...it remains one of the most unsettlingly accomplished American movies of the new millennium, and exactly as difficult to categorize or definitively interpret as its maker intended.

| Apr 6, 2020

There's much to argue with, but this unconventional, oddly beautiful film resonates in unexpected ways.

| Mar 12, 2018

It offers a dismaying whiff of mortality in the spaces between the girls' chattering remarks in the cafeteria and in the blank eyes of boys who feel alienated from everything except the guns they cradle so lovingly in their arms.

| Apr 24, 2013

What I'll remember most vividly about Gus Van Sant's extraordinary "Elephant" is not the violent climax but the state of grace that precedes it.

Full Review | Apr 24, 2013

Elephant creates gorgeous, wide-open spaces that allow viewers the freedom to reflect without having a point-of-view imposed on them.

Full Review | Apr 24, 2013

The approach is oddly riveting, though, because the tension builds slowly, and you know what's going to happen at the end of the day.

| Apr 24, 2013

Van Sant's least 'show-offy', most personal, best picture in years (maybe ever), and an honourable attempt at respectfully considering the unbearable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2006

The film doesn't try to explain, but to put us in a subjective time and space, a place where it's impossible not to feel the abject horror of random violence.

| Jan 26, 2006

A morally dubious waiting game.

| Original Score: C | May 3, 2005

Elephant is a lurid tease posing as an art film.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2004

I haven't been crazy about a lot of Van Sant's recent work, but what he does here is simply astonishing.

Full Review | Jul 3, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 31, 2004

A living, breathing work that's distinctively different from the regular hyper-reality of Hollywood films.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 22, 2004

Pseudo-important posturing without either original thought or the excitement of an unashamed exploitation movie.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 20, 2004

You know what's going to happen at the end, but Van Sant gives the audience absolutely zero to cling to; it has the inexorable pull of a bad dream.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 23, 2003

Elephant is the film equivalent of Maya Lin's Vietnam monument, that collective gravestone to the fallen, in the way it employs abstract means to quantify the loss of life and elicit a profound sense of grief.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 20, 2003

An 86-minute cosmic provocation to rethink how we talk about the unspeakable, the scapegoats we look for, the effigies we burn.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 14, 2003

We ask: Who are these people? Which ones are troubled enough to bring guns to school? What are their lives like? What made them this way?

Full Review | Original Score: A | Nov 13, 2003

The film is understatement at its most powerful.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 7, 2003

While most of the characters are little more than sketches, Van Sant and his collection of young, mostly inexperienced actors make them recognizable and genuine.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 7, 2003