The cinematic frame might have contracted, but there's a kind of ferocious compassion in Dolan's vision, and its embrace is startlingly wide.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 9, 2015

Dolan loves close-ups and he gives his actors every chance to demonstrate their talent for ringing the emotional changes in a single take.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 9, 2015

Dorval and Clément are both exceptional, their brilliantly controlled performances contrasting with the explosive energy of rising star Pilon, who looks set to burst out of the screen and into the auditorium.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 22, 2015

The plotting is wayward and haphazard but the film is made and performed with such frankness and emotional intensity that its occasional stumbles never seem a problem.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 20, 2015

As outrageous as it is insightful, Mommy is a mother-and-son melodrama taken to operatic heights.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 20, 2015

A hugely emotional film that makes no apologies for its engagement with the ripest melodrama.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 20, 2015

Dolan has previously been accused of style over substance but here he draws both magnificently together. It's perhaps a little too long, but Mommy is a movie to make you feel alive.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 19, 2015

This is easily Dolan's best film, and it's exciting to think how many times we might have to revise that statement over the years to come.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 19, 2015

I suppose the relationship is Oedipal or primal or something or other, but mostly it's just an excuse for Dolan to stage a series of gaudy shout-fests.

| Original Score: C+ | Feb 20, 2015

Dolan is able to weave dialogue, camerawork, a fluid yet urgent editing style, and a magpie's ear for pop music into a cinematic world that you can almost hold in your hand before it starts spilling over.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 5, 2015

The movie's overlong, underpopulated and often devastating to watch. But it's told with an uncanny realism, and when it's over you feel shaken and a little sick - and realize that you can finally exhale.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 5, 2015

There's not much more to Mommy than these anguished character studies. They go round and round, yet a narrative never coalesces.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 5, 2015

Mother and son gesticulate wildly but remain undefined; Dolan's blandly showy aesthetic matches the vainly hectic action.

| Feb 2, 2015

Dolan is only 25, and though he doesn't have Orson Welles beat, this has to be one of the best films ever written and directed by a 25-year-old.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 30, 2015

"Mommy" is a shockingly honest, nerve-wracking and dazzling piece of cinema. If this doesn't rattle your soul, you don't have one.

| Original Score: A | Jan 30, 2015

Scary and wild, forthright and furious.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 30, 2015

The volatile, unbridled emotion of "Mommy" - its sheer life force - makes up for its structural weaknesses ...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 29, 2015

The movie's rhythm is jumpy, accelerated and alive.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 29, 2015

Xavier Dolan ranks as the most accomplished young dramatic filmmaker in North America, and this engrossing character study, his fifth feature, demonstrates an emotional perspicacity one might expect from an artist many years his senior.

| Jan 29, 2015

Heartbreaking, if you can get past all the yelling.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 29, 2015