Survival films are generally difficult to watch, given their dire subject matters, and there times when hitting standard dramatic beats inhibits the film’s creative flow, but “127 Hours” is about as entertaining and exciting as the genre gets.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 27, 2024

In the wrong hands, the story could have easily been toned down to movie-of-the-week quality banality. But the presentation is pure cinema, designed to create the illusion of motion and progress in otherwise stationary circumstances.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 3, 2023

It's the best movie one would want to watch with their eyes closed. [Full review in Spanish]

| Oct 6, 2022

An indelible physical experience with a bit of spiritual glop ladled onto it to help the bitter medicine go down.

| Original Score: B | Oct 4, 2022

'127 Hours' is as much a character study as a survival thriller, the story of a man who isn’t alienated from the world so much as purposefully disconnected.

| Jul 9, 2022

Boyle made what we all came to experience retain a sense of horrible surprise. You know Ralston survives, you know he gets the arm off, and yet those final few minutes of the film really truly got me.

| Jul 2, 2021

You'll laugh, you'll barf, you'll probably be a bit bored in places. But if you can make it through all this you'll find a film that'll probably make your heart skip a beat too.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 25, 2021

There are some creative visual tricks and a little ingenuity, but five days of being stuck in a canyon doesn't translate well to a 90-minute film.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 29, 2020

A good film featuring a truly great performance.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 18, 2020

An inspired and inspiring cinema experience.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 11, 2020

127 Hours is a classic, albeit internalized, adventure story juiced up with Boyle's attention-deficit-disorder camera work, which renders the world a pop-music fueled, caffeinated frenzy, as hallucinatory as any drug trip.

| Jan 22, 2020

127 Hours is not only an inspirational story about one man's journey, but a testament to the very essence of survival and humanity, prompting each of us to look within ourselves.

| Nov 16, 2019

This is a one man show, and Franco sinks his teeth into the role.

| Original Score: 3.2/5 | Oct 29, 2019

Franco is aided by tight direction from Boyle, who pulls out all the stops to put the audience into the situation and keep it interesting.

| Original Score: A- | May 8, 2019

Danny Boyle's hyper-kinetic cinematic vision for 127 Hours feels more than a little inappropriate and shallow.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 16, 2019

127 Hours is a consistently gripping drama that puts us face to face with the question of what we would or even could do to save ourselves in a similar situation.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 19, 2019

James Franco is compelling through an emotionally charged performance and shows what an actor can do with an intense screenplay and so little physical room to operate.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 31, 2018

An exceptionally made film, and further proof (if proof be needed) that Boyle is emerging as one of the most distinct directorial voices in contemporary cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 6, 2018

This may be a great film, and an ingenious film, but only if you've the stomach for it.

| Aug 30, 2018

Any film that relies on one actor to carry the movie demands a lot of its leading man but James Franco applies a youthful exuberance that makes him so watchable it's all viewers could do not to blink.

| May 15, 2018