Pasolini turns out to be a rich yet forgettable chapter in Ferrara’s filmography.

| Dec 14, 2023

Ferrara’s jumbling of languages in Pasolini offered a way forward, reaching towards a medium in which modes of communication become equivalent...

| Nov 9, 2023

A frustrating disappointment ... sluggish and slow, as if Ferrara either dreads having to find his way to Ostia Beach-where Pasolini was murdered-or finds pleasure in the foreplay.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 18, 2021

While its nonchalant style won't be for everyone, its understated ambition still is worthy of admiration along with Willem Dafoe's terrific performance.

| Sep 30, 2020

In many ways this film is as indefinable as Pasolini himself, conjuring divergent opinions of Pasolini's work.

| May 26, 2020

As an homage that honestly attempts to grapple with the spirit of the great artist's works and beliefs, Ferrara has concocted a worthy assemblage to honor him.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 5, 2019

Just as he did with 2018's At Eternity's Gate, in which he embodied the artist Vincent van Gogh, [Willem] Dafoe brilliantly captures the essence and a more-than-reasonable resemblance to the real figures.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 8, 2019

Despite Ferrara's attempts to generate scandalous imagery of his own, he winds up with many sequences of touching beauty.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 19, 2019

What distinguishes Pasolini from other biopics is its willingness to get lost within the artist's creative perspective while detailing his life.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 11, 2019

Willem Dafoe again reminds us just how talented and diverse an actor he truly is.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 6, 2019

Ultimately, Ferrara depicts Pasolini as a gentle intellectual with some very unpopular views. Funny how they so often die young.

| Jul 5, 2019

From its velvety opening frames, in which his subject speaks slowly and thoughtfully to a radio interviewer, Abel Ferrara's 20th feature film feels like something the Italian-American iconoclast was born to make.

| Jun 28, 2019

[I]n simply depicting the ordinary day of a man of such creative influence, the film taps into something existentially terrifying -- and, maybe, a little hopeful.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 28, 2019

Dafoe not only wears Pasolini's clothes but internalizes his spirit. He even holds our attention when Ferrara shows Pasolini sitting at his typewriter, pounding away at a screenplay.

| Jun 6, 2019

Expect darkness and fireworks from Abel Ferrara's thought-provoking biopic (with a fabulously diverse soundtrack).

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 4, 2019

It may be only one man's version of what many have speculated about... but in its clear-eyed grittiness, it's also a tribute from a filmmaker for whom the night's temptations were ripe and its dangers legion.

| May 30, 2019

The first of four films released theatrically this year from director Abel Ferrara, Pasolini is a deeply moving look at a legendary film revolutionary.

| May 25, 2019

The idea of a search is a significant parallel between the two intertwined portions of the film, which seem to work towards opposing ends yet culminate in the conclusion of a common node: the art of Pier Paolo Pasolini is inseparable from his death.

| May 21, 2019

This gives Salò, and the figurehead that Ferrara and Dafoe create from Pasolini's artistic courage, great and undeniable significance amid the political hypocrisy and artistic crises of today.

| May 15, 2019

In showing Pasolini's last hours, Ferrara places an unusual emphasis on the quiet, placid environment in which his subject worked, the bedrock of domesticity which anchored him though ultimately could not protect him.

| May 13, 2019