Your Friends and Neighbors Critic Reviews

LaBute's "Your Friends and Neighbors'' is to "In the Company of Men'' as Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction'' was to "Reservoir Dogs.'' In both cases, the second film reveals the full scope of the talent, and the director, given greater resources, paints what he earlier sketched. Read the full review

Savagely funny black comedy. Read the full review

Bleak, scathing, and utterly compelling. Read the full review

LaBute achieves a bracing originality by observing human folly as a means to understand rather than condemn. Love or hate his films, LaBute is one of the most challenging filmmakers to emerge in years.Read the full review

The web of lies, failures and brutal revelations here is strong stuff, and it's the work of an original filmmaker who takes no prisoners. Read the full review

As was true for "In the Company of Men," LaBute doesn't care if viewers are offended. Supported by a fine group of actors, he tells the story without compromises, and that gives us a refreshing alternative to multiplex fare. Read the full review

Like Mamet, LaBute's approach is precise, stylized and detached, and he also follows Mamet the director in positioning his characters close to the camera, as if they were addressing the audience directly, without much depth of field -- or air to breathe. Read the full review

If these repugnant people were really your friends and neighbors, your time would be more profitably spent reading the real estate listings than the movie reviews. But for 1 1/2 hours in a darkened theater, the derailment of their unhealthy emotions makes for one compulsively watchable train wreck. Read the full review

It once again confuses a kind of juvenile titillation with insight and treats the ability to make audiences squirm as a pinnacle of film art. Read the full review