Cristian Mungiu’s tragicomic examination of EU economics, refugees, and Christmas delivers both as blistering social commentary and an unsparing portrait of community groupthink.

| Dec 20, 2023

RMN is the Romanian acronym for “nuclear magnetic resonance” and, sure enough, modern master Cristian Mungiu’s urgent, fiercely intelligent migration drama doubles as a laser-enhanced dissection of European hypocrisies and contradictions.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 6, 2023

Though Mungiu takes a heavy hand with the symbolism, particularly in a head-scratcher of a final moment, his main characters remain irreducible in the face of a conflict that’s seemingly cut-and-dried.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 6, 2023

The European project takes a hefty pummelling in this beautiful yet unrelentingly harsh drama from the Romanian film-maker Cristian Mungiu (Graduation).

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 25, 2023

This measured, contemplative approach works supremely well, gradually tightening its grip as the tensions in the community mount.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 23, 2023

What Mr. Mungiu puts together, in tandem with the ornate private lives of several main characters, is an anatomy of race hatred.

| Jul 28, 2023

Once [it takes off], it's a fascinating slow burn that feels urgent.

| May 17, 2023

R.M.N. is as gripping and scrupulously humane as Mungiu’s admirers have come to expect from an artist of supreme discipline and dramatic skill.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 9, 2023

Mungiu has put his hand on the pulse of a nation — and the globe. It’s one of the best, most passionate films of the year and leaves you with to think about.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 3, 2023

Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N. zooms in on the resentments and anxieties roiling Europe.

| May 1, 2023

The film’s rejection of bigotry is undermined by its own uncomfortable assumptions about whose story is worth telling and who gets to represent the community.

| Apr 29, 2023

Further evidence that [Mungiu] is one of the world’s most interesting dramatists.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 28, 2023

Mungiu’s touch is so deft and his filmmaking so enlivening, and the villagers so laughable (if also scary!), that you never feel dragged down or punished by the ugliness.

| Apr 27, 2023

Mungiu does not offer an easy remedy for this toxic mess. How could he? But no one who makes a movie this vehement can fail to harbor a hope for what human beings, at their best, can be. R.M.N. is the work of an outraged idealist.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 27, 2023

R.M.N. isn’t a nativity story; it’s a nativism story, a roving panorama of small-town hostility and a microcosm of tribalist enclaves the world over.

| Apr 27, 2023

A rigorous, naturalistic, and devastating cross-section of xenophobia.

| Aug 5, 2022

Martin Grigore’s Matthias, a bear of a man who quits a slaughterhouse job in Germany and returns home to many problems and the sound of no hands clapping, is the embodiment of Hitchcock’s definition of suspense.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 31, 2022

It has a closing gambit with which I’ll need to sit a while longer, but RMN certainly lands – and with blunt force.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 27, 2022

Via long, unblinking takes and with a steady camera that occasionally switches to jerky handheld, Mungiu slowly reveals what’s really on his mind: a substrata of xenophobia, nationalism and racism that lies beneath it all.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 24, 2022

Another very special film from this exceptionally gifted and thoughtful (and extremely angry) director.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 23, 2022