While Schreiber shows promise behind the camera, the competing tones never quite harmonize into a satisfying whole.

| Mar 4, 2025

Rather than aiming to please, the film expects a certain patience on the viewer's part as it ambles and slowly shifts from an often forced quirkiness to a bone-deep melancholy. That change of tack proves worth waiting for.

| Feb 3, 2020

The lamentable influence of Dave Eggers' oh-so-precious post modern literary devices from "A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius" (2000) are glued all over a bullet proof piece of magical realism...

| Original Score: C- | Apr 15, 2009

What begins in quirks and idiosyncrasy moves into a dark place where profound sadness and profound closure co-exist side by side.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 28, 2008

It is a film that doesn't want us to forget. Or perhaps it is a film that wants a new generation to remember a past which profoundly shapes its present.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2006

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 12, 2006

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

...for all its importance as a message picture and for all the subtlety of its filmmaking, the movie never quite feels like it has as much to say as it thinks it does.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Mar 20, 2006

It's risky material for a first-time director... But Schreiber's involving screenplay and his remarkably assured handling of the material somehow brings it all together into an effective, charmingly offbeat whole.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 17, 2006

Una Vida Iluminada ya es suficiente carta de presentacin como para esperar ms del Liev Schreiber director que del actor.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 28, 2005

...a thoroughly enjoyable, not entirely predictable sentimental comedy/drama...

Full Review | Dec 15, 2005

It's also a generous performance, because Wood literally takes a backseat to Hutz's movie-stealing turn as the language-mangling Alex, whose English is 'not so premium'.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2005

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 6, 2005

Poignant, pensive and profound.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2005

A estria de Schreiber na direo tematicamente ambiciosa e merece aplausos.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 21, 2005

Pardon my obtuse thinking, but I want to draw a line between this wonderful, bitter sweet film and Little Fish, the much acclaimed Australian film. Both film deal with the presence of the past in our lives; indeed, Everything Is Illuminated (by the past)

| Nov 20, 2005

This is a film with a wide range of emotions. It is a film with some laughter and some very affecting moments. It may be a flawed film, but parts are really excellent.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Nov 12, 2005

A strange film that starts out as one thing and transforms into something quite different before it's done.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 9, 2005

The film remains mildly worthwhile simply due to its utter weird, sometimes beautiful construction, it adds nothing to the canon of Holocaust films or Jewish themed films

| Original Score: '1.'5 | Nov 2, 2005