With our country lurching ever closer to joining the “New World Order” mentality, a possible cold war, and many American voters embracing communist and socialist ideals and platforms, “The Manchurian Candidate” has never been more vital and relevant.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 27, 2024

Stealing the show is Oscar-nominated Angela Lansbury as Harvey's mother -- monstrous, manipulative and completely power-crazed, she is an unforgettable creation.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 17, 2024

The Manchurian Candidate thrilled audiences in 1962 while addressing McCarthyism and the Cold War in its own way.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 23, 2024

Heady stuff in a nail-biting chiller that still has the power to make viewers perspire profusely.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 27, 2023

The Manchurian Candidate is an extremely disturbing film, a remarkable achievement given that you don’t see that much in terms of graphic violence or overt sexual behavior on the screen...

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 20, 2023

“Manchurian” is one of the finest political intrigues in film history. It’s raw power and serpentine plot devices are terrific.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 6, 2023

Gaudy, surreal, inexplicable, sensible.

| Dec 7, 2022

An outstanding reminder of the dramatic force of black and white cinema. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 15, 2022

Life has rarely imitated art in more fantastic, catastrophic, and wildly suspicious ways than with The Manchurian Candidate.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 23, 2022

John Frankenheimer's cracked masterpiece...

| Nov 10, 2020

The Manchurian Candidate rings of relevancy while remaining a supreme example of a well made suspense thriller.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 8, 2020

One of the most successful adaptations from a novel to the big screen, capably translating the paranoia and suspense Condon imparted to his literary readership.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Aug 27, 2020

Its unreal characters [are] essentially relevant to ourselves in the Cold War, its extravagant fears for the future rooted logically in the recent past.

| Mar 6, 2020

Wildly implausible though some of its razzle-dazzle incidents may seem in retrospect, this Hollywood mystery melodrama is almost continuously exciting or amusing or both.

| Oct 11, 2019

An unstable compound of science fiction, political satire and murder which fails to explode.

| Aug 1, 2019

The direction and acting are good, so interest is maintained. Frankeheimer's handling of the early sequences, in which he attempts and succeeds in creating on film the corruption of the mind, is imaginative filmmaking.

| Mar 1, 2018

"The Manchurian Candidate" is striking in its hard edge. This is not a slick, subtle dissection of modern politics. This is a fist to the face.

| Jun 3, 2016

... what strikes me is the savvy and modern craft of its filmmaking.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 31, 2016

Classic Cold War satirical thriller stands test of time.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 23, 2013

[VIDEO ESSAY] John Frankenheimer directs with a distinctive complexity of visual depth and a surreal tone of lurking menace.

| Original Score: A | Sep 30, 2012