Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

The overall mood is stately and melancholy, the selective use of color is ravishing, and some of the natural views are breathtaking.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

As an exception to the norm, Kitano doesn't appear this time, confining himself merely to writing, directing, and editing.

Film Threat

The cinematography is stunning, particularly where Matsumoto and Sawoko walk through the four seasons of life.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

Kitano's gentle side reigns in Dolls, a gorgeous meditation on love and devotion, but the film's hypnotic tone and beautifully formalized color scheme makes it unlike anything he's done to date.

Film Threat by Darrin Keene

The cinematography is stunning, particularly where Matsumoto and Sawoko walk through the four seasons of life.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

Lush and poetic, Dolls proves once again that Kitano is one of the world's most original filmmakers.

San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson

Colorful and sweeping.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

Dolls is an art film, and a languid, inexplicably haunting one at that.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Dolls isn't a film for everybody, especially the impatient, but Kitano does succeed, I think, in drawing us into his tempo and his world, and slowing us down into the sadness of his characters.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

A work both rigorously stylized and deeply personal. Devotees of Kitano and Japanese cinema will admire Dolls.

Los Angeles Times by Carina Chocano

The movie's pace is appropriate to its mood, which is crisp, melancholy and gently cruel.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

With some staggeringly beautiful photography of cherry blossoms and scarlet autumn leaves, Dolls is so enthralled with its own cinematography that it can't bear to edit itself, and during the autumn and winter segments of the bound beggars' journey, it almost reaches a standstill.

Variety by David Rooney

Despite an excessively meandering final act, the drama's three intertwined stories have a cumulative impact, their affecting sadness matched by meticulously composed visual poetry.

New York Daily News by Robert Dominguez

Rife with beautiful imagery and loads of symbolism, though none of the stories is particularly compelling on its own.

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

Whether this measured exercise in romantic melancholy moves you to tears or bores you to them is probably a matter of personal susceptibility to the sting of bitter regret for love lost.

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

Dolls risks the bank on symbology as gaudy as teen anime and as heavy as a stone temple.

The Hollywood Reporter

Dolls soon becomes overloaded with symbolism, and consequently suffocates the audience.