Every camera move (or lack thereof) crackles with purpose, and the film moves towards its confounding finale with such pleasurable assurance that I’m glad not to know.

| Jan 23, 2023

An intimate gorgeously shot period piece anchored by a subtle performance from Mortensen.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 3, 2022

Visually sumptuous and impeccably acted, the film uses the rich landscapes of Patagonia, as well as the pliancy of the human face to subtly convey our anxieties rising to the fore, taking hold and painting a reality of its own bleak making.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 21, 2020

While Jauja itself is a fabled city of riches and happiness, Alonso uses the word to describe conquest alone. [The characters get lost] psychologically, [not physically].

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 20, 2019

A haunting existential work, often perplexing, always fascinating, Jauja is a dazzling experiment that never fully reveals itself, always hiding its meanings and ideas behind long takes and metaphors.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 7, 2019

A strange and sometimes beautiful film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 31, 2019

Alonso aims for a surreal, slow cinema take on a psychological western, sort of like Anthony Mann meets Peter Greenaway, and he wills you into his weird rhythm by allowing most shots to run a minute or so longer than you would expect.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 15, 2019

Tone can only excite so much when there's so little story, but equally there's only so much atmosphere you can dredge from a succession of beautiful yet static landscapes.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 10, 2019

Like all great films, Argentine director Lisandro Alonso's "Jauja" makes up its own rules.

| Feb 16, 2018

After a six year wait for director Lisandro Alonso to follow-up his masterpiece 2008 "Liverpool", we finally have a new adventure.

| Nov 16, 2017

Jauja will be off-putting to some, but for those willing to get on its challenging wavelength, it's worth the ride.

| Aug 24, 2017

[A] strange, beguiling, and excitedly didactic film.

| Original Score: B | Jun 6, 2016

You've got walking in grass, riding a horse through grass, and sitting amid the grass. A few grisly kills. But mostly there's grass. And it grows. Green. Sometimes yellow.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 3, 2016

Imagine Carl Theodor Dreyer, with a dash of Herzog, directing a surreal 50s Technicolor western and you might have some idea of what to expect from Lisandro Alonso's baffling yet transfixing Jauja.

| Dec 7, 2015

With Jauja Alonso follows the ever-widening orbit his films have been tracing even further, nudging his trademark concerns... of his earlier work into something considerably more expansive, playful, even supernatural.

| Dec 7, 2015

Jauja feels less like a film than a hazy dream of postcards from nowhere.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 6, 2015

As a micro-critique of colonialism, the film resonates alongside Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), among others, all road movies leading nowhere.

| Nov 11, 2015

It isn't too great a chore to sit though this film, but it isn't really compelling, either. The story lacks a real payoff punch.

| Original Score: C | Nov 5, 2015

If the idea was that getting into the mental hell of these characters that are caught in a dry landscape would suddenly give good pictures of wild nature devouring characters who deserved no better fate, Jauja falls short, a lot. [Full review in Spanish]

| Aug 28, 2015

It's a puzzling head-tripper.

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 11, 2015