Cremaster 3: Critic Reviews

The filmmaker ascends, literally, to the Olympus of the art world, but he would have done well to end this flawed, dazzling series with the raising of something other than his own cremaster.

Exudes the fizz of a Busby Berkeley musical and the visceral excitement of a sports extravaganza.

Like poetry and music, it isn't so much what it means as how it means. The maze of the artist's endless, haunted hallways will keep you clueless, speechless and quite possibly sleepless, in the manner of all visionaries.

Not since Ghostbusters has a film used Manhattan's architecture in such a gloriously goofy way.

It offers little beyond the momentary joys of pretty and weightless intellectual entertainment.

Trapped in a seat while the three-hour Cremaster 3 goes on (and on), you feel more like a prisoner than a participant.

It is either an unparalleled opportunity to witness the work of an artist proclaimed by some the 'most important American artist of his generation.' Or an obligation to witness the work of the artist etc., etc.

The hypnotic imagery and fragmentary tale explore the connections between place and personal identity.

Barney has created a tour de force that is weird, wacky and wonderful.

There's no denying the elaborateness of the artist's conceptions, nor his ability to depict them with outrageous elan, but really the whole series is so much pretentious nonsense, lavishly praised by those who equate obscurity with profundity.

May be the best combination of everything that Barney does best in this series: the striking visuals, a definite narrative, and enough variety to keep things interesting. The final sequence, "The Order," is as engaging as this series gets.

Barney's outlandish mise-en-scene, forever emphasizing the organic, the amorphous, the massive, the adhesive, and the fluorescent in quite literal ways, also retains those very qualities in my memory.

the longest and last of 'the Cremaster Cycle' is also Barney's crowning masterpiece.

Attempting to sum up the scope of Matthew Barney's epic in a few words is like trying to shove the history of existence through a scrotum-shaped pinhole.

The endurance test of the Cremaster series.

6:30 p.m. (Upon the completion of "Cremaster V") - zzzzzz . . .

Extremely accomplished filmmaking that's only in need of an editor. And perhaps a coherent story.