Popular reviews

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  Review by David Chen ★★★★ 5

  There's a scene in this movie where one of the people goes to Norwegian prison and you see their room and it's literally something that someone would pay thousands of dollars per month for in the States. 

  The American Prison Industrial Complex is inhumane, is what I'm saying.

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  Review by Cinematic Underdogs ★★★★½ 4

  Four takeaways from The Painter and the Thief:

  1. Wow. This twisted documentary turned so darkly surreal at times it left me in disbelief. The last time I felt so moved by a documentary was The Act of Killing, which still remains, in my humble opinion, a nonpareil cinematic experience.

  As a few have noted, there were some narrative developments that felt ostensibly staged, simply because the incidents were so perfectly metaphorical / serendipitous. With climactic payoffs as fortuitous as the manufactured flukes of fiction, I definitely found myself unsure of whether a few scenes were not premeditated.

  That said, so much of this felt utterly unprocessed: much too gritty and graphic to be reduced to creative fabrications. The depiction…

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★ 1

  On April 20, 2015, two large oil paintings were stolen from Oslo’s Galleri Nobel. The story didn’t quite rise to the level of international news — the work was only valued at €20,000 — but it was nevertheless a life-fracturing moment for Barbora Kysilkova, a gifted yet struggling young Czech artist who poured her trauma into those photoreal canvases for safekeeping. Both of the culprits were apprehended just a few days later, but Kysilkova only cared that neither of the paintings were found; something invaluable had been taken from her, and returning two random junkies to an Etsy-crafted Norwegian jail wasn’t going to make up the difference. She needed those men to provide another painting. And so Kysilkova, professing “a…

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★½

  It’s a little too easy to be dubious of this unusual documentary from director Benjamin Ree. It gives an account of an evolving friendship being established after artist Barbora Kysilkova has her paintings stolen by Karl Bertil-Nordland, and it sketches a sincerely humane and forgiving tale.

  Ree interviews the pair while they are interacting together as well as separately and gently surveys the forgathering dynamics. The footage is often emotional as they begin to open up to one another, but there's an underlying notion that they are consciously aware of the cameras on them. It's difficult not to wonder how their behaviours would have unfolded if the cameras weren't present. However, what it does do, and does it rather well,…

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  Review by Teresa ★★★★½ 1

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  The irony in The Painter and the Thief is that while the title of this documentary categorizes one protagonist as a painter and the other a thief, the film actually paints two holistic pictures of these characters, whose labels as “painter” and “thief” do not define them at all.

  In 2015, Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova received a call informing her that two of her most famous paintings, Chloe & Emma (left) and Swan Song (right), had just been stolen. Fortunately, security camera footage allowed the culprits to be identified quickly. At the court hearing, Kysilkova approaches the main suspect, Karl-Bertil Nordland, and asks him, “Maybe we could meet some time? Of course, all for the purpose…

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  Review by Scott Tobias ★★★½

  Fascinating documentary about a Czech painter who strikes up a complicated friendship with the Norwegian convict who steals two of her works. She has him sit for multiple portraits, the first of which draws a truly extraordinary reaction--in internet-ese, the thief "feels seen" in a big way. But the two also develop a co-dependency that upsets whatever power dynamics their relationship was originally premised on.

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  Review by Hunter Morris

  I love movies about art. The Painter and the Thief is a riveting dissection of art and subject, proving a painting is never just oil on canvas. They are reflections of the subject and the artist, even if they are uncomfortable ones. 

  The Painter and the Thief is one of those documentaries that sounds too good to be true. After her paintings are stolen, the painter befriends the thief and chooses to use him as her next subject for her art. The bond these two form is unique and pure. 

  This is the best film I’ve seen so far in 2020. The timeline is pieced together beautifully and the camera captures both the painter and the thief at their highs and lows. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see The Painter and the Thief in awards discussions later this year...if awards are even still happening that is...

  {#166 on Favorites list} {#1 on Best Movies of 2020 list}

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★½

  The Painter and the Thief is a real tearjerker. It feels like stumbling onto lives that we shouldn't. The film follows two people, an artist and a criminal. They are very different people, and are broken in different ways, on different scales. This is a film of human symbiosis, both helping each other in an emotional way, not necessarily in a material way.

  If this film has convinced me of anything, it is that paintings can have real human and social value. We see the titular thief's emotional reaction to a painting when he cries. And he really cries, like loud cries, for a long time. It's never explained why he cries, but that's a deeply moving moment. This is…

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  Review by Chris Gilman ★★★★½ 2

  This movie features sequences so beautiful and full of humanity and compassion and redemption that you forget The Thief is wearing a t-shirt that says “FAT PEOPLE ARE HARDER TO KIDNAP.”

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  Review by ˗ˏˋ Liam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★½

  wow wow woww neon sure does know a good doc when they see one

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  Review by Marianna Neal ★★★★

  A one of a kind, incredible story! Emotional, important, and insightful. We are more than our labels and our circumstances. Being seen is a powerful thing. Highly recommend not reading anything about the plot going into this one.

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  Review by Josh Larsen ★★★½ 1

  Repentance leads to relationship. But relationships are hard.

  www.larsenonfilm.com/the-painter-and-the-thief