Rolling Stone
4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] 1976 sci-fi masterpiece....[It] probes environmental degradation and the corporate state in ever-relevant terms." 09/22/2005 p.118Entertainment Weekly
"It remains visually stunning..." -- Grade: B 10/07/2005 p.59 Premiere
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Roeg is a true cinematic poet, but he's a determinedly modernist one..." 11/01/2005 p.110 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH crowned Roeg as the heir to '60s time-tweaking experimental mentalists like Godard and Resnais." 03/01/2007 p.126 Uncut
3 stars out of 5 -- "[E]ntirely of its own kind, and at times mesmerising." 03/01/2007 p.121 Sight and Sound
"[A] kaleidoscopic jumble of images and ideas....[With] some bravura camera and editing tricks..." 03/01/2007 p.83 Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide 8 of 10
...highly original, fabulously photographed adaptation of Walter Tevis' classic fantasy novel is riveting for the first two-thirds, goes downhill toward the end. Still tops of its kind.
Reel.com 10 of 10
In good sci-fi the genre isn't the heart of the tale, but rather an examination of what makes us human, and whether that's a good thing to be. Nicolas Roeg's 1976 masterpiece, The Man Who Fell to Earth is what a sci-fi film should be: challenging, beautiful, explorative, and thoroughly alien...Nicolas Roeg's early films (Walkabout, Don't Look Now) showed an eye for cinematic splendor, but The Man Who Fell to Earth is the product of an artist at his peak. The cinematography is unbearably beautiful, from shots of the New Mexico desert to visions of a dying Anthea. Mirrors play a key role in the visuals, and there are often shots of mirrors reflecting other mirror, giving the illusion of reflection into infinity. Notions of viewing, sight, and vision come up repeatedly throughout the film--via both dialogue and visuals--from Farnsworth's extreme Coke-bottle glasses to the multiple televisions Newton watches as he mourns for and forgets about his abandonment of his people, planet and, especially, family. Roeg also deals heavily with the concepts of alienation and the other. Newton may be the only alien, but all the characters (all of us?) are outside of society's status systems, and no one could possibly embody universal otherness any better than David Bowie, who, in his frailty and detachment, is the perfect personification of the alien. - James Emanuel Shapiro
Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
It requires an almost courageous leap of the imagination to take Nicholas Roeg's "The Man Who Fell to Earth" seriously. Here's a film so preposterous and posturing, so filled with gaps of logic and continuity, that if it weren't so solemn there'd be the temptation to laugh aloud. And yet, at the same time, this is a film filled with interesting ideas - it's like a bunch of tentative sketches for a more assured film that was never made...There's also an interesting relationship, lightly sketched in, between Buck Henry (as the president of Bowie's business ventures) and Chicago actor Ric Riccardo. The suggestion of affection and caring here is, once again, a nice contrast to the Bowie character's inexorable dropping-out act. The film's cinematography is sensational at times; as he did in "Don't Look Now," Roeg once again presents sex scenes spectacularly intercut with contrasting, contradictory material (one of the breakups is done as counterpoint to "The Third Man"). "The Man Who Fell to Earth" was apparently at least 30 minutes longer in its British version. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the connections and the structure worked better in Roeg's original cut. But what we have here are pieces of a vast, ambitious, complex conception. Some of the pieces are, in themselves, so very good that we really regret they don't fit together. - Roger Ebert
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