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LOVE LIZA
"Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a tour de force
portrayal of a man shattered by his wife's death...It's a great
performance that's a horror to watch. Of all the bleak year-end
movies, 'Love Liza' is the bleakest; of all the sad characters you've
seen lately, Hoffman's Wilson Joel is the saddest...What saves 'Love
Liza' from sinking under its own weight are a few appreciated spurts
of comic relief, and Hoffman's courageously raw performance." --Jack
Mathews, The New York Daily News
"The masterful Philip Seymour Hoffman, who delivers the season's
best supporting performance in '25th Hour,' owns the screen again
with his first movie leading role in 'Love Liza,' an indie inky-black
comedy...an oddly endearing little chamber piece that provides a
terrific showcase for Hoffman, surely the best actor who has never
been nominated for an Oscar." --Lou
Lumenick, The New York Post
"'Love Liza' is downbeat and dreary, one man's descent into inhalant-fueled
oblivion... Except as an acting exercise or an exceptionally dark
joke, you wonder what anyone saw in this film that allowed it to
get made...'Love Liza' has little to say about suicide or coping
with grief or even addiction...it's like one long, drug-fueled hallucination."
--Marshall Fine, The Journal
News
"Mr. Hoffman appears in nearly every frame of 'Love Liza," a piercing
study of spousal grief...and his omnipresence is something of a
mixed blessing. His skills--for precision and understatement, and
for unexpectedly allowing a gleeful, almost crazed energy to burst
out in otherwise somber circumstances--are impressively evident,
but the movie is so small and emotionally constricted that it gives
him too little room to explore his range...our nearly complete lack
of knowledge about his life before Liza's death makes his suffering
more of a spectacle we watch from outside that a predicament we
might sympathize with." -- A.O.
Scott, The New York Times
"Hoffman holds the screen with ease and confidence in what is a
terrifically tough film to watch. 'Dark and demanding' doesn't begin
to describe this devastating film, which holds out the possibility
of redemption and rebirth on the slenderest of threads...Determinedly
modest in tone, 'Love Liza' is a fiercely brave and honest work."
--Kevin Thomas, The Los Angeles
Times
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