This movie seems a radical step for Almereyda, and more attentive to the nature of the medium than anything he has attempted before.

| Nov 6, 2024

Mostly playful if occasionally pretentious ...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 29, 2015

There are a few feints at considerations of human nature, and a word is spoken in defense of obedience, but the film serves better to start a conversation than to draw a conclusion.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 22, 2015

Fascinating work by Michael Almereyda, a mix of audacious artifice, ruminations and reality.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 22, 2015

Peter Sarsgaard carries this engaging biopic of Stanley Milgram.

| Oct 22, 2015

When you have such a provocative foundation and such rich material to work with, pushing it to the next level isn't necessarily the best choice.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 22, 2015

"Experimenter's" most striking quality is the way it encourages us to think deeply, from the first frame to the last, even if it's just to consider what on Earth an elephant is doing on screen.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 22, 2015

Seemingly loose and free-associative in style, "Experimenter" builds to an effect and, for all its humor - or rather, through its humor-makes a sober and chilling point.

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

Peter Sarsgaard is wonderful as the postulating professor, but the fresh, attractively stylized film is less about Milgram and more about empathy, duty and post-Holocaust elephants in rooms.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 16, 2015

Bracing, original and thought-provoking.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 16, 2015

Sarsgaard's sleepy, soothing voice and demeanor are bewitching.

| Oct 15, 2015

Despite the story's freight, the laboratory shocks and Milgram's insistent melancholia, "Experimenter" is a nimble, low-frequency high.

| Oct 15, 2015

Experimenter is admirably committed to being a film about ideas, to grappling with the legacy of a still topical study, and to tinkering with the hidebound codes of the movie biography

| Oct 15, 2015

Reading about these experiments is disturbing enough, but it's another thing altogether to see them convincingly dramatized.

| Original Score: B | Oct 15, 2015

Watching "Experimenter" is to realize how little life is in most biopics. Most such movies carry the stench of rigor mortis, but writer-director Michael Almereyda's bracing, daring drama is alive and alert from its first moment.

| Oct 14, 2015

The movie's an intellectual shock tactic, but it succeeds.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 14, 2015

The movie is itself a rat-maze of one-sided mirrors, windows upon windows, anonymous hallways, compartmentalized instances of watching, being watched, seeing and not-seeing.

| Oct 13, 2015

A biopic that feels more like a ride-along on an exploration of human nature.

| Oct 12, 2015

The word reflective suggests a slowdown or cessation of action proper, but Experimenter is busily, thrillingly reflective. Its artificiality makes it seem even more alive, more in the present tense.

| Oct 12, 2015

Aesthetically, the film cunningly suggests life that exists solely within an academic experiment, closed off from chaos that isn't manufactured.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 25, 2015