Mascaro internationalizes a strain of the French cinéma du corps as he weds it with the emerging art-house aesthetic of digital realism, crossing borders and species to create something extraordinary...

| Dec 1, 2023

Securing Gabriel Mascaro laudable international renown, Neon Bull vaunts the director among the frontrunners forming a new generation of phenomenal Brazilian auteurs with this a moody, unpredictable drama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 30, 2020

An incredibly rich, intimate, warm portrait of human desire, jealousy, folly and dreams.

| Jul 17, 2020

Neon Bull employs the unique routine of rodeos to approach - and subvert - gender stereotypes.

| May 15, 2020

In its nonjudgmental empathy for people living on the farthest fringes of society, its bleakly epic scope, and its sentimental nihilism, Neon Bull shares a fair amount of DNA with the films of New Hollywood.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 3, 2019

It's a mood that combines the real, the surreal, and the banal, and merges them together to make a film that continues to inspire curiosity long after the credits roll.

| May 25, 2019

Neon Bull has the potential to be an engaging film - particularly with the addition of the lead Iremar's subversive interest in costuming. It wastes all of this potential, however.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 19, 2019

The Neon Bull exists well beyond the realm of didacticism, surrendering instead to the joys and the discomforts of the senses.

| Aug 25, 2018

The film creates a distinct sense of time and place, following the characters into their makeshift domiciles and elaborate corrals that guide each bull toward the arena.

| Aug 22, 2018

Even at its most sensational, there's a no-frills naturalism that makes Neon Bull easy to take in.

| Aug 21, 2018

This is a sad movie then -- albeit its most touching moment comes in the form of a simple hug between two like souls -- but also a very beautiful one.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 16, 2018

The film's many internal frames bring bodies together-sex is in the air-but they also suggest people making do with the fences that are a fact of life.

| Nov 29, 2017

A film in which its theme isn't expressed in the plot but in its style. [Full review in Spanish]

| May 4, 2017

Neon Bull doesn't move viewers toward political consciousness about either animal cruelty or human tenderness. Iremar and his disadvantaged cohorts rouse fascination about beasts (mammals), not human beings or citizens.

| Mar 3, 2017

The documentary filmmaking background of Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro informs much of his second dramatic feature, which ventures deep without judgment or undue instigation into the lives of a group of itinerant rodeo workers

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 27, 2016

A strangely hypnotic experience.

| Nov 16, 2016

Laced with empathy, insight and more than a few narrative, visual and emotional surprises, Neon Bull proves a winner.

| Nov 13, 2016

...hypnotic...

| Original Score: 12/20 | Nov 9, 2016

There are some arresting images at the beginning of the film that signal a visual storyteller and indeed the film opens a window into a world that is at once half familiar and foreign

| Nov 5, 2016

Every frame aims to be a visual poem and the film sums up in sweaty sensuality. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 19, 2016