66
Metascore
6 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 83IndieWireAdam SolomonsIndieWireAdam SolomonsLetting the movie do the talking often works best.
- 75Washington PostMark JenkinsWashington PostMark JenkinsObliquely but evocatively, “Desperate Souls” ponders the many roles of the cowboy: gay icon, cinematic hero and symbol of American manifest destiny from the Rockies to the Mekong. Yet the documentary acknowledges that neither Schlesinger’s film nor its era could change everything.
- 70The New York TimesBen KenigsbergThe New York TimesBen Kenigsberg“Desperate Souls” convincingly argues that there’s no other time at which Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) could have become enduring movie characters, let alone have the tenderness between them depicted so subtly.
- At best, Desperate Souls suggests a series of passionate stories being told by a beloved family member, occasionally sprawling but never anything less than compelling. By the end there’s a sense of sadness that its shaggy pleasures are now in the past, rendering its faults comparatively minor.
- 60Wall Street JournalKyle SmithWall Street JournalKyle SmithIt was one of the last moments when the balance between 1940s-style uplift and what became known as cinema’s American New Wave still held; within a few years, boomer culture simply subsumed all else. “Desperate Souls” does a fine job of exploring the tectonics of that shift.
- The film takes only a moment to discuss the success of its source material. In fact, it is only at the end of the movie that "Desperate Souls" reveals that "Midnight Cowboy" won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Instead, the documentary spends too much time looking at the world around Schlesinger's drama.