Watching Tetro, Coppola's first original screenplay in some 30 years, is like eavesdropping on someone's dream.

| Mar 19, 2018

Coppola excels at what might be termed the cinema of inadequacy.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Nov 18, 2011

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 2, 2011

There is not enough dramatic tension to sustain the film for two hours and conjectures about the Coppola family saga are really extraneous to the experience of Tetro.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 6, 2010

Unabashedly theatrical and richly cinematic, even when it's falling apart...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 6, 2010

The way ahead could be for Coppola père et fils to stay away from personal themes. Family isn't everything.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 26, 2010

Frustrating and fitfully compelling, Tetro may not be a return to former glories, but this is Coppola through and through, an over-ambitious effort about thwarted ambition, full of ideas and passion, and smitten with cinema.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 26, 2010

Though it's unlikely to announce his return to the grand stage of big-budget cinema, the movie is graced with touches of the old Coppola magic.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 24, 2010

Tetro is a movie filled with splashes of brilliance rather than being a plain brilliant movie.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 24, 2010

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 24, 2010

What threatens to be a mere exercise in style proves to be as involving as it is inventive.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 17, 2009

While Coppola seems revitalized by quoting from movies he studied at UCLA film school, what ultimately makes Tetro so compelling is the filmmaker's return to the motifs that made his 1970s films powerful.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 14, 2009

What makes it eminently watchable is the craft. Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. films in luscious widescreen monochrome that looks almost wet. Osvaldo Golijov's score is another pleasure.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 14, 2009

It is interesting. Better, it is quite possibly great.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 31, 2009

Visually inventive, narratively edgy, and unlike anything else.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 10, 2009

Coppola has made some of the greatest films ever made in traditional narrative mode, but whenever he goes into his indie-outsider dance, he stumbles badly.

| Original Score: C | Jun 19, 2009

The movie is alive from beginning to end, and it's a pleasure to see at least one big-name director get out of the prison of his own reputation.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 19, 2009

For beauty, vision and the palpable sense of a veteran filmmaker still reveling in possibility, it's something to see.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 19, 2009

Coppola is still very much alive.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 18, 2009

Tetro has no internal tension and should have been a comedy.

| Jun 18, 2009