Bujalski’s abiding fascination with and respect for work twists ironically around his characters’ preference for its straightforward demands over the open-ended ambiguities of love.

| Mar 10, 2023

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 16, 2011

It is typical of Bujalski's finely wrought observation of their lives that the film ends, as it began, with a moment in which Lauren is poised, indecisively, on the cusp of a decision.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 8, 2011

Ultimately a dull story about dull thirtysomethings whose dull issues are conveyed in a prying, cinema verit style, implying drama and meaning in the mundane details of their dull lives.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 7, 2011

It's weirdly gripping, an authentically banal slice of life. Mumblecore must die. But maybe from its ashes will come something spikier, stranger.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 16, 2010

A relentlessly talky and meandering slough of claustrophobia passing itself off as an intimate life study.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 15, 2010

More than ever, Bujalski comes across like the natural heir to someone like Eric Rohmer, an artist who creates intricate, perceptive and artful cinema that rejects unnecessary style and contrivance.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 15, 2010

A step forward, but a sluggish one.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 14, 2010

It's rambling, doesn't really go anywhere, and is not necessarily about anything beyond its own sense of place. But it's mildly diverting nonetheless. It's about mood, not plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 12, 2010

Makes up in depth for what it sacrifices in breadth.

| Feb 8, 2010

Beeswax reminds viewers that in talkative films much can go unspoken. For writer-director Andrew Bujalski these betwixt-between, hem-haw spaces are the places to be.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 16, 2009

if Beeswax doesn't feel as significant as his last film, Mutual Appreciation, it's that movie's equal in terms of lovingly gnomic characters and very real anxieties.

| Oct 15, 2009

Everyone is a full-grown adult dealing with all which that entails, and both the characters and the film's easygoing rhythms are, remarkably, true to life and love lost, or found.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 9, 2009

There are viewers and critics who simply can't abide mumblecore. But give this movie a chance: Bujalski has a serious talent for finding resonance in the mundane.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 11, 2009

Bujalski is very much interested in how people -- in his instance, quite intelligent, civilized and articulate twentysomething individuals -- cope with life's everyday challenges, finding naturalistic drama in what may initially seem pedestrian.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 21, 2009

Beeswax ranks as one of the most mature mumblecore exercises yet, a sure sign that the movement will live on despite its misguided detractors.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 7, 2009

Bujalski has an unusual gift for spotlighting small moments and underplaying large ones.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2009

At first glance a modest, ragged slice of contemporary life, turns out to be a remarkably subtle, even elegant movie. Its leisurely scenes and hesitant, circling conversations conceal both an ingenious comic structure and a rich emotional subtext.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 7, 2009

Bujalski's funny, diverting character piece has a lived-in quality that's no small achievement.

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 6, 2009

This warm, graceful and fundamentally optimistic movie snuck up on me, in the best possible way.

| Aug 6, 2009