Having lost none of his penchant for the odd and bizarre, Arturo Ripstein's Bleak Street is a formidable late-career gem from the Mexican auteur.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 11, 2020

Ripstein has a careful, benign hand, free of caricature and sentimentality. His feat is in the storytelling; the stripped down version of the preposterous story reinforces its tragedy.

| Mar 16, 2020

While undeniably outrageous at times, Bleak Street also takes its protagonists and their plights seriously. Like many of Ripstein's previous films, there is real grit and dirt within his desaturated poverty-riddled scenarios.

| Aug 25, 2018

No one gets away unscathed in "Bleak Street"... but no one seems beyond redemption either.

| Feb 15, 2018

[Ripstein] peers at tangential characters with subtle tracking shots that make the story feel like a maze with no exit.

| Oct 12, 2017

... brims with incident, atmosphere, and character, but is low on anything that could be strictly called plot or momentum.

| Oct 12, 2017

Proof of the director's obsession with the subject and inevitable repetition. [Full review in Spanish]

| Apr 22, 2016

I keep hoping Ripstein will once again make a great movie. This isn't it. [Full review in Spanish]

| Apr 1, 2016

Ripstein has to stop trying to make movies as plays, we already hace Antonioni and Trkovski for that. [Full review in Spanish]

| Mar 31, 2016

By failing to provide an adequate picture of the humanity at stake, the movie shapes up as a superficial affair. While consistently intriguing, it appeals foremost to perverse curiosity and leaves us, deeper down, unmoved.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 11, 2016

Arturo Ripstein's Bleak Street lives up to its name, being a beautifully shot but ultimately unsatisfying exercise in miserablism.

| Mar 10, 2016

Although the movie doesn't flinch at presenting a dark and unsavory portrait of a down-and-out slice of humanity, it also detects a glimmer of something more in the characters, nudging the story in the direction of tragedy.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 10, 2016

Every shadow becomes a dagger, every fire escape a prison in this beautiful B&W noir.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 26, 2016

Beautifully shot, refreshingly offbeat, captivating and unflinching while remaining grounded in humanism.

| Original Score: 8.95/10 | Jan 24, 2016

The slice of life that is Bleak Street is definitely situated on the darker side of the road. It's unquestionably worth visiting for a reality check.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 21, 2016

The true story that inspired it raises eyebrows, but those raised eyebrows are all the film provokes, as well. That just isn't enough.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 21, 2016

"Come, let us have a drink," says one aging streetwalker to another, "and hate everything and everyone." If that sounds tempting, then Mexican auteur Arturo Ripstein's latest will be right up your dimly lit, trash-strewn alley.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 20, 2016

[A] sense of surreality within a mode of social realism (the scenario, believe it or not, was actually inspired by true event) ... gives the movie its off-kilter power.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 20, 2016

It's a creepy and beguiling oddity, willfully weird but, at the same time, not quite weird enough.

| Jan 19, 2016

Echoes the style of Luis Buñuel sans the sharp commentary.

| Jan 19, 2016