If Minghella's debut feature Truly, Madly, Deeply was overrated -- a Ghost for the NW3 set -- this movie is a quantum leap towards cinema's potential for magic.

| Feb 4, 2020

You can take your brain to The English Patient and you will not be insulted. Your eyes will not be offended either. This scarcely makes Minghella's film the best in the world; it just makes it loom large.

| Feb 4, 2020

Its wit, sophistication and artistry never are at odds with the fundamental pull of a powerful love story that out-Zhivagos Doctor Zhivago because it respects love's mysteries, admits it doesn't know the heart's boundaries.

| Apr 27, 2018

Relentlessly beautiful, but not quite stupifyingly so

| Mar 1, 2018

It took a filmmaker with Anthony Minghella's vision to even attempt an adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. And it took a filmmaker with Minghella's talent to pull it off.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 22, 2015

Could this possibly be the Casablanca of the late 20th century?

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 7, 2014

It's the sort of solemn production that is often mentioned as an Academy Award contender.This says less about the quality of the film than it does about its self-consciously lofty tone and its sense of self-importance.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 6, 2014

It's a tragically lovely story about the cruel devastation of selfish and ungoverned love. It's also one of the best movies in a long, long time.

| Jan 6, 2014

The film is a smashing success on its own terms, though as a transcendent love story it lacks the firm foundation in human reality that characterizes Lars Von Trier's superior Breaking the Waves.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 6, 2014

With its fine acting, sumptuous visuals and levels of intrigue, The English Patient boasts the elements of something greater than a love story. Too bad it devotes them to something less than a great love story.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 24, 2013

The triumph of the film lies not just in the force and range of the performances, but in Minghella's creation of an intimate epic: vast landscapes mingle with the minute details of desire, and the combination is transfixing.

| Feb 24, 2013

Out of each of these uprooted characters are spun stories of love, loyalty and betrayal.

| Jan 29, 2008

The whole film is permeated with tenderness for its hurt characters, whom Minghella sees as just a small slice in the fellowship of people who love and suffer.

| Jan 29, 2008

The cast is superb: Binoche, with her thin, seraphic smile; Scott Thomas, aware of the spell she casts but not flaunting it; Fiennes, especially, radiating sexy mystery, threat shrouded in hauteur. Doom and drive rarely have so much stately star quality.

| Jan 29, 2008

A respectable, intelligent but less than stirring adaptation of an imposingly dense and layered novel.

| Jan 29, 2008

This is the real thing, and real things don't come along very often, so you'd better snap them up when they do.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2007

For all the film's effectiveness as a love story, I often felt I was being hurried through a busy itinerary.

| Feb 5, 2007

The result is completely intoxicating.

| Feb 5, 2007

Needless to say, the performances are flawless; more surprising is the fluency, poetry and scale of Minghella's direction.

| Jan 26, 2006

Torrid, witty, passionate and intelligent.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 18, 2002