Notable largely for the anguished, nuanced performance of Jessica Lange ...

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 18, 2014

The problem is that audiences are likely to become as fed up with the murderous lovers (Oscar Isaac, Elizabeth Olsen) as they become with each other.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 16, 2014

Olson and Isaac are hot but what have you done to the story, Stratton?

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 15, 2014

The poison slips down easily enough, but it's diet cola when set against 2009's Korean vampire movie Thirst, still this book's most potent screen translation.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 15, 2014

The movie-settish interiors and street exteriors are all painted grunge green or grunge grey: a one-coat Expressionism bordering on one-brush, broad-stroke miserablism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 15, 2014

A tonally indecisive film, which keeps changing its mind about major issues of remorse and ongoing motivation.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 15, 2014

Sensitive performances from a willing cast bring Zola's novel to life on the big screen.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 11, 2014

It's most remarkable as a pairing of two inspired actresses with four decades separating them: 25-year-old Elizabeth Olsen, the bewitching star of Martha Marcy May Marlene, and 64-year-old Jessica Lange.

| Feb 21, 2014

Like any adaptation, the film glosses over some of the finer details of the novel, but it preserves the author's moral ambiguity towards his characters.

| Feb 21, 2014

For those who want sweeping, "In Secret" offers all the essentials - unbridled passion, deceit, fate so unkind, a classically creepy mother and grand tragedy.

| Original Score: B- | Feb 21, 2014

Despite its able cast and handsome period costumes, In Secret is, in fact, quite awful.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 21, 2014

Isaac is better in his early scenes as a seducer, Olsen is better in her bitter, angry later scenes, but they synch up by the film's over-the-top last moments.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 21, 2014

[A] wicked, The Postman Always Rings Twice-style riff on the 19th-century bodice ripper Thrse Raquin.

| Original Score: B | Feb 20, 2014

Olsen widens her eyes and parts her lips prettily, but she's a wan, recessive presence and an increasingly problematic one as Therese and Laurent are engulfed by mud and blood.

| Feb 20, 2014

Though it's always a pleasure seeing Lange being theatrically anguished (you expect the skies to part with thunder), or Olsen's doleful beauty, "In Secret" never quite rings true.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 20, 2014

Rather than revealing the brutish natures of Zola's characters, the movie's lovers seem simply to be following a yellowed script, more with duty than passion.

| Feb 20, 2014

A film rich in atmosphere but emotionally as blunt as its title.

| Feb 20, 2014

Though the more lurid aspects of Zola's story scandalized readers in his day, they will be well familiar to anyone who has studied Hollywood's pulpy black-and-white thrillers of the 1940s.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 20, 2014

Whatever possessed the people who made this film to believe its ponderous style would appeal to contemporary audiences?

| Feb 20, 2014

In Secret probes these troubled minds from an arm's-length remove.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 20, 2014