86
Metascore
14 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The New York TimesGlenn KennyThe New York TimesGlenn KennyDawson City now enters that time line as an instantaneously recognizable masterpiece.
- 100Village VoiceMichael AtkinsonVillage VoiceMichael AtkinsonIt’s an orgy for film geeks and history jonesers, to be sure, and the revelation of how exactly the prints got waylaid and then buried in the permafrost, saved by virtue of Dawson City’s fading away in the twentieth century, proves a sweet narrative reward.
- 100Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranLos Angeles TimesKenneth TuranThe thrilling documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time is indescribable not because it's ambiguous (it's totally straightforward) but because it does so many things so beautifully it is hard to know where to begin.
- 91Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerChristian Science MonitorPeter RainerThe rise and fall of Dawson City, intimately tied to the vagaries of climate and man’s greed, is heartbreakingly rendered.
- 91The Film StageJose SolísThe Film StageJose SolísMorrison proves that there is no better way to tell the story of movies than with movies, and it seems almost spooky how the Dawson City reels supplied him with the material he needed.
- 88Slant MagazineChuck BowenSlant MagazineChuck BowenThroughout, direcgor Bill Morrison mixes documentarian detail with an ecstatic sense of poetry.
- 88RogerEbert.comGodfrey CheshireRogerEbert.comGodfrey CheshireDawson City: Frozen Time is a rather clunky and uninspiring title for a film that’s both revelatory and deeply fascinating.
- 80Paste MagazineKenji FujishimaPaste MagazineKenji FujishimaAs impressively exhaustive as it is as a work of history, Dawson City: Frozen Time plays even more affectingly as Morrison’s most direct love letter to cinema: as a tool not only for recording history, but also for capturing between-the-lines truths that history books can only graze.
- 75IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichAs an act of preservation, Frozen Time is a marvel, a miracle, a complete good. As an act of storytelling, it’s still a bit too cold for the nitrate to catch fire.
- 67The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyThe A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyIt’s much more involving as a work of pure and hypnotic collage than as a researched narrative of facts, dates, and names.