73
Metascore
13 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91The Film StageRory O'ConnorThe Film StageRory O'ConnorA rare and elusive sense of myth is captured in The Tale of King Crab.
- 88Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreAn intimate piece of romantic folklore with breathtaking geographical ambition, The Tale of the King Crab comes to theaters feeling familiar, but startling in what it shows us and where it takes us.
- 88RogerEbert.comPeter SobczynskiRogerEbert.comPeter SobczynskiThis Italian import's title may make it sound like either a kids movie or a cooking documentary, but it proves to be a wild and compelling work that simultaneously evokes the influence of such disparate filmmakers as Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog, and Sergio Leone (not to mention a dash of “Broadway Danny Rose”-era Woody Allen) while still coming across as a fresh and unique cinematic vision.
- Watching The Tale Of King Crab feels like watching the stories on which all later stories have been based. You also get brooding intensity and slippery, dreamlike atmospherics and dialogues that strip things back to their essentials.
- 80The New York TimesGlenn KennyThe New York TimesGlenn KennyThe movie’s depictions of landscapes both sere and fertile, and its all-but-palpable portrayals of isolation, have echoes of the best work of Werner Herzog and Lucrecia Martel. But de Righi and Zoppis here show more genuine affinity than affected influence; they’re moviemakers worth keeping an eye on.
- 80VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeIt’s an old-fashioned literary fable, spiked with shots of grimacing men with sunburned faces blasting one another with shotguns that wouldn’t be out of place in a Sergio Leone movie.
- 75Slant MagazineCarson LundSlant MagazineCarson LundA film that so clearly takes delight in the unfolding of a story and the unpacking of an enigmatic character is refreshing in an arthouse landscape where such narrative qualities are often relegated to secondary concerns.
- 67IndieWireRyan LattanzioIndieWireRyan LattanzioThe Tale of King Crab is an engrossing, if slight riff on 1970s foreign arthouse classics — though not quite as spellbinding as its forebears, despite a bifurcated structure that makes for two occasionally tantalizing films in one.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckThe Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckThe Tale of King Crab strains mightily for a poetic quality that it never quite achieves.
- 60The GuardianCath ClarkeThe GuardianCath ClarkeWhat first-time feature directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis seem to be going for here is a Herzogian waking nightmare, but the necessary sense of horror and despair never fully comes off.