Working within the confines of what was actually said and done, Satter still manages to create emotional aptitude in what could have been a rather stale true crime story. This is undoubtedly one of the more underrated films of 2023.

| Feb 5, 2025

Sweeney's complex tricky performance – mixed with the emotional stakes – makes this intriguing drama completely absorbing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 18, 2024

Sydney Sweeney shines as real life whistleblower Reality Winner in Reality, Tina Satter’s taut chamber piece adaptation of her award-winning play.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 3, 2024

It’s hard for most of us to get inside the heads of people like this, but Reality, and particularly Sweeney’s performance, illuminates this mind-set.

| Jul 25, 2024

Reality makes for a compelling, quiet-spoken thriller, but its rigid adherence to factuality also leaves it a little boxed in, cutting it off from any greater truth about Winner’s story.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 4, 2024

a fantastic, stranger-than-fiction diorama of surrealist fact [that is] symbolic of the political fragments of the American populace

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 4, 2024

The film is a masterclass in psychological analysis of how an interrogation goes, as well as the work that Sweeney put into having her face in front of a camera throughout the runtime...

| Apr 17, 2024

... A fascinating, captivating, and revealing film. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 6, 2024

With an intriguing narrative, Reality delivers a journey where the layers of truth gradually unfold, revealing the tensions and challenges inherent to the contemporary political game. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 6, 2024

I can't say that any of these films has a happy ending, per se: they feel like a drowning person reaching for the rope trailing behind the ship after falling overboard--but here we are still thrashing. Doomed, you know, but not dead yet.

| Jan 5, 2024

Reality is a painfully effective, tense chamber piece on the nature of authority...

| Dec 29, 2023

Through that cold, synthetic, and strange interrogation, Satter creates formidable tension. [Full review in Spanish]

| Sep 25, 2023

Reality is a striking work that cannot be dismissed in the contemporary era of politics and “post-truth narratives.” Sydney Sweeney’s performance alone is worth the audience’s time, and how the film is constructed and what it says is daring and dynamic.

| Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2023

Sweeney performs like a proverbial onion, peeling back layers of uncertainty and ambiguity throughout. Has she done something wrong? Does she know it if she did?

| Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 30, 2023

Cleverly directed and featuring a star-making performance from Sydney Sweeney, this is one of the best films of 2022.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 8, 2023

Generates enormous tension from the gradual emergence of truth and the complicated question of what to do with it.

| Original Score: B | Jul 31, 2023

Even if it ultimately hits a ceiling, the movie’s central turn, mastery of tone, and Satter’s literalizing of the tension between truth versus fiction in Trump-era America make it an intriguing experiment worth watching.

| Original Score: 70/100 | Jul 26, 2023

It’s a painful invasion of privacy, a slow-motion assault.

| Jul 26, 2023

From the first shot, director Tina Satter creates an unsettling retelling of an infamous whistleblower interrogation through minimalistic design, natural performances, and disoriented editing leading to one of the tensest films of the year.

| Jul 25, 2023

When discussing single location movies, Reality is worth being added to the conversation. It's snappy, tense, unnerving and unique, offering an astonishing lead performance and several experimental stylistic choices in its cinematography and editing.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 24, 2023