It is full of masculine fury and the women who take the brunt of it, and if this does not sound an attractive proposition, it's because it isn't, and never is, but, as far as these unattractive propositions go, this is powerfully affecting.

| Aug 31, 2018

The movie is cruelly frank about the ways damage cascades down to the powerless, but while it's not for the fainthearted (or for animal lovers), rewards are there.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 1, 2012

More so, as familiar as a lot of this Considine does a great job of making it feel fresh and original even if little of it actually is, giving his finished film a lived-in quality that's undeniable.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 27, 2012

The principals are superb, with Mullan and Colman doing a masterful job of inhabiting their separate but equal prisons.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 27, 2012

You won't find two finer performances in recent times than those by Mullan and Colman, who in a perfect world would each have received Oscar nominations this week.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 26, 2012

If the script ultimately seems a bit extreme (are there no immediate consequences for Joseph's tantrums or the criminal outbursts of Hannah's abusive husband?), it's often surprisingly successful in pushing the limits of British kitchen-sink drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 8, 2011

Paddy Considine's first feature as writer-director comes off like a playwriting exercise, with familiar characters taking every opportunity to wage messy, cathartic arguments or exhume traumatic memories.

| Dec 1, 2011

The acting - particularly the moving performance of Olivia Colman as a battered spouse living in a grim corner of Leeds, England - is fierce and committed. So why doesn't its impact linger?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 1, 2011

This isn't the kind of movie that even has hope enough to contain a message. There is no message, only the reality of these wounded personalities.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 1, 2011

True, the stars are very good at what they do, but so what?

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 18, 2011

Like a bruise, black and blue and more deeply felt than it initially seems.

| Nov 18, 2011

The performances carry the film and occasionally lift it beyond its kitchen-sink lower-depths doldrums.

| Original Score: B | Nov 18, 2011

It is the kind of film that leaves you limp, exhausted and feeling battered by the end. But its wrenching performances make the beating worth weathering.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Propelled by male rage but softened by Considine's big-hearted understanding of his characters, this bruising slice of urban life rewards our patience.

| Nov 17, 2011

The characters are trapped, suffocated, pushed through a story that gives them very little room or time to figure themselves out, and that finally turns their feelings into the wan stuff of fable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Considine's intense film isn't easy viewing, and surely isn't pretty, but his actors are remarkable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Tyrannosaur sounds like a particularly extreme work of British working-class miserablism, but Considine and his cast have no use for comfortable distance created by cliché.

| Original Score: A- | Nov 17, 2011

Tyrannosaur is British miserabilism at its most numbingly brutal and blunt.

Full Review | Nov 15, 2011

Hope? Redemption? Catharsis? Tyrannosaur offers such possibilities, but the trip getting there is brutal, indeed.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 27, 2011

Not without its flaws, Tyrannosaur is an auspicious start, and if Considine gains confidence from it, even better may lie ahead.

| Oct 11, 2011