The first two-thirds are an extraordinary slow burn that provides ample time to admire Mr. Zvyagintsev's talent with the wide frame.

| Jan 18, 2018

The Banishment is so obviously the work of an exceptional film-maker that you can't deny its power, ambition and ability to keep you watching.

| Aug 15, 2008

The film works mostly in ellipses and silences, establishing a solemnly mysterious mood.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2008

There are prize-winning performances, seductive landscapes and hallucinatory shots of empty urban streets and shadowy interiors.

| Aug 15, 2008

Photographed with mesmerising clarity and power by Mikhail Krichman, and consciously evoking those found in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, they are the most compelling feature of this grindingly slow and self-conscious fable.

| Aug 15, 2008

I can't help feeling that this is a slight misstep from this director, and can't decide whether his film has at its centre a mystery or a muddle.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2008

While the heavenly rays of the Almighty Himself could not have done a more exquisite job lighting the film, its beauty doesn't compensate for the sparse, slow and unrewarding story.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 15, 2008

A frustrating, oblique and portentous endurance test.

| Original Score: 2/6 | Aug 15, 2008

It feels more like a cin dissertation designed to showcase Zvyagintsev's appreciation of the medium than an original piece of cinema.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2008

We will not reveal more of the plot in the hope that one day it will be playing in a theater near you . It is truly something to see; for among all the lives to be ruined it is a visual rhapsody.

| May 24, 2007

If only the ravishing opening shot of Andrey Zvyagintsev's The Banishment was followed up with both beauty and something genuinely profound, then disappointment wouldn't be so palpable.

| May 18, 2007

A movie falls into the clutches of long, solemn stares into space, meaningful drags on cigarettes, cryptic dialogue revealing little and a tiny drama that feels old, tired and empty of real purpose.

Full Review | May 18, 2007