Single Man, A

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Some films aren't revelations, exactly, but they burrow so deeply into old truths about love and loss and the mess and thrill of life, they seem new anyway. A Single Man is one such film, one of the best of 2009

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

A singularly enjoyable and moving film.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Firth plays him as a man of his time who is also mournfully ahead of his time. He's addicted to his own broken heart. A Single Man may break yours as well.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

It’s a film of stunning beauty and deep underlying sadness, a self-financed labor of love filled with impossibly gorgeous, oft-unclothed men and dazzling eye candy.

NPR Bob Mondello

An exquisite, almost sensual grief suffuses every frame of A Single Man.

Time Richard Corliss

Tom Ford -- the Texas-born fashion designer who for a decade was the creative director at Gucci -- financed this first feature himself. The producer couldn't have hired a smarter director.

Variety Leslie Felperin

Like the speck of sand that seeds a pearl, it’s the tiny fleck of kitsch at the heart of “A Single Man” that makes it luminous and treasurable, despite its imperfections.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

For the most part, Ford has done good by the film, infusing a sad story with warmth and humor to spare. While loss is what makes George's experience universal, heart is what gives him such life.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Everything fits perfectly, from titles to fin, but most of all Firth, who dons the role of George like a fine bespoke suit.

Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore

An exquisite character study in grief.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

There’s a lot, in fact, that keeps this film from greatness. One performance alone recommends it. That’s enough.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The film belongs to Firth. Uncanny at showing the heart crumbling under George's elegant exterior, he gives the performance of his career.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Built around Firth’s fine work, A Single Man is a handsome film that, like its slender source novel, is stylish, quiet and sure.

Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz

It relies on a singularly brilliant performance by Colin Firth to make it one of the year's more satisfying films.

Empire Ian Freer

It sounds like a downer but A Single Man is exciting, emotionally alive filmmaking, a potent cocktail of style and substance. And Firth thoroughly deserves the Oscar.

Newsweek David Ansen

A Single Man's sleek surface may go against Isherwood's crisp, understated prose, yet the story's beating, wounded heart and its spiky intelligence still come through, personified in Firth's moving, eloquently internalized performance.

The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young

Sensitive and stylish.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The striking directorial debut from fashion designer Tom Ford -- is so unusually beautiful it would be easy to dismiss it as superficial.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

While A Single Man has its flaws, many of these fade in view of the performance and the power of Isherwood’s story.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Though the deliberate pace can feel slow to glacial at times, the visuals are gorgeous, and the melancholy mood is exquisitely evoked.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Then again, Colin Firth is enough. Every movie is a performance, but very seldom is a performance a movie.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Truth be told, Firth's transcendent performance in A Single Man renders that stylistic gimmick utterly unnecessary -- Firth provides all the emotional color this movie needs, and then some.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Firth plays George superbly, as a man who prepares a face to meet the faces that he meets.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Despite its downbeat theme, A Single Man is ultimately optimistic about the human capability to gradually make peace with seemingly insurmountable pain and tragedy.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It's hard to sell people on a movie about grief, but A Single Man deserves recognition for being about something real that usually goes unexplored: The grief from which there really can be no return.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

How fitting that Firth should carry A Single Man, a movie of quiet but potent emotional power, perfectly suited to his singular gifts.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

In a movie of murky surfaces and deep loneliness, the redemptive surprise of A Single Man is how it becomes a clear endorsement of the Buddy System.

Chicago Reader Staff (Not credited)

A romantic tale of love interrupted the isolation that is an inherent part of the human condition and ultimately the importance of the seemingly smaller moments in life.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The film is slowed by its own beauty, but it is salvaged by two majestic scenes.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It’s a dirgelike odyssey sparked by Julianne Moore’s overheated turn as George’s best friend – a welcome respite from Firth’s clenched emoting.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

A Single Man tells us about love, isolation, and sorrow, but never makes us feel any of those things.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A Single Man is like a big coffee table book on grief, loneliness, and loss - and mid-20th-century home design.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It doesn't matter if the movie around Firth is a good one or a lousy one: Either way, I wouldn't be able to explain how an actor could come up with a performance as subtle, in both its heartbreak and its magnificence, as this one is.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

A Single Man, with one significant exception, gives us only a series of immaculate poses. The exception is Firth, who, in spite of Ford's best efforts to turn him, too, into another piece of movable scenery, manages to convey a real human soul stirring beneath George's petrified façade

Time Out New York Keith Uhlich

Christopher Isherwood’s seminal queer novel deserves a film adaptation that captures both its sense of place and its activist spirit. Cowriter-director Tom Ford settles for the glossy ephemera of a Vanity Fair cover spread.