Sean Axmaker Stream on Demand Apr 26, 2025

It’s a powerful, provocative, ambitious drama set in the shadow of September 11, 2001, a marvelously messy film about the messiness of emotions and people and relationships, especially as they are tested in extreme circumstances.

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Keith Uhlich Time Out Aug 28, 2024 5/5

This is frayed-edges filmmaking at its finest.

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CJ Sheu Review Film Review Jul 7, 2022

[This] is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a William Gaddis adaptation, [...] [in which people] talk to each other and to Lisa [an astounding Anna Paquin], and Lisa talks to them, but nobody’s listening.

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Jason Adams My New Plaid Pants Jul 2, 2021

This is a movie so dense and somewhat sloppy, somewhat wonderfully so, that I don't know I can do it any justice

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Ed Travis Hollywood Jesus Mar 31, 2020

I highly recommend investing in the extended cut of this important drama. You'll be forced to wrestle with the meaning of justice...

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Josh Larsen LarsenOnFilm Feb 19, 2020 3.5/4

Anna Paquin offers one of the more indelible portraits of late adolescence put on screen.

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Sarah Boslaugh TheArtsStl Dec 30, 2019 8/10

... captures the essence of New York City life (or the Upper West Side version of it, anyway) as well as any film ever has, while also portraying the difficult path to maturity of a 17-year old girl ...

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Abbie Bernstein Assignment X Feb 8, 2019 B

Margaret has some intriguing ideas that don't often get dramatized in this fashion, and it has a fine cast bringing it to life. Still, like its young protagonist, sometimes it comes off as a bit too self-righteous and self-involved.

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Kelly Jane Torrance Washington Examiner Jan 4, 2019 2/4

Let's hope [Director Kenneth] Longeran's next film doesn't take over a decade to appear -- and that he learns where his real talents lie.

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Pat Padua DCist Aug 30, 2018

So contrived and ham-handed that its successes are mostly drowned in its failures.

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Rubén Rosario Hudak on Hollywood Aug 27, 2018 4/4

From its majestic slo-mo opening shots of New York City pedestrians to its devastating closing moments at the Met, "Margaret" enthralls like no other...This smart, literate urban opera is well deserving of a standing ovation.

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Robert Koehler Cinema Scope Oct 2, 2017

In Margaret, everyone has her own opera.

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Martin Tsai Critic's Notebook Oct 7, 2015

"Margaret" not only faithfully captures a young woman's growing pains, it also serves as an emblem for our collective post-9/11 grieving process.

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Sean Burns Philadelphia Weekly May 3, 2015

This movie may be a lot of things, but finished isn't one of them.

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Guy Lodge Empire Magazine Sep 29, 2014 4/5

Knotty, ambitious and trading in messy human truths, it's the work of a master dramatist. Here's hoping Lonergan's next one reaches us a little faster.

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Jack Giroux Film School Rejects Sep 29, 2014 B+

A messy-yet-poignant dramatic opera about the power of regret, loss, and worst of all, being a teenager.

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Neil Smith Total Film Sep 29, 2014 3/5

If two and a half hours in the company of quarrelsome, self-absorbed New Yorkers don't sound too punishing, there's much to like.

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Craig Mathieson sbs.com.au Sep 29, 2014 3.5/5

It has failings, but they're not fundamental, and if anything they speak to just how much Lonergan tried to coerce into a single story. He was aiming for ecstatic transcendence.

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Susan G. Cole NOW Toronto Sep 29, 2014 4/5

Lonergan's brainy script wouldn't work without Paquin, who makes Lisa a force of nature. As a walking paradox -- both controlling and completely out of control -- she's riveting.

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Emma Dibdin Total Film Sep 29, 2014 4/5

Margaret's journey to the screen may've been rocky, but the result is a singularly compelling study of trauma. It's a raw, messily magnificent near-masterpiece.

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