The two-hour documentary provides plenty of background information for a stop on Floreana...

| Aug 24, 2021

The film builds tension slowly and steadily and shows the stuff of true crime in an exotic land. The directors resist sensationalizing, and instead mete out the story in thorough--perhaps too thorough-- details.

| Mar 16, 2020

A real-life whodunnit provides a riveting narrative backbone, but despite some juicy melodrama, this languid doc never quite lives up the intrigue of its central conundrum.

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

One typically feels a certain disconnect when looking at old black and white photos like these, but the readings bridge that gap and give the photos an eerie immediacy.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Apr 2, 2019

[An] exotic thriller of a doc.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 12, 2017

In this gripping true-crime story, an absurdist stew of petty tensions and quasi-Nietzschean dynamics rip apart the tiny colony of Europeans who settled one of the Galapagos islands in the '30s.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 18, 2014

holds the viewer and compels him

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 5, 2014

The wealth of letters and journals, read by a strong cast that includes Diane Kruger and Connie Nielsen, provides an instant emotional charge.

| Jul 31, 2014

To make a thrilling documentary about the past, you need dead people who were honest or creative in ways you can exploit. This extraordinary film, which deconstructs a murder mystery from the Thirties, has such people in spades.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2014

It's like an Agatha Christie plot.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2014

Quite a few pounds of fat could have been cut from this film, but it's a remarkable tale.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 24, 2014

Could do with a brisker edit, but the bizarre, exotic nature of the subject matter is wholly riveting and confidently staged.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 24, 2014

Its unhurried pace and inability to wring tension from the conflicting accounts ensures that though it fascinates, the film never fully enthrals.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 21, 2014

The story at the center of The Galapagos Affair is fascinating and historically resonant, and Goldfine and Geller tell it well.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 3, 2014

The mysteries are fascinating, all the more so because they are still unsolved.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 15, 2014

The peculiar fascination exerted by The Galapagos Affair is a testament to our voyeuristic desire for real-life tales of odd characters in awful situations.

| May 9, 2014

A dazzling documentary about an unsolved murder in an ad hoc community in the Galapagos islands in 1934.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 9, 2014

"The Galapagos Affair" spins a strange and compelling tale, with perfectly sinister music by Laura Karpman setting the mood. But the movie is better at building suspense than following through.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 8, 2014

Despite The Galapagos Affair's bloated runtime, clocking in at a shade over two hours, the two-thirds of the film that is good is a very compelling illustration of the inescapability of human nature and the constraints of society.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 2, 2014

With effective use of archival footage, modern interviews, and narration from survivors' journals, this doc will have viewers debating whodunit for hours over postscreening beers.

| May 2, 2014