…an allegory, but of a wry and intelligent kind that’s peppered with memorable moments and scenes, impeccably played…

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2023

Every shot in the film seems efficient and economical: clever and skillful in most cases, but always precise. [It] leaves the viewer amazed, puzzled, but finally satisfied. The film is ultimately honest at a time when that quality seems rarer and rarer.

| May 18, 2022

Wise Blood is as sly and nimble as some of the late films of Bunuel. Huston is now 73, so this is an old man's film, but it has a vigor and audacity that most young directors should envy.

| Nov 4, 2021

Flannery O'Connor's incisive sense of person and place is brilliantly captured in this 1979 film adaptation of her highly regarded first novel, which plays out as a broad comedy set within a timeless purgatory.

| Original Score: 5/6 | Aug 4, 2020

John Huston's exploration of humanity goes beyond the purely individual to the anecdotical, which is why he's capable of attracting all sorts of viewers. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 12, 2019

Wise Blood would have worked, at least as a piece of local grotesquerie, if it had remained at an impressionistic farcical level. But it tries to encompass more than this.

| Mar 20, 2019

Wise Blood is an unsettling account of post-war machismo and mental illness wrapped up in small town values and big ideas.

| Jan 24, 2019

This time, Huston has found material that was all but guaranteed to fuel the battiest recesses of his imagination.

| Sep 19, 2014

Funny, tragic, philosophical, farcical -- this is Huston near the top of his form. A useful batch of interviews, including one with Dourif.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 19, 2014

Wise Blood, an unusual mixture of comedy, tragedy, satire and horror, is an uningratiating but haunting work.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 19, 2014

Ultimately the movie's taste becomes highly questionable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 19, 2014

John Huston, with uncluttered direction and expert handling of actors, has fashioned a disturbing tale of the fringe side of overzealous religious preachers in the deep South.

| Jul 6, 2010

I dont have to run away from anything cause I dont believe in anything!

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 28, 2009

strange, sub-Coen Brothers caricature that, especially when underscored with Alex North's deliberately hammy hillbilly music, never amounts to much more than a condescending tragicomic satire of spiritual emptiness

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 30, 2009

Huston stays true to the novel's events but draws from the story all the black comedy he can find. We are in strange territory.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 25, 2009

Any film that features both Harry Dean Stanton and Ned Beatty as scam artists and its tale about religious hypocrisy borders on madness, is one not to be missed.

| Original Score: A | May 15, 2009

perhaps the most ballistic of Huston's late-period films

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 13, 2009

Huston's Wise Blood is a sharp, busy canvas that, like a man with a good car, doesn't need to be justified.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 13, 2009

This adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's novel is John Huston's best film for many years.

| Jan 26, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 6, 2005