Control: Critic Reviews

Control goes past the cliches of punk rock-god gloom to offer a snapshot of alienation that's shockingly humane.

Where Control might have been literal-minded and sentimental, it is instead enigmatic and moving, much in the manner of Joy Division's best songs.

Corbijn's movie is shot in a stunning high-contrast monochrome, perversely turning Macclesfield's grimness into grandeur. It effortlessly revives a British cinematic style that you might call beautiful realism.

Though Curtis is hopelessly dysfunctional, photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn makes us achingly aware of the singer's talent, the haunting poetry of his songs and how, living in the gloomy culture he did, his passing was virtually inevitable.

A steady and moving memorial to a man who rarely felt comfortable in his own skin.

Control is like a wake where the guests forgot to bring the booze and, for the most part, have nothing very nice or even particularly interesting to say about the deceased.

Newcomer Riley is a revelation himself. He's the physical spitting image of Curtis, thin with fragile features, and his impressions of Curtis' violently jerky stage mannerisms are dead-on.

The film nails both the malaise and creative vigor of Curtis' short, bruised and chillingly relatable life.

Control" has an unmistakable pulse: a wiry, electric tension between the extraordinary spectacle of Curtis at maximum surge and the dented ordinariness of which his undear life, like ours, was mostly composed.

The extraordinary achievement of Control is that it works simultaneously as a musical biopic and the story of a life.

Methodical and cool, this film is more artful sonnet than fanzine rave.

Sam Riley is fascinating as Curtis, a hypersensitive young man hobbled by his incurable disease, and Samantha Morton is poignant as his put-upon wife.

The movie examines a life -- and a death -- without getting deep about it. The result is oddly exhilarating.

[An] absorbing and ultimately harrowing look at Ian Curtis' short, unhappy life.

Somber, sad and compelling.

Control seems an honest tribute to a haggard ghost. It'll inspire many a young viewer looking for tips about the workings of self-torture and famous doom.

Joy Division has the movie that, for better or worse, lives up to the myth.

A good movie that falls short of greatness by aping too well the behaviour of its subject -- occasionally brilliant, sometimes mundane.

Instead of painting a tiny, cramped picture intended only for the elite, it opens up one small corner of the world for everybody. Control is proof of the way the music of someone else's life can suddenly and magically become your own.

Story-wise, this picture doesn't break new ground; this is a tale that one can find littered throughout the pages of history both recent and long ago, but the way Corbijn has presented it gives it a freshness and fervor that makes it worth sampling.

It features lots of music from that time, and it has decent performances, but it fails to make the case for its fallen star.

You don't watch this movie, you live it.

The film overcomes the central miscasting of Samantha Morton.

The way Ian Curtis blocked his onstage movement mirrored isolationism in his home life. He clasped the microphone stand like a drowning man would a life preserver, but he couldn't stay afloat in dreary waters of his own creation. A seamless rock biopic.