Just watched it again for the second time. Powerfully touching and horrifying at the same time, because it’s a true story. Great performance by Judi Dench.

Beautifully acted by Judy Dench and to a lesser extent Steve Coogan. A powerful tear jerker of a film. Well worth watching. Judy Dench is so good.

This was such an exceptional movie with great acting and storyline. It was so intense and sad; definitely a tear jerker. Judi Dench was superb as usual. It's a must see.

a touching story served by actors with finesse and sobriety

A touching and significant movie. But it is undermined if one understands it's frequent manipulation of the "true story".

Often the film becomes a bit too heavy handed, especially in the flashbacks, but when the focus is on the odd and effective pairing of Coogan and Dench its more grounded in real substance and becomes rather moving.

Just a perfect film and story with bravura performances by Dench and Coogan! Have tissues handy!

Nuns should be the repressed ones. Not us.

sad but BEAUTIFUL movie and Judi Dench is a great actress

A touching and well written drama that is based on a true story. One of the keys to this movie is the surprising chemistry struck up between Coogan and Dench.

The way that the story is told is magnificent. Tragic and comedic at the same time, the film flicks a true cord of emotions which resonates even louder through the social and cultural differences of Philomena and Martin.

This is an Old Fashioned Proper Story. Strong story telling requires no shoot-em ups, car chases, drugs, sex or violence. Much less any Marvel comics people or special effects.

Stephen Frears beautifully adapted true story revolves around Judi Dench's efforts to reunite with her son, (with the help of Steve Coogan's journalist) fifty years after he was taken away from her when she was sent to a home for 'fallen women' run by nuns. The two leads are utterly sublime, and their chemistry is the crux of the film. However the way the key issues of religion and faith are addressed is superb, and even handedly argues cases from each sides of the arguments raised.

Not much to say about this one. It's alright but relies upon the audience's patience and interest in the subject matter. Take that away, you have a decent pair in Dench and Coogan and not a great deal else.

With "Philomena," I was all set to be disappointed. Looked like a quaint British indy with Judy Dench playing predictable, bitchy, indignant Judy Dench, yet again. For a change, she plays an unpretentious Christian lady aching to find the son stolen from her by scheming nuns years before. Along with Sophie Kennedy Clark, who steals the show in the early gut-wrenching scenes, the entire cast turn this potentially formulaic little dramedy into a towering, cathartic, very special event.

Sweet, endearing, and impactful, "Philomena" delivers an emotionally-saturated story with an amazing performance by Judi Dench.

The story itself is riveting enough, but I would watch Steve Coogan and Judi Dench sell pillows on the tube at 3 AM! Coogan is brilliant as the cynical writer who slowly becomes a staunch advocate for Dench's lonely woman (surprisingly sedate), searching for the child she was forced to give up. Even under the tragic past and overall sadness of this story, there runs a dazzling current of understated humor between these two unlikely friends. Not to thump a drum, but it could be a great advert for birth control funding and the general rights of women over their own bodies.

‘Philomena' is a real life story about Irish old lady who reveals with a secret that she has kept for 50 years, about her extramarital son whom she had to give away... The best part of this drama is Judi Dench in a leading role - she perfectly embodied a somewhat naïve person who seeks answers to questions from the past, but manages to remain positive despite the awful things she had to endure. She and Steve Coogan, as a cynical journalist, both carry the movie. I liked the good ratio of humor and drama and would definitely recommend this for watching.

Philomena is searching for the son who was taken from her fifty years ago and given up for adoption by the nuns running one of the Irish Republic's penitential Magdalene laundries. The usual inducement employed to coerce unmarried mothers to give up their child is that he/she would have a ‘better' life; a life without the stigma of illegitimacy, and one of comfort of the material things the single girls couldn't hope to afford. But the nuns and priests who ran the laundries were keeping a secret that was far more shameful than illegitimacy even in 1950s Ireland: taking money from American Catholic couples for the babies of the unmarried mothers. They were running baby farms. The desolation of the young Philomena (played superbly by Sophie Kennedy Clark) and the other girls forced to work seven days a week in Dickensian conditions in the laundry is gut-wrenching. And Judi Dench as the older Philomena has the remarkable ability to evoke an extraordinary depth of emotion just by staring into the middle distance. Steve Coogan, who co-wrote and produced the film, may have reprised the character since, but here he leaves his comedic turn as Alan Partridge firmly behind playing Martin Sixsmith, the former New Labour political advisor who was sacked over smear allegations and a leaked email, from whose book the film was adapted. Returning to work as a freelance journalist, Sixsmith happens upon Philomena's story, and takes her to America to search for her missing child. Having sex out of wedlock is still considered a mortal sin by the Catholic church, but the mental and physical cruelty metered out by the nuns in the Magdalene laundries, and the selling of the girls' babies as their penance was reprehensible; a shame that will rightly haunt the church until the last mother has been reunited with (or at least discovers what happened to) their child. The pain inflicted of the young unmarried girls – one who died in childbirth and was buried in the grounds was just 14 years old – is unfathomable and unforgivable. However, despite the seriousness of the subject matter and the depth of emotion is evokes, there's a lightness of touch to the script that never once resorts to being mawkish. STREAM OR SKIP IT Rating: 😁 Outstanding. Adapted from Martin Sixsmith's book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, the BAFTA winner of Best Adapted Screenplay is a definite must-see.

This had been on my TBW list forever and now that I've finally seen it, it was completely different than I anticipated. That being said, it's an excellent and heartbreaking movie. I really felt for Philomena and Judy Dench plays her beautifully. Definitely worth the wait but I'm glad I finally watched it. So terrible, how young, unwed mothers were treated back then. Shameful.