Filmed in glamorous black and white, all dialogue furnished via intertitles, the movie is less a pastiche than The Artist and, at least initially, it's not as precious.

| Feb 22, 2019

The pleasure resides as much in the layers upon layers of references to film history, to Spanish history, to fairytales, to Hollywood entertainment, as it does in its story of a little girl who loses everything.

| Jul 31, 2018

It's like watching a gorgeous tragi-comic opera written by Dickens and co-directed by Fellini and Almodovar.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 8, 2014

The film is exquisitely shot and Macarena Garcia is achingly gorgeous as the fawn-eyed Carmen/Snow White.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 8, 2014

A Spanish take on Snow White that picks up where The Artist left off and shows the full elegance of silent filmmaking.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 8, 2014

No film this year will look as swooningly beautiful, its deep-focus monochrome vividly rendered by the cinematographer Kiko de la Rica, and not many will sound as good, either, thanks to a score by Alfonso de Vilallong.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 8, 2014

What Berger does with the actors, the sight gags, the close-ups, the music, the photography is close to perfection.

| Jan 3, 2014

This year's crowded field of Snow White movies has a winner, at least in terms of quality, in Pablo Berger's delightful Blancanieves.

| Nov 27, 2013

Berger, like his rad forebear Luis Bunuel, marries poetry to film.

| Nov 27, 2013

While the story, shorn of its supernatural elements, is mired in abuse and tragedy, its effect is sensual and superficial.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 27, 2013

We're not in Disney's world. Berger knows his Grimm, and he suffuses his entrancing fairy tale with a moving sense of melancholy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 27, 2013

From Spain, here's a miracle of fairy tale repurposing: a version of the Brothers Grimm's "Snow White," set in Spanish bullfighting country in the late 1920s. Writer-director Pablo Berger's Blancanieves goes all the way with its concept, and then further.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 27, 2013

Alfonso de Vilallonga's music isn't mere accompaniment, it's a score with rich emotional resonance. The silents, as this film suggests, achieved aesthetic marvels before sound came along to set things back for a while.

| Nov 27, 2013

Had Berger gone deeper into Rafita's sad passion he might have passed beyond the safe frontiers of Disney and into the twisted realm of Buuel.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 27, 2013

If you're looking for visual kicks, this offers plenty.

| Nov 27, 2013

It hardly needs to be said that this fairytale is not really intended for children. In truth, few fairytales are.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 21, 2013

Pablo Berger's brainchild is truly enchanting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 12, 2013

It feels saturated with pleasure: it is extremely pleasurable to watch, and shows every sign of having been extremely pleasurable to make.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 11, 2013

Blancanieves is a makeweight project, but its modest pleasures linger in the mind.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 11, 2013

Will we soon get a movie every year, or every month, devoted to actors in silent-cinema slap doing kitschy dumb play to music-accompanied monochrome?

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 11, 2013