Emma Thompson once again proves she's our finest actress working today. The power of the film is diluted slightly by an insistence of adherence to the source but the fine performances shine through.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2019

This is a film that poses important moral and legal questions, but it's also a personal story in which a diligent woman, who regularly faces intense criticism, has to confront several deeply troubling personal problems.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 26, 2018

The Children Act is a mature and thoughtful film that is, above all, a wonderful showcase for a brilliant Emma Thompson.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 25, 2018

Thompson goes along with it as best as she can, but it's hard to watch this shift when we haven't been given any believable reason why Maye would fall for Adam's adolescent courtship and love poems.

| Oct 17, 2018

Emma Thompson is quietly devastating in The Children Act, an Ian McEwan film that is only kind of emotionally manipulative.

| Oct 5, 2018

[Thompson] is so good that she overwhelms the story's shortcomings.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 26, 2018

Thompson and Whitehead shine, and director Richard Eyre has crafted a highly textured, respectable film about grown-up issues.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 21, 2018

The Children Act leaves you not only wanting more, but ready to binge it.

| Original Score: B | Sep 21, 2018

"The Children Act" isn't all that interesting a movie, despite the many talented people involved and the generally high level of work they do.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 20, 2018

"The Children Act" feels utterly of a piece with the original book: urbane, understated, handsomely realized and impeccably interpreted by a cast of superb actors.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 19, 2018

This film adaptation never reaches the intimate heights of Ian McEwan's novel, but Emma Thompson's portrait of a family court judge who lets the world in at the cost of losing her own judgment is acting of the highest order.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 15, 2018

Thompson has incredible chemistry with Tucci and also shares a couple of staggeringly intimate moments with young Whitehead that brought tears to my eyes. She is the reason to watch this movie.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 14, 2018

As mature as movies get, the elegantly costumed and designed The Children Act is a welcome getaway from the now-fading summer's loud fare.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 14, 2018

Equally comfortable on both stage and screen, Emma Thompson brings an added value to the mix that literally saves the film and keeps the viewer awake.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 14, 2018

Characters move through their posh habitats, explaining what they've done, are about to do, should have done years ago. Their confusion is fine; the fuzziness of the filmmaking less so.

| Sep 13, 2018

The Children Act stages the clumsiness of belated domestic confrontations with the very coldness that's kept its characters from having discussed their emotions for decades and from having had sex for almost a year.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 13, 2018

It's always rewarding to watch Thompson bring her lucid wit and deep emotional reserves to bear on a meaty role.

| Sep 13, 2018

No one gives better pensive gaze here than Thompson; the drama lies in the fallibility of even the most competent and well-intentioned among us.

| Sep 13, 2018

A beautifully internalized performance from Ms. Thompson and the various efforts to highlight the cinematic potential in Fiona's anguish... can't override the tidy ironies of Mr. McEwan's design.

| Sep 13, 2018

It's worth seeing precisely for the heat of the arguments that you can enjoy after the screening and, above all, for Emma Thompson.

| Sep 10, 2018