90
Screen International by Dan Fainaru
Richly detailed, sensitively played and cleverly mounted.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
While it's well acted and has strong moments on a scene-by-scene basis, the film lacks an emotional center, keeping the impact cool and diffuse where it should be affecting.
83
An alternately wise, melancholic and good-humored look at people surrounded by support but nonetheless alienated by their incapacity to confront their problems.
67
Trier is far too talented for there not to be some good things here, but it just doesn’t add up to much.
60
A tasteful grieving-family weepie, it's conceived and performed with utmost sincerity, yet lacks the intemperate human authenticity, the sense of profound strangeness in the everyday, that made Trier's ‘Reprise’ and ‘Oslo, August 31st’ so hard to shake.
75
Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo
Louder Than Bombs is a parable that takes depression seriously as a condition and a state of being.
60
As the family resolves problems of the film's own making, the satisfaction gleaned is relatively minor. The threatened and/or promised explosions fizzle out frustratingly, leaving behind the lurking impression of Louder Than Bombs as a well-crafted, well-played, slickly-written misfire.
91
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
Trier’s sensibility for the dynamics of family, for the depiction of nebulous memory, and for the detail of life (the film’s full of beautiful, complex scenes), means that I’m already eager to take a second look and see what else there is to unpack.
40
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
A rather silly, pointless and directionless film.
70
Strangely, Louder Than Bombs manages to be glaringly obvious and admirably subtle in the same breath.