100
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
The film, a hard jewel of beauty and reportage, demands and rewards that second viewing.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
Slant Magazine by Christopher Gray
After the film's early optimism and speculative midsection, Western struggles to manage all the rich dramatic irony of its final half hour, perched uneasily between plot and stasis.
80
The New York Times by Daniel M. Gold
With its evocative landscapes and its non-narrative, cinéma vérité style, Western is a layered, atmospheric chronicle of living traditions like bullfights and rodeos, mariachi bands and Texas two-steps. Yet the film also records the tremors of change.
91
In Western, the filmmaking philosophy remains the same, but the subject is new and different, and the storytelling is deeper, nuanced, and honed by experience.
90
A low-key but sharply observed work that benefits from real local flavor and a gift for lyric image making.
90
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
The film’s bracing ground-level truths, by turns hopeful and despairing, challenge Beltway anxieties about the “porousness” of the border and shake up preconceived notions about Americans’ relationships with their southern neighbors.
90
Screen International by Tim Grierson
As a dreamy yet concrete evocation of lives beset by unseen anxieties and dwindling resources, Western has a mythic quality in keeping with its totemic title.