The ending’s a downer, all right, but you might just smile too. Then feel bad about it. Then chuckle. Which is when you realize Potrykus has you right where he wants you.

| May 12, 2025

Potrykus’ first film since becoming a father presents a corresponding shift in the anxieties and compulsions that drive his work’s perpetually juvenile characters.

| Original Score: 4.25/5 | May 7, 2025

Although its characters are middle aged, their childish games in the first half signal a kind of coming of age; and yet unlike most films on that theme, which end when childhood is left behind, it keeps us there to explore what it means to be an adult.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 5, 2025

Ultimately, this film is a tragedy about being overlooked – how it feels to never get the hang of living in a world which judges you, using criteria you never agreed.

| May 4, 2025

What is our life if not acknowledged in some way by others? VULCANIZADORA explores this idea but serves it with a caustic understanding of the sometimes desperate behavior of humans.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 3, 2025

This is a film that has elements of both James Wan's "Saw" and Kelly Reichert's "Old Joy," an indelible mix of friendship, doubt, despair and expiation.

| Original Score: B+ | May 3, 2025

With Vulcanizadora, Potrykus is asking us to consider the plight of the men who are living examples of detritus and refuse. [...] Vulcanizadora showed me how to find comedy in the horror of despair, and that is a minor miracle.

| May 2, 2025

“‘Vulcanizadora’ is an astonishing coming-of-age tale for adults-in-crisis.”

| May 2, 2025

A meandering, elliptical, tedious and unpredictable genre-bending experiment that's ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

| May 2, 2025

Intimate and intelligent, this unexpected film leaves you reeling. It seizes the languid, devil-may-care spirit of the 90s and twists it, exploring the ungraceful collision of two former screwups with the unyielding, often sour, landscape of middle age.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 2, 2025

It’s not for all tastes, but those on the same offbeat wavelength will find surprising emotional depth in what starts off as a quirky and thinly sketched buddy comedy about midlife crises.

| May 2, 2025

Most of its impact comes from going into the movie without any preparation and feeling as if you’re watching a blank tabletop being filled in with puzzle pieces until a full picture emerges.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 2, 2025

The first half of Vulcanizadora is a unique kind of comedy ... What can be said of the second half is that somehow finds humor under even more unlikely circumstances...

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 2, 2025

Spasmodically funny, though hardly a comedy, “Vulcanizadora” is raw, moving and, briefly, horrifying.

| May 1, 2025

Veering into grim humor, Vulcanizadora is a subtle, quiet scream about the importance of seeking therapy, especially within somewhat emotionally closed-off men

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 1, 2025

With a pair of enticing performances at the center, the film leaves a lasting impression, even though it might initially seem like a fleeting exercise. Stick with it. It’ll be worth it.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 1, 2025

...you feel the desperation and doom closing in with each passing scene.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 30, 2025

Vulcanizadora, Joel Potrykus’ bizarre, brilliant black comedy, flits between and merges sharp surrealism and crushing realism with stunning results.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 29, 2025

Joel Potrykus looks without flinching at the ultimate consequences of permanent adolescence.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 27, 2025

Vulcanizadora is a tough hang, but it is saved from utter bleakness by Potrykus’ sympathy for his characters and the deader-than-deadpan wit with which he observes their predicaments.

| Mar 27, 2025