... stars an astonishing Ryan Gosling...

| Feb 3, 2018

People have a right to make godless films. Bean's made one, and it's as brilliant as it is humane.

| Nov 15, 2017

An exploration of what it means to be Jewish and what it means to hate - two separate subjects that happen to overlap in this case.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 15, 2009

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 30, 2006

No polemic, the movie puts our own religious sensibilities and prejudices to the test. The result is arresting, prickly, vaguely funny, even - 'difficult' in the best sense.

| Jan 26, 2006

An important movie, a reminder of the power of film to move us and to make us examine our values.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2002

[Gosling's] combination of explosive physical energy and convincing intelligence helps create a complex, unpredictable character.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 16, 2002

One of the year's most thought-provoking, hard-hitting films, gutsily opening up a subject rarely done with this kind of all-out chutzpah.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 20, 2002

A somewhat crudely constructed but gripping, questing look at a person so racked with self-loathing, he becomes an enemy to his own race.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 12, 2002

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 9, 2002

Blessed with a searing lead performance by Ryan Gosling (Murder by Numbers), the movie is powerful and provocative. It's also built on a faulty premise, one it follows into melodrama and silliness.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 14, 2002

Ryan Gosling ... is at 22 a powerful young actor.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 14, 2002

It's a raw, deeply felt portrait of self-loathing turned inside out.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 13, 2002

See it. Debate it. Remember it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 13, 2002

Bean's film concentrates almost entirely on the externals -- the bluster, the swagger -- when the story he is treating just begs for full, detailed, potentially explosive emotional and psychological scrutiny.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 7, 2002

Easily the most thoughtful fictional examination of the root causes of anti-Semitism ever seen on screen.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 7, 2002

A cinematic sucker punch.

| Jun 1, 2002

An amazing and incendiary movie that dives straight into the rough waters of contradiction.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 31, 2002

Mr. Bean's diagnosis of Jewish self-hatred in The Believer may be misdirected in the present circumstances.

| May 30, 2002

It is a challenging film, if not always a narratively cohesive one.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 24, 2002