This is frayed-edges filmmaking at its finest.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 28, 2024

Knotty, ambitious and trading in messy human truths, it's the work of a master dramatist. Here's hoping Lonergan's next one reaches us a little faster.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 29, 2014

Margaret is less about plot mechanics than about the virtuosity of the dialogue, the complexity of the characters, and the detail and depth of their untidy world.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 29, 2014

Even in its truncated state, this is pretty gripping stuff.

| Sep 26, 2014

It has its flaws, but I defy you to find a more intelligent or impassioned American film this year.

| Jul 10, 2012

Ambitious, affecting, unwieldy and haunting, it's an eccentric, densely atmospheric, morally hyper-aware masterpiece...

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 27, 2012

Had I seen Margaret in 2011 it would have likely been number two or three on my list of the best films of the year.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 27, 2012

Messy but masterful; a sprawling portrait of what it means to be a bright young woman who's realizing that the world isn't the warm bath of acceptance that her privileged life would indicate.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 26, 2012

Margaret comes apart at the seams as you watch it, but it gives off a lovely light. Seek it out. You can thank me later.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 13, 2012

Haunting and thought-provoking despite flaws; an important post-9/11 movie with its own troubled mythology.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2011

Paquin, whose squirmy style of acting I've never liked, is astounding here...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 2, 2011

Paquin creates that rarest of things: a profoundly unsympathetic character who is mysteriously, mesmerically, operatically compelling to watch.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 1, 2011

The acting is uniformly wonderful. It's a phoenix of a film, risen from the ashes of what looked alarmingly like failure, and it needs to be seen.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 1, 2011

No group of actors in a film ever had so little time to establish so much complexity or succeeded with such consummate skill.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 1, 2011

For all its awkwardness and uncertainty, the film is a city symphony, romantic yet scathing, lyrical with street life and vaulting skylines, reckless with first adventure...

| Oct 10, 2011

Margaret definitely has many elements for a successful drama. It's unfortunate that no one was able to shape them into a functional movie.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 7, 2011

Margaret is a mess. An impressive mess, but a mess nonetheless.

| Original Score: C- | Oct 7, 2011

Kenneth Lonergan's new film, Margaret, finally released six years after it was shot, now seems destined to become part of film history as one of the more stunning examples of a filmmaker's sophomore slump.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 7, 2011

An ambitious, novelistic, sprawling story that attempts to show a young woman's internal development while simultaneously conveying the soul of modern-day New York.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 7, 2011

It took six years to make this movie. Do yourself a favor: don't wait six years to see it.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 6, 2011