Grey Gardens is a late-era accomplishment of what direct cinema had set out to be at the end of the 1950s.

| Mar 26, 2024

A painful but poignant affirmation of life, rich in the kinds of socio-psychological truths that the camera rarely has the freedom to reveal.

| Sep 15, 2022

The Maysles Brothers (in this film, working with Hovde and Meyer) habitually put human beings on the screen and ask us, simply, to recognize them. For this reason alone, Grey Gardens warrants viewing and support.

| Oct 31, 2019

The elegance and the decadence of two superstars, as Warhol understanded. A great cinematographic travel to East Hamptons. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 25, 2018

An extraordinarily crafty invasion into the lives of Edith Beale and her daughter Edie.

| Apr 11, 2018

The film resists a focus on the eponymous house's restoration, instead representing the women's chaotic lives as a non-linear series of moments.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 18, 2016

As tender and revealing as it is completely bonkers.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 14, 2016

Edith and Edie are like a toxic vaudeville team, joined not just by blood but affinity. They're three parts folie a deux to two parts shtick.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 6, 2015

Classic ...

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 30, 2015

Watch 'Grey Gardens' long enough and the question of exploitation drops, leaving potential victims to become real people.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 5, 2015

Old-money outcasts, or dropouts by lifestyle choice, the Beale ladies are not condescended to, smirked at or exhibited.

| Mar 5, 2015

The beauty of this film is the dignity it imparts to the Beales, trapped in their pasts. They failed to launch, yet paradoxically, they continue to fly so high.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 4, 2015

Richly detailed and boundlessly evocative, even at its most claustrophobic.

| Mar 3, 2015

The Maysles and the Beales are equally culpable in giving the film its goon-show edge, which undoubtedly accounts for its pull on some audiences.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 2, 2015

Rarely have high spirits and theatrical energy seemed like such a tragic waste; an era and its myths seem to be dying on-screen in real time.

| Mar 2, 2015

GREY GARDENS is an American classic.

| Original Score: A+ | Dec 12, 2013

There is something unseemly in the choice to document the Beales at all.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 1, 2013

Depressing cinéma vérité film.

| Original Score: C+ | Aug 12, 2012

Tragicomic docu of aging eccentrics won't appeal to kids.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 24, 2012

[VIDEO] "Grey Gardens" plays like an all too real version of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" It is a backdoor view into of New York's 20th century aristocracy.

| Original Score: A+ | Apr 4, 2011