Brilliant as ever, [Al] Pacino is the master trickster who manages to both demonize and humanize Paterno.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 19, 2018

Mr. Levinson lays this out with considerable skill and energy.

| Apr 9, 2018

It speaks to viewers with disparate reactions, but it also speaks to anyone who didn't dig into the scandal at the time by outlining what happens when we are too quick to defend the famous faces instead of those claiming to be victimized by them.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 9, 2018

Unfortunately, no amount of makeup or prosthetic noses can hold [Al] Pacino back for long, and his growl is so loud sometimes that it overpowers the vision of the wounded god Paterno became.

| Apr 9, 2018

Al Pacino's Paterno is so convincing, and eerily lifelike it becomes necessary from time to time, to remember that this isn't the actual coach

| Apr 6, 2018

Yes, it's interesting to watch Paterno's end as his family tries to rally around him, but there are too-few glimpses of Penn St. in his heyday, when he and others conveniently looked the other way.

| Apr 6, 2018

Now, with the title role in HBO's unsettling and riveting and scathing Paterno, Pacino reminds us of why he's a singular talent.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 6, 2018

The climax is exactly what happened in reality.

| Apr 6, 2018

Parallel to its main narrative, Paterno briefly becomes another and perhaps more interesting kind of movie - one of those stirring Spotlight-style paeans to difficult journalism, told through the character of Sara Ganim (Riley Keough)...

| Apr 6, 2018

What makes Paterno such a disquieting experience is its preoccupation with the cost of denial, and the nightmarish way it can burrow into your subconscious.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 6, 2018

At times, the film does a fine job handling extremely upsetting material, but for the most part it's plagued by a problem of perspective, constantly unsure what kind of film it wants to be.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 6, 2018

It hits home not only because the crimes it profiles are so heinous, so unconscionable, but because the entire subject is so agonizingly relevant today.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 5, 2018

Paterno is a small movie that tells a story many of us already know, but it nonetheless makes its big point strategically and effectively.

| Apr 4, 2018

A different perspective, one less wedded to the Nonjudgmental Portraits of Notorious Middle-Aged Men genre probably would have been more enlightening, if less likely to earn Pacino an Emmy nomination.

| Apr 4, 2018

Paterno's makers, director Barry Levinson and writers Debora Cahn and John C. Richards, have a risky idea that mostly pays off: They've constructed their film around a vacuum.

| Apr 4, 2018

The script is weak and the direction is weaker, as Levinson tries to walk a fine line on the issue of Paterno's involvement for the sake of the tacked-on finale.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 3, 2018