Capote: Critic Reviews

It teases, fascinates, and haunts.

Bennett Miller's film is a fascinating and fine-grained reconstruction of the period in which Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood.

Hoffman delivers a thrilling and profound Oscar-caliber performance that will haunt viewers well after the movie is over.

The genius of the film, besides Hoffman's stunning performance, is that it knows exactly how much is enough. It never overplays, lingers or punches up.

When it's good -- which is very often -- Capote remembers what Capote forgot: Beware the reporter who thinks he's the story.

Capote is a cool and polished hall of mirrors reflecting the ways in which Truman Capote came to write (and be written by) In Cold Blood.

A devastating portrait of genius and narcissism.

It's a fully realized look at a time and place as well as a riveting study of career obsessions warring with a sense of justice.

It's about as close as film can come to capturing a man as he gradually loses all bearings and joy. At these moments, it's hard to look at Capote. But it's even harder to turn away.

Hoffman and company make Capote well worth seeing. What makes the movie important is the way Capote exposes the work of journalism.

Small-scaled and limited, Capote is nevertheless the most intelligent, detailed, and absorbing film ever made about a writer's working method and character -- in this case, a mixed quiver of strength, guile, malice, and mendacity.

Capote is a film of uncommon strength and insight.

It is exceptional in every sharp-eyed, low-keyed detail.

Skillfully and economically put together.

Engages both the practical and the moral implications of Capote's achievement.

As entertaining as it is insightful.

It is complex and thoughtful and tragic in the end. And it is certainly one of the best movies of the year.

This spare, uncompromising portrait not only examines what drove the author but delves into the ethics of journalists who identify with their subjects, or pretend to, in order to report their stories.

Miller's Capote, from a screenplay by Dan Futterman, has been rightly hailed for Philip Seymour Hoffman's uncanny reincarnation of the late Truman Capote.

Philip Seymour Hoffman gets it perfect in Capote, with a star turn both meteoric and mesmerizing. This is not an example of a fine actor bringing charisma to a movie. Lock, stock and barrel, he is the movie.

The mesmerizing performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman as the celebrated writer dominates every scene, while director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman's penetrating study enthralls in every aspect.

Acting doesn't get much better than Philip Seymour Hoffman's acid-etched -- yet oddly poetic -- portrait of Truman Capote.

A meditation on the artist's obligations to the art and to society and lines that blur when you cross them.

The almost perfectly realized Capote -- stumbling only in the lack of shading it gives Keener's and Greenwood's characters -- offers a sobering glimpse at what the author had to give up of his soul to achieve his success.