Hard Truths

critic Reviews

, 95% Certified Fresh Tomatometer Score
  • Marianne Jean-Baptiste puts on a prickly masterclass in Hard Truths, another superb character study from writer-director Mike Leigh.
  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Danny LeighFinancial Times
    Call it the sorrow of the ordinary front door, of which Hard Truths grows into a graceful study. Credit to Jean-Baptiste and the actors. And to Leigh, for making, at 81, one of the best films of his career. 
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Wendy IdeObserver (UK)
    Make no mistake, these performances are certainly worth the weight of attention that is placed upon them. But great turns don’t always amount to a great picture.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Laura VenningEmpire Magazine
    A gruelling but ultimately rewarding experience, this is Leigh at his most confrontational, devastating and humane, aided by the unadulterated power of Jean-Baptiste’s career-redefining performance.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Mark KermodeKermode and Mayo's Take (YouTube)
    A really fine film.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Martin RobinsonLondon Evening Standard
    Jean-Baptiste will rightly take all the plaudits, but it’s a reminder of the careful work Leigh does. For all the naturalism, Leigh is a stylist as much as Pedro Almodovar is, just one more interested in capturing scared humans than plot.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Christina NewlandiNews.co.uk
    Baptiste is toweringly real: formidable and heartbreaking in her performance.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Chuck BowenStyle Weekly (Richmond, VA)
    Marvel at the vividness of the demons that Jean-Baptiste has been able to conjure in this extraordinary performance: Her exorcism is our rapture.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Ray PrideNewcity
    Its searing virtues work from surfaces and deepen, until its wordless final passages, where one character finds hope and two others must, or die... Pansy is one of the great portraits of contemporary depression and loneliness.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Latoya AustinMovie Marker
    Hard Truths is an enjoyable, unfettered microscopic gaze behind closed doors within the pride of Caribbean households with other rituals of Caribbean home life ... Hard Truths presents no easy answers and is subtle but illuminating
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Tom ShoneSunday Times (UK)
    Hard Truths is minor Leigh, to be sure... but it’s made with all his usual rigour and an exquisite balance of Dickensian comic grotesquery with cup-of-tea-and-a-biscuit sympathy.
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