77
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumA warm and honest portrait of a marriage at its most mysterious, and ordinary.
- 80SalonAndrew O'HehirSalonAndrew O'HehirBlock has made a sad, delightful and half-accidental movie about his own parents.
- 80VarietyEddie CockrellVarietyEddie CockrellA tonal triumph of true-life storytelling told with equal measures of tension and redemption.
- 80The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottMr. Block has put his parents’ life, and his own, into this film with such warmth and candor that it may take more than one viewing to recognize it as a work of art.
- 80L.A. WeeklyElla TaylorL.A. WeeklyElla TaylorOpen-minded, probing but never prurient, 51 Birch Street is much more than a portrait of suburban ennui. It's a loving, painful map of the gulf between thought and word, between word and deed, that props up good marriages, and sends bad ones to hell.
- What makes 51 Birch Street a moving revelation rather than a therapeutic exercise is Block's commitment to understanding his parents, Mike and Mina, on their own terms, regardless of what it does to his image of them.
- 75New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanNew York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanThe intimate history of Doug Block's parents becomes fodder for a broader look at family secrets in this complex documentary.
- 75Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsChicago TribuneMichael PhillipsThe film has a compelling way about it. All five of the immediate Block family members emerge in full and affecting portraits.
- 70Village VoiceVillage VoiceBegins shakily, with a naked self-consciousness that can be off-putting, but quickly develops into an absorbing and ever deepening drama.