Animals

Animals is a stark, brilliant, uncompromising, beautifully acted piece of work that deserves to be mentioned with “Panic in Needle Park” and “Requiem for a Dream” as a cautionary tale about drug addiction that doesn’t glamorize but also steers clear of proselytizing.

It's gritty and grim, but Animals is also a gripping portrait of young junkies in love.

There are a couple of things that make Animals effective, the main one being the performances of the two leads and the symbiotic relationship they create.

Animals may be the kind of story we've seen, but it's told in a way that makes it worth seeing again.

Grimy and sad but not sensationalistic, the debut feature is like Drugstore Cowboy drained of its hipness and sex appeal.

Searching for originality in an addiction narrative like Animals is a problem, because these stories of decline and degradation tend to sound the same. So the limited time frame is the film’s strongest asset, because it’s only paying attention to the final hours.

It sticks firmly to a Kerouac-lite immersion into young love rather than a more provocative portrait of the hazards inherent to modern urban life.