wall naturalism and jaw-dropping visual effects.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

A movie masterpiece...is Lars von Trier's ecstatic magnum opus on the themes of depression, cataclysm, and the way the world might end.

Empire by Kim Newman

Von Trier is a burr under the hide for many viewers, and the unconverted won't be convinced. But it's audacious, beautiful, tactful filmmaking and perhaps the perfect match for "The Tree Of Life" on a bipolar double bill.

Chicago Reader by J.R. Jones

Apocalyptic visions are nothing new in cinema, but they're almost always epic in scale; Von Trier's innovation is to peer down the large end of the telescope, observing the end of the world in painfully intimate terms.

Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey

Firmly rooted in the filmmaker's esoteric, frustrating, provoking, demanding narrative style, the movie is also amazingly romantic - lush, ripe, rich, delicious.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

Its true subject is melancholia as a spiritual state, a destroyer of happiness that emerges from its hiding place behind the sun, just like the menacing planet, then holds the heroine, Justine, in its unyielding grip and gives Ms. Dunst the unlikely occasion for a dazzling performance.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

A ravishing, emotional and often very funny film about a wedding gone wrong, the end of the world and a woman suffering from profound depression.

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

Plenty of moments in Melancholia are painfully funny. Some moments are even painful to watch, but there was never a moment when I thought about the time or my next movie or did not care about the characters or had anything less than complete interest in what was happening on the screen.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

Melancholia is a remarkable mood piece with visuals to die for (excuse the pun), and a performance from Dunst that runs the color spectrum of emotions.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

Von Trier's latest fable is nothing without its blaze of majesty - or, as his detractors would say, its bombast.

Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez

The poetic, referential succession of near-still images that opens the film so immaculately distills Melancholia's moody narrative and themes that it makes the two-hours-plus that follow seem impossibly redundant.

Boxoffice Magazine by Richard Mowe

The second half, though, simply descends into chaotic banality as the sisters await their fate.