It's not enjoyable, it's not challenging. It's only frustrating.

| Original Score: C- | Sep 18, 2021

Post Tenebras Lux weaves an austere narrative around the crumbling of family life in rural Mexico while dropping in autobiographical clues of Reygadas' own upbringing in often breathtakingly beautiful moments of serene cinema.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2020

I still can't deny that parts of the film resonated with me, and down the road I might come to appreciate it more, but right now I feel mostly indifferent to what I saw.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 2, 2019

If only the movie were as terrific as its 10-minute pre-title sequence.

| Feb 22, 2019

As the film advances and the narrative clues dry up like an arid desert of unfinished letters, it's tough not to see Reygadas' new work as little more than a series of vignettes, each one bellowing, "Respect me."

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 13, 2019

When the images are spectacular, a lot can be forgiven; but mostly Post Tenebras Lux is like being trapped in Mr. Reygadas's dream diary.

| Aug 10, 2018

If Reygadas set out to make an intuitive, pre-cognitive film, then this mysterious, intangible but profoundly resonant prologue comes closest to realizing that dream.

| Oct 11, 2017

It's either a sublime work of genius or a drearily pretentious nightmare. Possibly both.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 1, 2017

The film is at once brilliant and banal, original and derivative, heartfelt and pretentious. Its sheer visual gorgeousness is enthralling, yet there are passages that seem arty and self-indulgent.

| Jun 16, 2017

As irritating as this film is, I am grateful for it. Reygadas is an artist, and an uncompromising one at that.

| Original Score: 63/100 | Mar 9, 2014

An unusually bold and bizarre drama that offers a different way of looking at film.

| Original Score: B | Feb 10, 2014

It's a picture one could walk away from for a period of time and the movie wouldn't notice.

| Original Score: C+ | Dec 10, 2013

A completely essential piece of film art.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 12, 2013

Post Tenebras Lux is a film rich with sheer material presence, making good on Reygadas's apparent intention to make the viewer truly feel the audible and the visible, but his pictorial gimmickry can only do so much aesthetic heavy-lifting.

| Nov 5, 2013

Even with its head games and confusions, "Post Tenebras Lux" is an imposing spiritual work,

| Original Score: 3 | Sep 16, 2013

Reygadas' jagged, broken-logic drama lurches from fantasy to earthbound complications, though it is often hard to tell one from the other.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 25, 2013

A bewildering array of arresting imagery - glowing devils, self-decapitation, joyless sex clubs and public school rugby matches - that seems to confrontationally resist reconciliation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2013

If there's a unifying concept to all of this it's the idea of defilement.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 3, 2013

The result calls for a viewing as different as looking at a Vermeer against Rothko or de Kooning or multiple other modern painters.

| Jun 17, 2013

Along with Bela Tarr and Terrence Malick, Carlos Reygadas is one of today's few genuinely religious filmmakers.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 12, 2013