Chance Solem-Pfeifer Willamette Week Jan 22, 2025

The film slips into a level of dreamy, nonlinear creativity seldom found in Eastwood’s unfussy directorial style. Would-be framing devices become multidimensional narrative portals.

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Herb Boyd The Crisis Nov 14, 2023

Sure, the music is great, but it should have been placed in political and historical context. Bird did not wage the cultural revolution alone, nor did he fall from out of the sky.

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Terry Francis Southern Voice (Atlanta) May 8, 2023

Aside from Lennie Niehaus' superb work as musical supervisor... and Forest Whitaker and Diane Venora's performances in the lead roles, all you get are clichés and the film's superficial response to an artist's descent into self-destruction.

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Tom Cassidy Common Sense Media Dec 1, 2021 3/5

People who don't like jazz often complain it's overlong, complicated, noodling, and meandering. These criticisms can all be leveled at director Clint Eastwood's Bird, who, unlike a jazz master, doesn't back up his work with any inventive flair.

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Richard Propes TheIndependentCritic.com Sep 3, 2020 3.0/4.0

It is only thanks to Whitaker's performance, which won him a Golden Globe, that we are truly able to bond with Bird and truly care about his lifelong challenges.

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Charles Mudede The Stranger (Seattle, WA) Feb 12, 2020

Eastwood directed Bird in much the same way he plays jazz piano-not with caution, not with precision, but with a love that is supreme.

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Richard Combs Sight & Sound Jan 16, 2020

What the film pulls off is the difficult fusion of this kind of accuracy with larger 'truths' which are no respecter of accuracy.

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David Sterritt Christian Science Monitor Dec 11, 2018

"Bird'' is a movie that demands your full attention, refusing to yield all its meanings if you sit back and let it wash over you.

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Michael Wilmington Los Angeles Times Dec 11, 2018

In this movie and its hot, fast bursts of bop, Charlie Parker gets a fitting elegy.

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Variety Staff Variety Mar 26, 2009

Sensitively acted, beautifully planned visually and dynamite musically, this is a dramatic telling of the troubled life of a revolutionary artist.

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Urban Cinefile Critics Urban Cinefile Jun 5, 2008

The greatest strength of Clint Eastwood's bio-pic tribute to jazz saxophone great Charlie 'Bird' Parker, is its dark and haunting mood.

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Brad Laidman Film Threat Dec 6, 2005 3.5/5

Eastwood shows a Parker that is haunted by his boyhood addiction, and shows off the innumerable people who loved his talent who were let down by him time and again.

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Philip Martin Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Feb 18, 2005 3/5

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Jeffrey M. Anderson Combustible Celluloid Jan 15, 2005

Eastwood made the switch from Hollywood icon to great world director with his viciously underrated Bird.

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Jake Euker F5 (Wichita, KS) Mar 18, 2004 2/5

Overlong, and reeking of prestige.

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Jeremy Heilman MovieMartyr.com Jan 3, 2004 71/100

Eastwood clearly is committed to presenting Bird to his audience with all of his complexities and contradictions intact.

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Jeffrey Westhoff Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL) Nov 13, 2003 3/5

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Janet Maslin New York Times May 20, 2003 3/5

Bird is less moving as a character study than it is as a tribute and as a labor of love. The portrait it offers, though hazy at times, is one Charlie Parker's admirers will recognize.

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James Sanford Kalamazoo Gazette Jul 29, 2002 2/5

"a well-produced downer that moves like a funeral procession"

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Bob Grimm Las Vegas Mercury Jul 26, 2002 3/5

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