While the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman finds mild humor in his smalltime criminal's lethargic efforts to appease his grieving wife, first-time director John Slattery is unable to consistently maintain the tragicomic tone he strives for.

| Jan 22, 2022

Those looking for one last great Hoffman piece won't find it here.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 26, 2021

This might sound harsh, but God's Pocket is a movie that has no business existing.

| Apr 13, 2021

God's Pocket is worth a look -- certainly as one of the last performances of the great Hoffman, but also as an ambitious, if ultimately faulty directorial debut from long time actor Slattery.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 30, 2019

The tone, writing, and performances in God's Pocket are all incredibly awkward, which is a surprise considering the artists at work.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Mar 28, 2019

... something that's trying to be a dark comedy that doesn't know how to handle that "dark" part, so instead it just ends up being sad ... and a little disappointing.

| Mar 2, 2019

God's Pocket feels like three separate movies. And none of them moved me.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 11, 2018

John Slattery ... makes his directorial debut with this film and does a good job of it, but there's a problem with the script which is neither here nor there in terms of its commitment to drama or comedy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 18, 2017

So long as Slattery trains his lens on the bars and back rooms of this salty-dog slum, this film is great fun, if an acquired taste.

| Aug 4, 2017

It's place full of colorful characters but lacking in a particularly interesting tale to tell, or a particularly interesting way to tell it.

| Original Score: C | Jun 21, 2016

Slattery shows real promise as a director, guiding his actors with ease and effectively evoking a very specific time and place.

| Jun 18, 2016

God's Pocket reveals Slattery as a capable director who can provide a generous playground for his actors, but his expressive ways need tempering. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Apr 7, 2016

Its crazed whirlwind of tones suddenly made perfect sense once the location is established. If you're from Philly, you'll get it.

| Jan 9, 2015

The colour balance, locations, set designs and dialogue have an authenticity we rarely see in bigger budget movies and the characters are, well, characters.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 10, 2014

God's Pocket is strange one, but a strange one that I can't stop thinking about.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 27, 2014

A tonally scattershot indie film. The biggest misstep of the movie is the trite narration from Richard Jenkins, who espouses a kind of low-level loser pride in his columns for the local paper.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 19, 2014

The film skates unevenly between spit-and-sawdust realism, mean-streets crime anecdote and queasy black comedy, but it's never boring.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 10, 2014

Everyone gets at least one good scene, but the cumulative effect of all these rampaging tragedies and outbreaks of black comedy is ultimately rather exhausting.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 8, 2014

The cast is amazing and the film has a certain grim visual beauty. But ultimately there is little here but ugly senselessness.

| Aug 8, 2014

Its cast features some of Hollywood's most redoubtable character actors, among them Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his final appearances before his untimely death earlier this year.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 8, 2014