86
Metascore
34 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumThis truly intimate film invites viewers to commune as well and feel a profound living connection with fellow humans of 30,000 years ago.
- 90The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttTo call this movie fascinating is akin to calling the Grand Canyon large.
- 90VarietyJustin ChangVarietyJustin ChangFiltering the world's oldest paintings through the latest in cinematic technology, Werner Herzog delivers a one-of-a-kind art-history lesson in Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
- 88Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertSpellbinding.
- 80EmpireAdam SmithEmpireAdam SmithA typically quixotic documentary in which great unknown artists from 35,000 years ago collaborate with one in 2011. Profound, mysterious and utterly absorbing.
- 80New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNew York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinCave of Forgotten Dreams is sometimes frozen by Herzog's awe. But it's hard not to love him for always trying to look beyond the surface of things, to find a common chord in the landscape of dreams.
- 80Chicago ReaderChicago ReaderThe paintings are extraordinary and the 3-D cinematography invites the viewer to get lost in every brushstroke. This is one of the few films to use the format for intellectual, even philosophical ends: the added depth parallels the deeper understanding of humanity that the paintings inspire.
- 70Boxoffice MagazineJohn P. McCarthyBoxoffice MagazineJohn P. McCarthyWith his (Herzog) idiosyncratic blend of serendipity, bluntness and mischievous irony, he's able to get at deep questions like no other documentarian.
- 60Time OutJoshua RothkopfTime OutJoshua RothkopfCave of Forgotten Dreams feels stuck in a middling zone of too much conjecture and not enough scholarship.
- 60Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanFor better or worse, the movie does for Chauvet what Baudrillard complained an on-site replica did for Lascaux-render the real thing false.