Farhadi paints a pained but balanced picture, one where social manners are the confining aspect.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 4, 2021

The maturity of the mise-en-scene and the quiet confidence of the storytelling indicate a major talent, one that would flower in later and better films.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 12, 2019

Fireworks Wednesday,.. stands out from Farhadi's work in this sense, using the occasional jump cut and shift in perspective to create a distrustful sense of time and space.

| Aug 23, 2018

"Fireworks Wednesday" brings an organic, sympathetic, and humanistic take on themes that have long been explored.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 23, 2018

Though surrounded by actors of talent, especially the women, [Taraneh ] Alidousti carries the film by way of her expressive, all-seeing eyes.

| Aug 18, 2017

Here's a film directed by a relative newcomer, Asghar Farhadi, that feels just as fresh as films by his predecessors, yet it also turns slightly inward, getting a little closer to the more turbulent human emotions.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 26, 2017

This is a very well acted film by the three main actors. The central part of the story (by writer-director Asghar Farhadi of 'A Separation') is powerful.

| Original Score: B | Jan 15, 2017

It would be easy to write Fireworks Wednesday off as a melodrama, but Farhadi builds it so methodically and so intentionally, that you get a sense for every character, and every revelation hits harder than the last.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 9, 2017

Although Fireworks Wednesday holds its own among Farhadi's impressive catalog, it's not his best.

| Jan 2, 2017

A film whose power lies in its subtleties, in its hidden fire.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 15, 2016

[In a] Farhadi film... each divulged bit of information forces the audience, and the characters, to reevaluate what they thought they understood.

| Nov 15, 2016

Farhadi refined his vision and technique in later films like "A Separation," but "Fireworks Wednesday" is a strong and resonant early work, and it's gratifying that it's finally seeing the light of day in the West.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 15, 2016

Farhadi manages to skirt the political and focus on human emotion, deception and frailty with such force that his setting and artistic restraints are rendered near irrelevant.

| Original Score: A | Jun 10, 2016

Fireworks is an exhausting film that might telegraph some of its twists, but Farhadi still manages to make them feel devastating in the moment.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 18, 2016

It was made 10 years ago but plays like new with its timeless scenes of marital strife and all the lying, deceiving and mistrust that go with it.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 30, 2016

Not one of Farhadi's subtler projects.

| Apr 29, 2016

Tehran on the eve of the Muslim New Year provides the backdrop for this engrossing Iranian drama about a marriage in crisis.

| Apr 28, 2016

[A] complex and magnificently acted melodrama ...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 28, 2016

Mournful, enigmatic and compulsively engrossing, "Fireworks Wednesday" gives viewers a chance to watch a master at work - before he was acknowledged as a master.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 28, 2016

A sure sense of suspense, which often simmers when the most commonplace of gestures is mistaken for the deepest betrayal... may well be another Farhadi masterpiece.

| Apr 25, 2016