At once delicate and gritty, wistful and deeply satisfying.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Oct 29, 2008

In an era when Hollywood has largely lost the ability to distinguish between romance and sex, Once is the rare film that recognizes that love is no less love for being held in check, it is merely a different kind of love.

Full Review | Sep 18, 2008

Once doesn't plop its emotions on its characters' sleeves, and it trusts us enough to leave some of the best stuff unstated. In other words, it trusts us to know that half the music lies between the notes.

Full Review | Dec 19, 2007

A simply sung tale that deserves attention.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2007

Not since Before Sunset has a romantic film managed to be as touching, funny or as hard to forget as Once.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2007

A soulful valentine to music, friendship and the joys of honest hard graft, played out in the bedsits and recording studios of a deglamourised Dublin.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2007

Once is a largely successful attempt to present something old-fashioned - a romantic musical - in a modern way and on a budget that stops some distance short of six figures.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2007

In some places the camerawork feels a little underwhelming, and at times the leads' inexperience in acting shows up in comparison to their musical performances, but overall it works as a quiet, wistful modern romance.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2007

The year's most pleasant cinematic surprise. Once has enough heart, wit, verve and sheer songwriting genius to ensure you'll see it far more times than its title suggests.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2007

This Irish film has simplicity and it makes the film seem like something new, even though it comprises familiar elements.

Full Review | Aug 31, 2007

Forget everything you think you know about the movie musical, one of the more predictable genres. With Once, writer-director John Carney deconstructs it and reinvents it as something wholly new, inspired and alive.

Full Review | Aug 9, 2007

Don't miss Once. It has to be seen and heard to be believed and enjoyed.

Full Review | Jun 27, 2007

The real dialogue is the music, as the lovers communicate through lyrics. The filmmaking is unadorned, but the emotional virtuosity is rhapsodic.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/6 | Jun 23, 2007

Are you looking for a little film you can make your own, an enchanting, unpretentious blend of music and romance you can watch forever? If you do, Once is about to come into your life and make it whole.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 7, 2007

Told with the simplicity of a Chaplin film (more than once I was reminded of City Lights), Once has the tentative and unpredictable amble of a chance encounter rather than the absolute and overdetermined structure of a Hollywood film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 7, 2007

Given [director] Carney's roughshod methods, Once never resembles a standard studio offering, which works much to its benefit. Between Carney's unadorned writing and his rustic directing approach, Once always remains grounded in reality.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 2, 2007

Musicals ask us to take a happy leap of faith, to believe in a world in which people express their feelings by bursting into song. With Once, Carney has created that world within our own, and it weaves an irresistible spell.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 1, 2007

One of the movie's pleasures is that it keeps us asking what sort of love story will Once become?

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 1, 2007

Once transcends even its own ambitions, becoming a complex meditation on relationships, Irish culture, and music.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 1, 2007

Stripped of just about all artifice and dazzle, shot on the cheap on city streets, this Sundance gem is wiser about artistic creation and the fickle ways of love than any song-and-dance spectacular you've recently encountered.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | May 28, 2007