This low-key romance is an anti-dote to the dating apps.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 18, 2024

This is an affecting romance and a work of compelling social commentary. That's a noteworthy achievement.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 31, 2024

It's a really interesting concept that they explore in understated ways.

| Nov 29, 2023

It’s an exceptional cast, and they fill out the premise with subtle inflections and authentic desire -- the romantic wins out.

| Nov 18, 2023

Nikou’s sci-fi drama is more failed experiment than a fine, or redefining, romance.

| Nov 15, 2023

Fingernails won’t satisfy both hearts and minds at the level of its masterful predecessors, but Nikou has written and directed a moving, thought-provoking film.

| Original Score: B | Nov 11, 2023

The restrained performances reflect the emotional numbness of this life.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 10, 2023

That provocative element is in those touches where it references other films... when our relationships don't seem to match what we see in those films, when the feelings aren't as strong or as definitive, that's when the doubt creeps in.

| Original Score: 2.5 | Nov 10, 2023

For all its whimsy, Fingernails is delicately profound. Its characters aren’t making bold romantic moves; they’re interrogating their assumptions of what is ultimately an unknowable phenomenon.

| Nov 10, 2023

“Fingernails” won’t be for all tastes, but I found this gracefully acted, lightly dusted sci-fi drama to be one of the most refreshing films about love in a while.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 8, 2023

I’d happily watch Buckley and Ahmed read the phone book; they both possess the kind of pensive eyes and ambiguous half-smiles that serve as catnip to funny-sad auteurs. But, like Anna, you can’t help but want a bit more eventually, too.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 6, 2023

It’s an interesting premise, the performances are strong and it’s a tight, disciplined story that doesn’t tangent off. But it can feel a little cold even though the always wonderful Jessie Buckley has good chemistry with Riz Ahmed.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 6, 2023

Fingernails lacks the leak-proof internal logic that’s necessary to persuade an audience to fully commit to an outlandish central premise.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 5, 2023

Nikou’s film is wonderfully astute on love’s unruliness: it wants you to both delight in and despair of it, and have fun doing both.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2023

The Institute of Love plot here, the narrative body of the movie, is mostly pointless and sometimes grating.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 3, 2023

Fingernails is funny until it’s not: deeply romantic from the top of your head to the end of your fingernails.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2023

But analogue passion needs a better advert than Anna and Amir. Their will-they-won’t-they might leave you shrugging. And wondering when Hollywood forgot how to make love stories big enough for movies.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2023

Fingernails delivers a beautiful and eccentric articulation of the painstaking feeling of throwing yourself into the romantic unknown.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2023

The film is successful because it manages to create its own logical, nonsensical rules, which love then snaps.

| Nov 2, 2023

It’s not the familiarity of this setup that irks, but its silliness.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 2, 2023