GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

pyrocitor Love is Strange is an elegant, lovely little movie about how the course of life doesn't always run smooth, even if love does. Director Ira Sachs crafts a thoroughly human story - a tender love story of two men in their silver years, but equally a dour indictment of the New York housing market - that's too specifically unjust not to ring true, and all the more impossible not to invest in.Sachs is a director of consummately understated style, and he conducts with precise sparsity here, working wonders playing emotional scenes out in long, silent takes, allowing the omnipresent background Chopin to do the talking. There are snapshots here that linger as strikingly, unexpectedly vivid of the year: Ben and George's pleasantly quirky wedding, tearful, clutching hug as they reunite after a prolonged absence, and tenderly frank chat over drinks win the heartwarming points, but a prolonged sequence of John Lithgow pleasantly blathering on and intruding on Marisa Tomei's writing also stands out as savagely funny. Naturally, it's far from perfect. The script dollops on exposition somewhat thick more often than is comfortable, and the only real 'strangeness' in store are some overly convenient plot contrivances, lingering narrative loose ends, and awkward temporal editing gaps, which play as jarring stumbling blocks. Still, whether uplifting or deeply sad (and there's plenty of both in store), the film is too disarmingly sweet and honest to sweat the trappings much, and there's at least one third act plot point that suggests a much more clichéd, contrived tertiary conflict which instead pulls the rug out from the viewer, which is a pleasant surprise indeed.Most crucially: John Lithgow and Alfred Molina. Bless 'em. To say their chemistry and interplay is lovable would be the understatement of understatements. Their work here is simply beautiful, wholly believable as a couple who have spent a lifetime in love - not without tribulations, but all the stronger for them - weathering a steadily growing nuisance of a situation with dignity. The tiny moments of watching them interact are sure to conjure an irrepressible grin throughout, making their enforced situation all the more urgent and heartbreaking. Otherwise, the irresistible Marisa Tomei lends crucial support, with a delightfully naturalistic performance as Lithgow's beleaguered host facing marital struggles of her own, while Charlie Tahan is convincingly irritating as the film's requisite troubled teen, but a strong enough actor to hit sympathy gold with designated emotional moments.Strange may not be the operative word here, but there are countless, considerably more pleasant applicable adjectives to rifle through. Love is Strange is an inauspicious delight, adorable, bittersweet, and genuine, and easily worth sinking into. I'd even go as far as to say: you could very well love it; at the very least it's sure to make you smile. -8/10

Dunroman It's quite a long time since seeing a film so evidently intended for the thinking and a film so much of its age.While it might be easy to categorise this as a film about Gay Love, Marriage and the consequences, that would be a serious mistake as those themes are almost incidental, the important themes are much wider, the circularity of life and love, growing up, family and generations.What was interesting to me was what was NOT said or shown, like a good book you need to read between the lines.Finally a word about the score - sumptuous.Any lover of Chopin will feel the hair on the back of their necks, particularly at the final Berceuse with orchestral arrangement, which flows like the ripple of evening waves up and down a deserted beach - music at its most ...musical.

Rick James A lovely and touching film with some frustrations. The script is echt New York, right down to the reference to the Department of the Aging, the disdain for Poughkeepsie and the invocation of rent control. Never mind that the latter is regulated by the state not the city as the script states, or that you can't pass on a controlled apartment willy-nilly to a guy you met at a party. It's still pretty authentic, including the ugly interiors of the Brooklyn apartment and the stunning final scene in the West Village. True New Yorkers discern from the script that the elderly couple bought as renters when it converted to co-op 5 years earlier, presumably at an insider's price, so their net from the recent sale in 2013 is bound to be much greater than the 17,000-odd the script gives them. The longueurs on themes of Chopin add to the atmosphere. The acting is good if somewhat forced because this little film was probably shot over 2 weeks when Lithgow and Molina had the time. The political statement comes early, that a religious institution is exempt from civil-rights laws and can discriminate against someone based on their sexual orientation, which is otherwise forbidden in New York city and state; and that's why the church can fire George because the archbishop doesn't like him being gay. It seems gratuitous that George out of the blue writes to the parents of the school to affirm his faith despite having been wronged: that seems like an afterthought inserted to make the movie extend to 94 minutes. The black screen between Ben and George's discussion of Ben's art and the scene of Joey visiting George sans Ben in his new apartment is jarring, and the viewer is obliged to fill in the missing pieces unaided. Uncle Ben is not a particularly likable character, mostly insensitive to the dynamics of the relatives who have taken him in. Is his asking Joey late at night whether he's ever been in love another filler? Why in 2013 would a couple of high-school kids steal books from the library and what is the point in the story? Why George's reference to Ben's "pension" but none to Social Security, which he would have at age 71? Am I the only one who wondered if Joey's emotional reaction in the stairwell in the penultimate scene is regret at having given George the painting of Vlad, the guy he really loved? That would give the film more poignancy and impact. The film is well worth watching, with a solid message of devotion.

evanston_dad A modern day version of the 1937 Leo McCarey film "Make Way for Tomorrow," with a gay married couple in place of the elderly husband and wife who served as the focus of the earlier film. "Love Is Strange" has two wonderful actors at its center -- John Lithgow and Alfred Molina -- but they're not convincing as a gay couple, coming across instead like old college buddies crashing with one another. The film is too morose and dreary by far -- the saving grace of McCarey's film is the final third, when the elderly parents embark on one final day of being together before being separated indefinitely (perhaps forever), and they open a window for the viewer on to the rich history they share and which their selfish children have no knowledge of. The film is still tragic, but the tragedy is tempered a bit by the fact that these two people have enjoyed a life together and built a world of memories with each other that no one can take from them. No such message is conveyed in "Love Is Strange"; the result is more depressing than it is bittersweet."Love Is Strange" is yet one more cautionary tale for those who want to remake classics. Don't bother if you're going to make a film that is inferior in every way to the original.Grade: B-