"Never look away," we're told for the umpteenth time. But with von Donnersmarck serving as a dubious Virgil through the circles of 20th century history, you're better off just looking elsewhere.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 9, 2019

Another misstep, this time considerably less forgivable.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 8, 2019

Never Look Away is not without ambition and reach, and there is a real storytelling impulse. But the central performance of Schilling looks shruggingly uncertain.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 5, 2019

Bland ideas are sold cheaply. The cosmetic is valued over the nuanced. But it rifles through its own pages as the reader might a yarn by the recently late Judith Krantz.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 5, 2019

This is a film that throws a frame around history, and makes it as intimate and tender as a portrait.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 5, 2019

If Never Look Away gives us a plot of blithe, even sudsy-at-times compellingness, with pulsing subplots and plural characters, isn't that better than a worthy bore?

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 26, 2019

A truly outstanding film and a return to form for one of the most talented European filmmakers.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 26, 2019

Never Look Away is a three-hour movie of emotional depth that, despite its long running time, maintains its grip on your attention.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 21, 2019

Art and politics are explored in depth in this challenging but generally impressive examination of Germany in recent times, and though the film's running time is excessive, the story is a gripping one.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 21, 2019

Most biopics never crack an artist's process, if they even try, but this one goes in hard, in a courageous way. That's part of von Donnersmarck's purpose -- to chart the artist's growth and self-realization.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 19, 2019

You won't look away.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 1, 2019

Pardon my disgruntlement, but after three hours, my tendency is to desire a more resounding ending and something less solipsistic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 21, 2019

There is horror and beauty in this film, and sometimes both at the same time...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 21, 2019

Never Look Away becomes livelier after Kurt and Ellie escape to West Berlin and settle in culturally bustling Düsseldorf.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 15, 2019

Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's ambitious three-hour pre- and post-WWII epic has the rare and curious distinction of opening with a villain-speech that's actually supposed to inform your experience of the film.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 15, 2019

The title of "Never Look Away" is deliciously ironic: This is one of the most mesmerizing, compulsively watchable films in theaters right now.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2019

Somewhere in the decision to alter Richter's life, von Donnersmarck has invented plot details that are simply too hard to swallow.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 14, 2019

Lightning has not struck twice. At over three hours long, "Never Look Away" is a sumptuous epic of post-World War II Germany whose points are many and unsharpened.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 13, 2019

[It's] a highly ambitious, compulsively watchable and also exhausting and exasperating work, not merely for its length but because it has the feel of more than one film.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 13, 2019

Unlike its main character, it is not a great work of art. But it is a most agreeable, pleasurable cinematic calling card.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 12, 2019