Ceylan's deeply observant, quiet epic might leave you detached at first, but this is the kind of work that aims to creep up on and haunt you in the long haul, in many not instantly recognizable ways.

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 4, 2015

Such miserable people; why should we care? Maybe because Ceylan does.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 21, 2015

The easy gag about the 196-minute "Winter Sleep" is that it's so good it makes 3  1/2 hours feel like two, but that's no joke.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 29, 2015

These scenes are talky, yes, but what talk!

| Original Score: A | Jan 23, 2015

"Winter" feels very much like an epic novel, mirroring the pacing and themes of Chekov, whose work was its inspiration.

| Jan 22, 2015

Think of it as dramatic slow-cooking where the ingredients take their time to come together.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 9, 2015

Ceylan spins gold in thought and image, set to the mournful strains of Schubert's Piano Sonata No. 20, with this impeccably acted morality tale of a wealthy man who sins by omission.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 8, 2015

Probably the finest (and paradoxically, least faithful) Chekhov adaptation on film.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2015

Winter Sleep crackles like a hearth fire-it's a slow but incandescent burn.

| Original Score: A | Dec 31, 2014

Ceylan paces this thin dramatic sketch as if it were a Wagner opera, with ponderous pauses and fraught gazes yearning toward depths that the movie doesn't reach.

| Dec 29, 2014

Intimate, spectacular and masterful ...

| Dec 22, 2014

This movie struck me as both Ceylan's plainest, and perhaps his finest.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 19, 2014

Despite Mr. Bilginer's dug-in performance and the haunting grandeur of Aydin's world, this is finally a character too small to see.

| Dec 18, 2014

My favorite movie of 2014 is three hours long, and it's about Turkish people who live in caves.

| Dec 18, 2014

Bilginer gives a truly towering performance as Aydin-arguably the year's best, across all categories.

| Original Score: B | Dec 18, 2014

Beautiful to look at, with its burnished interiors and magnificent Turkish steppes, this long film builds to a powerful conclusion.

| Dec 17, 2014

"Winter Sleep" won't appeal to action lovers, but if you like endless verbal warfare, this is a joy.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 17, 2014

It's an epic tragedy about life in the Ivory Tower and the inability to understand-much less empathize with-other human beings.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 17, 2014

This patient, beautiful, painful, engrossing film pits husband and wife against each other and their world in a series of extended conversations/confrontations.

| Dec 16, 2014

Nuri Bilge Ceylan again exhibits his gift for making interesting stories out of predetermined plots, locating small eddies of change in the midst of eternally fixed dynamics.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 12, 2014