Variety by Peter Debruge

I confess my incapacity for his particular strain of slow cinema for two reasons: First, to let audiences know that it’s OK to be frustrated by the experience — you’re not alone. And second, so you might appreciate what it means that Days worked on me. Instead of leaning in, as I’m wont to do with challenging movies, I settled back into my chair and let the rhythm wash over me, lull me into its relaxing embrace.

The Playlist by Jason Bailey

That ending, poetic and beautiful, is the chronological conclusion of Days; emotionally, it crests a few minutes earlier, as the two men go on a modest dinner “date” after their encounter.

Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang

It’s a tale of profound isolation and thrilling connection, alert and alive and gorgeously sensual even as every moment carries a bittersweet reminder of time’s inexorable passage.

RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams

To enjoy Days, you have commit to its earthy dream logic. It is an extraordinary movie; it is not an easy sit.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

Days becomes such a resonant addition to Tsai’s exhumed body of work because the filmmaker recognizes and embraces that uncharacteristically sentimental undertow; the last 30 minutes of this (relatively short) movie reward viewers who’ve spent the previous 90 minutes searching — reaching — for a souvenir they might be able to take away from it.

The Film Stage by Matt Cipolla

With Days, Tsai turns the audience into the lonely and makes them see the world from the inside out.

TheWrap by Dave White

Formally, Tsai’s approach is as spare as possible while still maintaining a loose sense of narrative.

The New York Times by Glenn Kenny

Tsai’s motives for stretching his shots become clear after a while, and the film builds an uncanny mood.

Screen Daily by Lee Marshall

In a film lasting a shade over two hours, consisting of just 46 separate shots, the undisputed emperor of Taiwanese slow cinema crafts a ravishing, wordless story of urban loneliness.

Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene

Reciprocity might be impossible in a world rigged against queerness, Tsai seems to say, which doesn’t mean that certain things can't still be shared.

The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd

It’s a film of before and after isolation, implying the ways that unexpected connection can both blessedly break a pattern of routinized loneliness and create a new, perhaps more painful form of longing through its absence.

Slashfilm by Hoai-Tran Bui

A mesmerizing exercise in the mundane, Days is almost completely free of dialogue — and intentionally unsubtitled for this reason — inducing a kind of calm hypnotic state that makes the viewer even more aware of the sharp stabs of loneliness felt by his longtime muse Lee Kang-sheng.

The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor

It will sound like sacrilege, but Days could be the rare case of a Tsai Ming-liang film that doesn’t ever quite connect up and one that might even benefit from some cutting back.

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

By using uneventful long takes to slow down daily activities like cooking and showering, Tsai highlights little more than their banal, repetitive nature.