A film for book lovers that also both scratches that itch to chuck it all and move to the middle of nowhere, while also showing the seams of that fantasy.

| Apr 11, 2025

A sentimentally foolish whimsy of a plot lost almost completely in confused pacing – a melodrama cooked out of nothing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 2, 2024

Adapted from Penelope Fitzgerald's novel, Catalan director Isabel Coixet's The Bookshop is a rather bookish film - in a very good and comforting way.

| Sep 30, 2021

Like the town it's set in, The Bookshop is a small, intimately observed drama with an undercurrent of melancholy.

| Sep 30, 2021

Emily Mortimer delivers another glorious performance in The Bookshop.

| Sep 30, 2021

The Bookshop isn't a waste of time, but I couldn't tell you to drop $12 on this flick in a theater, unless you wanted a good-looking sleeping aid to take hold of you for a couple hours.

| Nov 9, 2020

The excellent performances and the setting make up for the frustration that the story may provoke in the viewer [Full Review in Spanish]

| Nov 8, 2020

The Bookshop is a pleasant film littered with stretches of what feel like interminable fluff.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 25, 2020

The Bookshop is one film on the surface and something far more sinister underneath, giving some terrific actors a marvelous showcase.

| Jun 23, 2020

The ever-winsome Emily Mortimer glows as a struggling widow who opens a bookstore in her insular coastal town.

| Mar 4, 2020

Despite such a quality cast, however, The Bookshop will likely test the patience of those who require peppier pacing and more compelling drama, even in a well-meaning film set in a British seaside village in 1959.

| Jan 23, 2020

The Spanish director, Isabel Coixet, doesn't let the movie go cutesy; she gives it a lowering, sober atmosphere. And the actors give it bite.

| Jan 7, 2020

Filmed with an almost British delicacy, Isabel Coixet gets her final argument in favor of reading and all its benefits for the soul. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 6, 2019

Movies that come to the big screen that are not about folks in tights fighting to save the world are few and far between. The Bookshop is one, and the main character is, in her way, as much a heroine as any in the DC or Marvel oeuvre.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 24, 2019

Everything is low-key and emotionally restrained but the director crafts a brilliant and powerful film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 22, 2019

By the destination's end, we have welcomed the journey that is The Bookshop.

| Apr 3, 2019

It is so lifeless and uninvolving that it will inspire most viewers to reach for a book to pass the time while it's running.

| Feb 20, 2019

Charming and inconsequential, The Bookshop perfectly evokes the sensation of losing yourself in a good book.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 11, 2019

You know every beat before you press play - but that's perfectly okay.

| Jan 19, 2019

The Bookshop is a predictable bore that wastes many of its talents on lacklustre storytelling and emotionally stunted direction from Isabel Coixet.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 18, 2019