Margaret: Critic Reviews

Lonergan's dialogue can sweep you up in a whoosh of personality and ideas, but it's hard to see what, apart from ego, convinced him that this story was so epic.

"Margaret" was filmed in 2005 and has reportedly been delayed because of persistent editing problems. These do not seem to have been solved.

Paquin creates that rarest of things: a profoundly unsympathetic character who is mysteriously, mesmerically, operatically compelling to watch.

Lonergan, who casts himself as Lisa's lukewarm father, a screenwriter, possesses a rare talent for elevating an embarrassing sequence into sadness or tragedy.

A distanced but often car-crash compelling portrait of a teen as an unfinished being.

Every bold vision requires respect; a few deserve celebration. This is one of them, imperfections and all.

How do you assess a movie when you know it's been edited down against the filmmaker's stern will? That's the dilemma created by Margaret.

This is the first bad movie that has ever made me call for a sequel -- to get it all right.

For all its awkwardness and uncertainty, the film is a city symphony, romantic yet scathing, lyrical with street life and vaulting skylines, reckless with first adventure...

Its hard look at a young, morally confused woman struggling for clarity is nothing short of riveting.

Margaret is a mess. An impressive mess, but a mess nonetheless.

What an interesting failure "Margaret" is.

From start to end credits, very much an example of good work that doesn't translate.

This unwieldy drama of conscience in the wake of tragedy is hyperarticulate but rarely eloquent, full of wrenchingly acted scenes that lack credible motivation or devolve into shrill hectoring.

For a 90-minute movie, "Margaret" has a thin story. So it's unfortunate that it runs 2 1/2 hours.

What it does have going for it is a pre-True Blood Anna Paquin, who burns up the screen with a bravura performance in a complex and discomfiting role.

On occasion, the film captures a welcome cross-section of modern New York life, serving as a freeform antidote to the intersecting-lives tidiness of similar films from the likes of Haggis and Inarritu.

Kenneth Lonergan's 'Margaret': Brilliantly submerges a willing viewer in the scattered yet fascinating day-to-day activities of a privileged New York teenager

Kenneth Lonergan's new film, Margaret, finally released six years after it was shot, now seems destined to become part of film history as one of the more stunning examples of a filmmaker's sophomore slump.

Rarely has a film with such a great cast and so many moments of terrific writing and such high dramatic goals been so messy and disorganized and fundamentally bad.

Nearly every scene is acutely observed, a strong cast fully inhabiting Lonergan's symphonic collision of ideas and in tune with his ear for the harsh poetry of New York language, variously hyperbolic and sparing, engaged and self-protective.

"Margaret" remains tantalizingly unfulfilled.

Lonergan didn't bite off more than he could chew with Margaret - this is his personal moral gymnasium - but he did bite off more than others might want to chew.

Lonergan has created a forceful yet extremely fitful film that teases with moments of brilliance only to frustrate in the end.

Complex and elusive, the film weaves so many utterly believable and often devastating narrative strands that you wish Lonergan had got his way and released his initial 4hr cut