Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 16, 2011

| Original Score: B | Nov 16, 2011

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 16, 2011

| Original Score: A- | Sep 7, 2011

At least one critic has called this Sokurov's most political film, but on its deepest level it considers not a particular war but the complex feelings between mothers and the young men they send out into the world to kill or be killed.

| Oct 24, 2008

Sokurov is able to say things about the terrible conflict without obvious polemic but to the maximum possible effect. That's largely why he is one of the most audacious and original directors in the world today.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 26, 2008

His sepia images of war's futility are beautiful, and Vishnevskaya's face is a compelling one, but they cannot compensate for the soporific anti-narrative.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 26, 2008

The eerie haze of the visuals, the half-babble of music and the toneless, teasing dialogue dance attendance on the strangest ghost of all: Galina Vishnevskaya.

| Sep 26, 2008

But Aleksandr Sokurov, with the mesmerising and subtly disorientating directorial style that he has mastered, makes it feel emotionally real and imaginatively true. A wonderful film.

| Sep 26, 2008

A bone-weariness pervades every inch of the film; even the light is bleached dry of vitality.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 26, 2008

Apart from a thoroughly irritating background track of schmaltzy classical music, this is Sokurov at his shortest and most digestible.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 26, 2008

It's also quietly challenging, in its own way, not least in its portrait of old age, its trials, new freedoms and the privilege of changing one's mind before it becomes too late.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Sep 26, 2008

This is war as stalemate, with Aleksandr Burov's bleached images creating an alien landscape in which colour is as rare as compassion. Rarely has combat seemed so savage or futile.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 26, 2008

Remarkable, how little Sokurov tells us, while telling us so much.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 8, 2008

The film is built on a massive incongruity: Watching this octogenarian drag her little bent-up wheeled luggage cart, amid rolling tanks and military transport trucks, you're looking at two eternal verities%u2014war, and civilians caught up in its wake%u20

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 7, 2008

The sepia tones and the claustrophobic camerawork are instantly recognizable as Sokurov's work, and so is the emphasis on family intimacy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 18, 2008

Alexandra is a pleasure to watch, but it's also one of those lovely, unclassifiable movies that flourishes better with repeated or prolonged exposures.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 20, 2008

In the hands of visionary filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, this simple material makes for a haunting drama about war, generational relationships and the human condition.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 30, 2008

Aleksandr Sokurov's anti-war drama Alexandra opens with a curious image and spends 90 minutes squeezing it for all it's worth.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Mar 27, 2008

Alexandra is a much more modest undertaking, but is just as compelling. And Galina Vishnevskaya, an 81-year-old opera singer, is wonderful as Alexandra.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 26, 2008