Tom Hanks is superb as a smart lawyer dying of AIDS who sues his former employers with the help of Denzel Washington, who matches Hanks' work note for note.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 29, 2024

Despite its weaknesses, Philadelphia can be enthralling and deeply moving at times.

| May 9, 2023

Graced with splendid performances, this often stirring drama not only has its heart in the right place; it delivers a strong, convincing portrait, as well as a lesson about decency in a story aptly set in the City of Brotherly Love.

| Dec 16, 2022

This is a movie that everyone should see. It is a very effective examination of these experiences during the early 90s.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 11, 2022

This is a very depressing story but one that is worth telling. The performances were top notch and it features the only Springsteen song I've ever enjoyed.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 11, 2022

Philadelphia certainly leans into melodrama. But its most impressive feat lies in its ability to also show queer people being happy and refusing to let other people’s prejudices ruin their self-perception.

| Oct 31, 2022

I couldn’t help wanting more from "Philadelphia," yet some part of me also wants to applaud it for having been made at all.

| Original Score: B | Aug 31, 2022

Philadelphia is a heartbreakingly mediocre movie. It’s dishonest, it’s often legally, medically, and politically inaccurate, and it breaks my heart that I must say it’s simply not good enough and I’d rather people not see it at all.

| Jun 3, 2022

Philadelphia is hardly a movie milestone, but it's actually quite limber for a film that has to carry such a heavy load on its shoulders.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 29, 2021

Every actor's contribution to the film is noteworthy, especially when Demme chooses to bestir them with intrusive camera angles and lingering scenes of emotional poignancy.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 24, 2020

Filmmaker Jonathan Demme does an absolutely superlative job of establishing the film's various characters and their urban environs...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 5, 2019

An important film not just from a cinematic perspective, but from a cultural one, bringing the AIDS crisis to the masses in a deeply human way, confronting and dispelling prejudices and misconceptions with major stars.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 7, 2019

Hanks and Washington (in a role that's unexpectedly comic) have rarely been better and use their considerable star power to obscure some of the movie's flaws.

| Original Score: 3'4 | Jan 30, 2019

Philadelphia, apart from having talented actors delivering remarkable performances, is a piece of history that anyone with a heart and a sense of justice can understand.

| Jun 9, 2018

Sparks of acting brilliance rescue the cautious, sometimes craven script, as does Demme's inventive direction. Though the plotting reeks of safety-first commercialism, the camerawork has the dangerous intimacy of independent film-making.

| Dec 12, 2017

Jonathan Demme's thoughtful human drama was certainly not the first movie to confront the AIDS crisis, but it was, even in the conventional skin of a courtroom drama, the most heartbreaking and passionate undertaking of its kind.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 14, 2015

Philadelphia may not be the film Demme's fans expect--its emotionalism is unfiltered by cool. But it has the power to open more than a few blinkered hearts.

| Mar 13, 2015

What remains most striking about Philadelphia may be the...conspicuous emphasis on intense close-ups. They force an inescapable emotional intimacy in relation to issues the mainstream, at least at the time, would rather have looked away from. [Blu-ray]

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 29, 2013

Moving, Oscared '90s drama fostered AIDS empathy.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 18, 2010

[An] extremely well-made message picture about tolerance, justice and discrimination is pitched at mainstream audiences, befitting its position as the first major Hollywood film to directly tackle the disease.

Full Review | Oct 10, 2008