Passing is one of the must-see films of 2021, one that will stay in your mind well after the credits have begun to roll.

| Jan 6, 2022

Much of "Passing" could be a stage play: people talking in confined spaces, the confinement figurative as well as literal. It's a chamber drama bearing the weight of several centuries.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2021

Hall breathes life and light into it in a way that lends a weight of beauty and honesty to its immersion into a world of purposeful pretense.

| Nov 12, 2021

Ruth Negga shines in Rebecca Hall's adaptation of the Nella Larsen novel.

| Nov 12, 2021

This film is nothing short of masterful.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 12, 2021

Negga is altogether extraordinary, a sort of human mirage of aspirational perfection and psychological delusion, shimmering with warmth and mischief and sex.

| Nov 12, 2021

Hall's approach has a cumulative power, tied closely to her faith that the actors can suggest an emotional turbulence that they're often not at liberty to express out loud.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 12, 2021

In the end, Passing will leave its audience gasping and then framing and reframing in their minds a story ripe with ineffable realities.

| Nov 12, 2021

Thompson and Negga are both tremendous.

| Nov 11, 2021

Although this is the first film written and directed by Hall... it is an astonishingly confident one.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 11, 2021

The acting is satisfyingly rich, as is often the case when an actor directs a movie.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 10, 2021

That atmosphere, in a sense, is stronger than the story, but it's more than enough to make Passing a movie that shouldn't be passed by.

| Nov 10, 2021

As a film, "Passing" feels somewhat undercooked, and builds to a sudden andunsatisfying conclusion. It's a movie that feels like it's straddling between too many worlds.

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 10, 2021

Hall's a tremendous actor, working here behind the camera, and what Thompson and Negga accomplish on screen in this extraordinarily detailed portrait becomes a master class in incremental revelations - the hallmark of the director's own best performances.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 10, 2021

Hall seems to have grasped the story as a performer would, prioritizing the potency of the characters' interior lives over the plot... She draws from Thompson and Negga a pair of finely tuned and exquisite performances.

| Nov 9, 2021

Hall and the actors navigate this with such precision that every frame, every shot, every action seems perfectly of a piece.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 9, 2021

The stars bring it all home by understanding how to say a lot, while also saying very little. There's a great deal of subtext in every scene and a real sense of tension.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 9, 2021

It's one of the rare adaptations that catches the essence of literary style in its images and its tones.

| Nov 2, 2021

Hall emphasises the moral grey area by shooting in black and white, an ingenious choice that allows her to light Clare as black or white, depending on who she's interacting with.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 30, 2021

Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson meet the intense acting demands of actress Rebecca Hall's gorgeous directorial debut.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 30, 2021