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Downtown 81

2000

Edo Bertoglio

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ted Bafaloukos, Tom Baker, Eszter Balint ...

6.4

128

Drama. Comedy The film is a day in the life of a young artist, Jean Michel Basquiat, who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted.

	Author	Review
United States	John DeFore The Hollywood Reporter	"For anyone steeped in or curious about the often uncategorizable music made during this period, 'Downtown 81' is a joyous artifact"	POS
United States	Dave Kehr The New York Times	"It's as a documentary that 'Downtown 81' is most successful, particularly at those moments when the somewhat unfocused filmmaking allows us to look past the foreground characters and catch glimpses of a vanished cityscape"	POS
United Kingdom	Adrian Searle The Guardian	"A delightful curio of a movie (...) [It] is both innocent and poignant (...) There are some great walk-on parts and terrific live music"	POS
United States	Brendan Kelly Variety	"An extraordinary real-life snapshot of hip, arty, clubland Manhattan in the post-punk era (...) It’s such a shame that so many of the other elements in this curiosity, originally shot in 1980-’81, fall so flat"	NEU
United States	Michael Joshua Rowin Slant	"Much of 'Downtown 81's charm rests on having captured the thrill of art being created by like-minded weirdoes in their natural, incubating habitat (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United Kingdom	Jason Wood BBC	"The film, which possesses nothing if not energy, is notable mainly for its contributions, musical and otherwise (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

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