Peter Bradshaw is, I've been told, a critic unafraid of tearing shreds off a movie. His review of Synecdoche, New York is up at the Guardian, and did he tear shreds off the film? Did he ever! Nope, no he didn't.

For his directorial debut, the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has outdone himself, for good or ill, with the strangest, saddest movie imaginable, a work suffused with almost evangelical zeal in the service of disillusion. It's a film of mad Beckettian grandeur about the terrible twin truths of existence: life is disappointing and death inescapable. And it supplies a third insight: art is part of life and so doomed to failure in the same way.

... At the end of it all, you will feel as if you have lived through some crazy tragedy, swum a chlorinated Hellespont of tears. It is not for everyone, but is utterly extraordinary in its way. If Charlie Kaufman never does anything again, this will stand as his cracked monument. (Source)

He gives the film five stars.

If you click the "Damon Wise's guide..." link beside the review, you'll find a few interesting quotes that I don't think we've seen before, from Charlie and the cast. Worth checking out.