A beautiful feat... this marvelous work blends memory, music and meticulous detail in what are actually two very closely related films.

| Aug 25, 2022

A terribly beautiful film... [that] makes one at times almost forget the simultaneously banal and and violent lives which the film remembers.

| May 20, 2020

Strange and stunning for a variety of reasons, Terence Davies created a masterpiece right out of the gate with his 1988 classic Distant Voices, Still Lives.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 30, 2019

The saddest part of Distant Voices/Still Lives is that we come away understanding no more than we did before about the inner workings of this and similar families.

| Sep 7, 2019

Terence Davies' 1988 debut Distant Voices, Still Lives, newly rereleased by Arrow Academy, deserves to be treasured as one of the great British films.

| Nov 1, 2018

Distant Voices contains some of the most beautiful, poetic filmmaking in British cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 6, 2018

For all the formal technique and the theatrically controlled tableaux, the drama is vividly present and alive.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 30, 2018

Enthralling...

| Aug 28, 2018

With an unfailing eye for place, décor, costume, and gesture, the director glides his camera through tangles of memories to evoke joys and horrors with a similar sense of wonder.

| Sep 22, 2014

A gripping and original piece of work, itself sure to be remembered as one of the finest films of the year.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 2, 2014

Just as you think you have its moves all doped out, a scene of such shocking beauty flashes before you that it takes your breath away.

| Jun 2, 2014

Even the movie's "smile though your heart is aching" optimism is depressing. What keeps the movie going is the director's always distinctive, sometimes arresting style, and the earnest, authentic acting.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 2, 2014

When a forty-four-year-old man makes a movie about his family and friends sitting around singing old tunes, you certainly don't expect an unforgettable amalgam of humor and heartbreak. But that is precisely what Terence Davies delivers.

| Jun 2, 2014

Screen dreams are strangest and strongest when they hit close to home. In Terence Davies' searing [Distant Voices, Still Lives]... mystery resides in the vision of his mother, magically poised on the hall sill, washing the outside windows.

| Jun 2, 2014

A rigorously controlled account of the experience of Davies's older siblings growing up in a working-class Merseyside terrace in the Forties and Fifties.

| Jun 2, 2014

Sadly, most of the time Distant Voices is a hit parade of Father's swiftest punches played to the hit parade that he might have been listening to on the radio.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 2, 2014

It's a movie of astonishing power and bold originality, marked by poignant humor and a stream of transcendent song that tempers the frequent harshness of the story.

| Jun 2, 2014

The editing is relegated to a series of quick (often mercifully so) blackouts. Time shifts occur at random and often confuse.

| Jun 2, 2014

Tinted with all the sensuous pathos of a faded photograph, Terence Davies' 1988 debut remains one of the most stunning British films ever made.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 2, 2014

In this very personal portrait, Davies, the artist, has re-created universal experiences -- familiar passions and needs -- that draw us to his family's humanity.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 2, 2014