Critic Reviews

It’s visually astonishing and often devastating, too. This might be the freshest film about young people in America since Larry Clark’s Kids.

You could also argue that this almost intentionally exhausting film is too much of a good thing. But there’s amazingly little of it you'd want to live without.

Part dreamy millennial picaresque, part distorted tapestry of Americana and part exquisitely illustrated iTunes musical, “Honey” daringly commits only to the loosest of narratives across its luxurious 162-minute running time. Yet it’s constantly, engrossingly active, spinning and sparking and exploding in cycles like a Fourth of July Catherine wheel.

In Andrea Arnold’s sublime film American Honey, freedom is relative, but every once in a while it can feel so damn good that the whole world disappears around it.

American Honey, long and messy as it is, is by turns observant and exuberant, and sweet in a way that is both unexpected and organic.

I don’t know how Ms. Arnold works the magic she does with her actors, whether amateur or professional — Mr. LaBeouf inhabits his role with sly charm and explosive ferocity — but it’s an expansion of what she started doing more than a decade ago in her remarkable “Wasp.”

It’s bold, captivating cinema, with a soundtrack that threatens to never leave your head.

The film slowly, slowly blossoms into an emotional wildflower by the end, leaving us with a scene that is kind of spontaneous road baptism, an unsure note of spiritual birth.

It's the closest thing to a magnum opus in Arnold's blossoming career.

It is indulgent in its length and relative plotlessness, though there’s no point at which the bravado of Arnold’s filmmaking, Lane’s riveting performance or Ryan’s stunning Polaroid-shaped lensing ever flag.