 As Brokeback Mountain expanded into most major cities this weekend, critics continued to heap praise on it. Stephen Holden in the New York Times called it "moving and majestic" and "a landmark." But Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times remarked that Brokeback "is a groundbreaking film because it isn't. It's a deeply felt, emotional love story that deals with the uncharted, mysterious ways of the human heart just as so many mainstream films have before it. The two lovers here just happen to be men." Joe Morgenstern wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "Love stories come and go, but this one stays with you -- not because both lovers are men, but because their story is so full of life and longing, and true romance." Peter Howell in the Toronto Star described it as "that rarest of things, a small picture that packs a big enough punch for Oscar consideration -- it's currently the front-runner -- but that retains all the distinctive elements that make it so unlike most multiplex offerings." Several critics, however, suggested that their colleagues had gone too far. Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News faulted the movie for being "tediously paced," and commented, "It's really a conventional love story in the mode of Gone With the Wind or Titanic." And Kyle Smith in the New York Post concluded that the film gets "gummed up with melodrama" and "though it's sad and sobering, it's still only a rough draft of a great movie." |
