Dan Bayer Next Best Picture Jan 29, 2024 7/10

Simultaneously too much and not enough, Buirski’s film manages to situate its subject perfectly in a historical context. However, it leaves many ideas either half-formed or glanced over in its effort to cover so much in such a tight timeframe.

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Stephen Silver The SS Ben Hecht Jan 1, 2024 4/5

It's great, featuring an immersive look at the film and its themes, of both the countercultural and queer varieties.

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Mark R. Leeper Mark Leeper's Reviews Dec 24, 2023 8/10

DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY is a history of the 1950s and 1960s by clips from films and other media. There is some discussion of the effect MIDNIGHT COWBOY had, but it primarily looks at how the film came to be at all.

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Matt Brunson Film Frenzy Sep 27, 2023 3.5/4

A must-see for cineasts.

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Mark Jenkins Washington Post Sep 6, 2023 3/4

Obliquely but evocatively, Desperate Souls ponders the many roles of the cowboy: gay icon, cinematic hero and symbol of American manifest destiny from the Rockies to the Mekong.

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Dennis Harvey 48 Hills Jul 31, 2023

Nonetheless, there’s a lot to enjoy here, including Voight’s recounting of how he begged his way (including apologizing to a casting director he’d previously alienated) into auditioning for the role of Joe Buck...

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Valerie Kalfrin AWFJ.org Jul 8, 2023

an immersive kaleidoscope of reflections from the people who helped Midnight Cowboy come to be.

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Odie Henderson Boston Globe Jul 8, 2023 2.5/4

“Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy” is a documentary as unwieldy as its title. It’s undermined by the sheer scope of its examination, which includes details that are hammered into its study so oddly that they strain credibility.

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Chad Byrnes LA Weekly/Village Voice Jul 8, 2023

As more and more disenfranchised people are being silenced by the majority in this country, this movie is a reminder that film is not only a powerful chronicle of a time in history, but a valuable weapon to fight back.

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James Verniere Boston Herald Jul 7, 2023 A-

DSDCATLOMC reveals the origins of the only X-rated film to win a best picture Academy Award.

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Pat Mullen POV Magazine Jul 6, 2023

As a slice of film on film documentary, a piece of urban studies, and a consideration of queer life, the film approaches a cinematic landmark from all angles.

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Claudia Puig FilmWeek (LAist) Jun 28, 2023

I liked how it captures that sense of iconic change going on at the time.

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Peter Rainer FilmWeek (LAist) Jun 28, 2023

I think it's a pretty good film... But what I found a little off-putting is that it tries to do too much.

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Alan Zilberman Spectrum Culture Jun 26, 2023 1.5/5

At one point, Buirski must have realized that her material was kind of thin. Her expansion of the film’s scope, a rehash of 1960s social change, pads out the material with zero fresh insight.

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Glenn Dunks The Film Experience Jun 26, 2023

Buirsky shoots her talking head interviews (Cowboy actors Jon Voight, Brenda Vaccaro, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Salt among them) often in close-up as if to play on the original movie’s confronting nature.

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Conor Truax In Review Online Jun 23, 2023

In certain moments, it feels as if Buirski’s film is overflowing, the volume of information that it tries to condense too great. But the flow of that motion is also often beautiful, and can be completely engrossing.

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Owen Gleiberman Variety Jun 23, 2023

“Desperate Souls, Dark City” captures what a disarmingly intimate film “Midnight Cowboy” was, but the documentary is also an essay on how the movie acted as a kind of portal: a passage from the old world to the new one.

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Charles Kirkland, Jr. RogerEbert.com Jun 23, 2023 2/4

The documentary spends too much time looking at the world around Schlesinger's drama.

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Kyle Smith Wall Street Journal Jun 22, 2023

It was one of the last moments when the balance between 1940s-style uplift and what became known as cinema’s American New Wave still held... “Desperate Souls” does a fine job of exploring the tectonics of that shift.

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Ben Kenigsberg New York Times Jun 22, 2023

Whether “Midnight Cowboy” deserves or can bear the weight that “Desperate Souls” accords it, the director Nancy Buirski presents these issues with a good mix of small-bore and big-picture insights and only the occasional overstatement or fuzziness.

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