| Original Score: B- | Feb 14, 2012

Apocalypto demonstrates two things: that Mel Gibson is a hell of a filmmaker and that his imaginative world borders on the Neanderthal.

| Jun 29, 2007

Apocalypto is a strange but largely entertaining mix of action, bloodletting, chin-rubbing and arthouse trimmings.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2007

It's escapism - the world would be a lot safer if good and evil were so clearly defined - and it's something that Mel Gibson proves (once again) that he does very, very well in Apocalypto.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2007

| Original Score: 3/6 | Feb 3, 2007

It's Gibson's taste for carnage that defeats him in the end. The brutality is relentless, and the many ways in which blood is spilt so ingenious, that it's numbing. Once the adrenaline rush subsides, there's nothing left.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 13, 2007

Pathologically brilliant. It is bizarre, stomach-turningly violent and frequently inspired.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 6, 2007

This is by no means a boring film, then, but it is a grotesque one, and that brings it pretty close to camp.

| Dec 30, 2006

As a piece of filmmaking it's certainly strong enough to restore his commercial viability. Whether that's to the good is another question entirely.

| Dec 30, 2006

While the ancient dialects and weighty quotations suggest an arthouse epic, Apocalypto is basically a really good period popcorn flick.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2006

[Gibson] has learned how to tell a tale, and to raise a pulse in the telling. You have to admire that basic gift, uncommon as it is in Hollywood these days, though equally you have to ask what obsessions goad it on.

Full Review | Dec 11, 2006

Mel Gibson is a real artist as a director.

Full Review | Dec 11, 2006

...beautifully rendered and convincingly exciting.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 8, 2006

None of us can completely resist the spectacle of a disturbed guy -- who used to just be a movie star -- projecting his own violent fantasies in public and repeatedly enacting his own crucifixion. Let's not pretend there's anything healthy about it.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2006

If, as a filmmaker, the obviously soul-stricken former movie star is an unabashed red-meat primitivist, he's also become an undeniably polished one.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 8, 2006

By the end I felt sure it was the most obsessively, graphically violent film I'd ever seen, but equally sure that Apocalypto is a visionary work with its own wild integrity. And absolutely, positively convinced that seeing it once is enough.

| Dec 8, 2006

Gibson has delivered an impeccably crafted action-adventure that starts fast and never lets up.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 8, 2006

By now, it's fair to say that Mel Gibson does not make boring movies. He does, however, make movies that make you a little worried about him.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 8, 2006

Apocalypto is primal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 8, 2006

An Oscar would not be forgiveness; it would be blindness.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 8, 2006