Incredibly sexy. It's nice to see a movie that's actually about passion.

| Sep 13, 2019

With changing geography and passage of time, the soundtrack shifts from Polish folk to French jazz to rock 'n' roll. This is one of the highlights of Pawlikowski's homage.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 14, 2019

"Cold War" captivates and transcends barriers of language and culture. It's a gorgeous tale as rocky as it is romantic.

| Original Score: A- | Feb 1, 2019

Heart-thumping: the passion on display is of all sorts, a steady flame against the cold.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 25, 2019

What struck home the most forcefully for me in "Cold War" is its depiction, insidious and unrelenting, of how artists under communism suffered for their art. At its best, the film is like a bulletin from a benighted world.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 25, 2019

It's gorgeous to look at and, honestly, quite compelling from beginning to end. I just wish I felt more of the love.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 25, 2019

Like the time period it covers, this love story is filled with passionate rhetoric and uncertain intentions.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 24, 2019

Pawlikowski remains a director to watch and Cold War is a film to watch again and again.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 24, 2019

Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War is a stunning piece of episodic storytelling that's positively breathtaking in its invigorating emotional magnitude.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 22, 2019

What the film is doing is recognizing their indelible life force and originality; it's a cri de coeur hurled toward an increasingly hidebound and emotionally stunted era of Western civilization.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 19, 2019

Poland has seen more than its share of war, and of the art and cinema of exile. Pawel Pawlikowski's latest feature, Cold War, is a spirited albeit flawed entry in this category.

| Jan 18, 2019

It's as verbally spare as it is visually spellbinding.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 18, 2019

If Kulig, who resembles Jessica Chastain, were American, Hollywood would be offering her everything.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 18, 2019

"Cold War" suffices as a simple filmic jewel of a story, about a couple swimming hard against the currents of history and governments until they only have each other to cling to.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 17, 2019

"Cold War" is a near-perfect film, an artfully crafted, flawlessly acted meditation on love, memory and invented history that's both deeply personal and politically attuned.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 16, 2019

Cinematographer Lukasz Zal finds a chilly, etched beauty in every frame; you're struck by how snow seems to stroke and soften a harsh landscape, and by the poignancy of wind ruffling the grass in a quiet field.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 16, 2019

Through "Cold War," Pawlikowski shows us the beauty in an ugly time, and then he makes us wait and wonder if the characters will ever see it, too.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 15, 2019

"Cold War" devastates all the same, and its meditations on what might have been and what could never be haunt long after the gutting final frame.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 15, 2019

Political freedom, long dreamed of, brings little release.

| Jan 7, 2019

You lap up the images of these beautiful actors, whose textures and feelings are enhanced by the film's overall beauty. And then you wonder if there isn't something missing.

| Dec 26, 2018