Gaspar Noé’s cinematic rape: “The 12 scenes of Irreversible — each shot in a single, semi-improvised take — constitute something of a tour de force. But so would being dragged through the streets by a wire noose. There is something to be said for violence that isn’t stylized and made to seem “fun” — that actually makes you feel like Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971) with your eyes pried open and no cathartic release. It could be argued that this is the only moral way to present violence, so that it hurts.

But there is nothing moral about Irreversible — only sneeringly superior and nihilistic, like Johnny Rotten at his most fatuous. [more] — David Edelstein, Slate