Either it's fresh and interesting enough to keep you guessing or it's maddeningly lost and too unstructured for not really coming to a conclusion or making a point in the end.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 7, 2024

Digging for Fire is Swanberg's best film to date. I enjoyed finding what's buried beneath his style.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 31, 2021

The frivolous blend of ludicrous mystery and tepid romance offered in Digging For Fire got me quickly bored.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 2, 2020

Simple but affecting, deep without becoming preachy, and dancing on the line between comedy and drama.

| Jul 26, 2019

What makes Digging for Fire such an enjoyable yet fleeting experience is how Swanberg lets these ideas flow organically into the film through his terrific cast and tight editing.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jun 3, 2019

DIGGING FOR FIRE is the tight, often funny and loosely scripted film that relies on the choices of the actors living in the moment

| Original Score: B | Mar 1, 2019

Digging for Fire is not revolutionary, or even revelatory, but it captures some things that are hard to express, and it did so with a terrific cast.

| Aug 23, 2018

Digging for Fire has an absolutely loaded cast full of recognizable names, but does nothing with them;

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 3, 2017

The actors are fine, but the end result feels undercooked, largely because of all the detours and subplots. It's like a miniseries writ small.

| Aug 21, 2017

The size of that ensemble and Swanberg's particular way of sorta hazily drifting from one half-overheard conversation to the next gives the picture a Robert Altman vibe that's never really been present in his work before.

| May 30, 2016

Strong performances drive thoughtful, mature marital drama.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 18, 2015

The movie has been dedicated to Paul Mazursky, the great radiologist of American social interplay who died last year. But Swanberg is still murmuring where Mazursky could speechify, gesticulate, and shout, sometimes in the same sequence.

| Sep 11, 2015

May not say anything revelatory, but the realization it imparts is no less valuable for it.

| Sep 4, 2015

The looseness turns into haphazardness, and while the picture digs around a lot, it never really catches fire.

| Original Score: C | Sep 1, 2015

It's a killer when 90 percent of your film consists of dozens of actors spouting reams of improvised dialogue that quickly fades into a din.

| Original Score: C | Aug 29, 2015

The large, talented cast is clearly thriving in the freewheeling style.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 28, 2015

Given all the sexed-up tension and enigmatic buzz of a murder mystery, Digging for Fire doesn't ever really get dirty enough.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 28, 2015

It's peak mumblecore with some big stars getting in on the action. And it's completely empty.

| Original Score: C- | Aug 27, 2015

A funny, insightful piece of work.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 27, 2015

Conversations drift and weave, as do the people having them. Narcissistic melancholy dukes it out with beer-and-pot-stoked merriment. There is longing. There is foolhardiness.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 27, 2015