By the time we reached the climactic and fantastically over-the-top showdown, I realized that while the characters were indeed trying to corner the market on smoldering glances, faux-Shakespearean proclamations and in-your-face symbolism...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 14, 2015

As good-looking as the movie and its stars are, "Ardor," whose title refers to a literal state of burning, never manages to catch fire.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 17, 2015

"Ardor" lacks tension, maybe because the actors are playing archetypes: Little is said, and there are few surprises.

| Jul 17, 2015

A densely atmospheric, Sergio Leone-steeped western that ultimately proves too reverential for its own good.

| Jul 16, 2015

Much of this movie is bewilderingly slow, while the big action scenes are mostly unbelievable.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 16, 2015

Unfortunately the movie loses this supernatural vibe in the second half, settling into a rather literal-minded revenge tale, though like much Argentinian art cinema it makes effective and poetic use of the natural settings.

| Jul 16, 2015

Writer-director Pablo Fendrik may well have been shooting here for "Pale Rider." But "Ardor" is more like pale imitation.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 16, 2015

After a while ... the sheer brutality and uncomplicated menace of the thugs is wearying.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 16, 2015

Too bad that Ardor's arrhythmic editing and glacial pacing make it impossible to get lost in its jungles - or to invest in its pseudo-mystical ambiance.

| Jul 14, 2015

It broods along as if it's expressing something monumentally important with each slow-as-molasses camera move.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 13, 2015

Gael Garca Bernal is the only saving grace of this schizophrenic rain forest drama.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 23, 2015

Some crunchy action adds blood but not meat.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 21, 2015

Director Pablo Fendrik makes evocative and dramatic use of his jungle settings.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 18, 2015

The Burning attempts to take the spaghetti western into the Argentine rainforest.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 18, 2015

It's all very environmentally minded and terribly worthy, but a bit of a slow-moving slog, and utterly devoid of any moistening drop of humour.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 18, 2015

Sergio Leone meets 'Sounds of the Rainforest' in this wafting new-age western.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 15, 2015

The spirit of Sergio Leone hovers above Argentine director Pablo Fendrik's Ardor, a spooky south-of-the-equator oater -- or "machete Western," if you will -- that trades open desert horizons for dense jungle backdrops.

| Jun 8, 2015

The reverential film takes itself far too seriously; it ends up being neither sufficiently inventive nor revisionist to surmount its archetypal cliches.

| Jun 8, 2015

In its favour, El Arbor looks bewitching, the banks of the Parana River shrouded in mist and vegetation.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2015