If this film were a meal, it would be like having your pudding first, and then having to chew through one hell of a lot of wet spinach.

| Aug 28, 2018

Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2010

If Winslet carries the complex psychological intrigue of the film on her shoulders, David Kross carries the heart of it on his.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 8, 2009

It is a majestically sombre, always gripping film, told with immense restraint and no hint of sensationalism.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 27, 2009

Daldry and Hare replicate adroitly the moral balancing act that makes the book so fascinating...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 20, 2009

The film...hankers after something redemptive. But whatever difficult possibilities about guilt and silence it explores are dissolved into disconcerting blandness.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 20, 2009

An airless vacuum labeled Serious Film

| Original Score: C | Jan 8, 2009

Its issues are infinite and moveable. It's a bold and challenging work.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Jan 5, 2009

Winslet duly earns her Golden Globe (and inevitable Oscar) nomination.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 5, 2009

Under the gloss of high production value, under the sheen of hardback good taste, there is something naive and glib and meretricious. It left a very strange taste in my mouth.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 5, 2009

The revelation of evil not only confounds the characters here; it numbs the film, stifles whatever wayward life it once had in it.

| Jan 5, 2009

The still, sad music of humanity - surely that should have been The Reader's score. We hear it in Winslet's performance at least, at once contained and tremendous, at once filigree in touch and fully wrought in thought and being.

| Jan 5, 2009

Can a single performance redeem a whole movie? Heaven knows Kate Winslet does her damnedest to wrestle with the contradictions of The Reader.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 5, 2009

Winslet's intricate performance and Daldry's skills of persuasion make it a worthy memorial to its producers, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, the values of whose own films it faithfully replicates.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 5, 2009

The performances are outstanding and the subject matter demands respect -- but it's a cold fish of a film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 2, 2009

The trial's outcome leads us into a third act that continues to give renewed, rending meaning to the movie's title.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 30, 2008

The Reader is a bold and provocative film and one of the most exquisite of 2008.

| Original Score: A | Dec 30, 2008

The Reader, based on Bernhard Schlink's novel, is a tragedy told with such precise remoteness, you feel as if you're watching it from across the room.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 29, 2008

As undeniably tasteful as The Reader is, it's also an absorbing and finally moving account of how one man comes to terms with both history and his story.

| Dec 29, 2008

A movie that's never bad but too easy to forget by the time you move on to the next book on your list of cinematic adaptations.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 25, 2008