50
Lacks dramatic tension and fails to bring this great music alive. It does not sing.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
Wenders lets the music and the sprightly people who make it speak for themselves, although the director's ongoing fascination with the urban environment is in top form as the camera serenely cruises the streets of Havana, often at a velvety dusk.
90
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Being able to hear this kind of playing is a special moment in time, one we don't want to end and one that we're privileged to experience.
90
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
I've never seen another movie that so clearly expresses the sensual sustenance that great folk culture provides its practitioners.
50
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
It is a touching story, and the musicians (some over 90 years old) still have fire and grace onstage, but, man, does the style of this documentary get in the way.
67
Austin Chronicle by Russell Smith
Buena Vista Social Club is obviously intended less as a concert film than as a set of cinematic liner notes about the vanishing musical culture.