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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Slumdog Millionaire
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84
Happy-Go-Lucky
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Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
83
Wrestler, The
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Let the Right One In
80
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
80
Wendy and Lucy
79
Frost/Nixon
78
I've Loved You So Long
78
Gran Torino
78
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
72
I Served the King of England
70
Black Balloon, The
70
Hunger
70
What Doesn't Kill You
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69
Doubt
69
Ashes of Time Redux
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67
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64
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64
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63
Where God Left His Shoes
63
Changeling
63
Eden
62
Duchess, The
61
Che
59
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58
Adam Resurrected
57
Special
57
Reader, The
56
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Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
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54
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54
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53
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51
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49
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35
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34
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32
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32
Let Them Chirp Awhile
31
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30
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29
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28
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28
Fireproof
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
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xx
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xx
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xx
Dostana
xx
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xx
Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
xx
Moscow, Belgium
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Reader, The
The Weinstein Company
MPAA RATING: R for some scenes of sexuality and nudity
Starring
Ralph Fiennes,
Kate Winslet,
David Kross,
Lena Olin,
Bruno Gan,
and
Alexandra Maria Lara
The Reader opens in post-WWII Germany when teenager Michael Berg becomes ill and is helped home by Hanna, a stranger twice his age. Michael recovers from scarlet fever and seeks out Hanna to thank her. The two are quickly drawn into a passionate but secretive affair. (The Weinstein Company)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
David Hare
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Stephen Daldry
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
Theatrical: December 10, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
123 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA | Germany |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Premiere
Jenni Miller
Winslet deserves an Oscar for her amazing performance.
91
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Tasha Robinson
Kross and Winslet's intense performances and Daldry's deliberately placid control of tone make the material work as a love (and hate) story as well as a metaphor.
75
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Fiennes brings to the role a shimmering subtlety.
75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
The Reader is closer to a near miss than a rousing success but, on balance, this is still worth seeing for those who enjoy complexity and moral ambiguity within the context of a melodrama.
75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Winslet's fierce, unerring portrayal goes beyond acting, becoming a provocation that will keep you up nights.
75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Though the effort is uneven, it's a well-acted romance that becomes a less compelling courtroom drama.
70
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
An engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season.
70
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
It is only, frankly, the strength of Winslet's performance that rises above conventional surroundings and makes The Reader the experience it should be.
67
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
The film is notable for its nice performances, its handsome photography, and its very active music. If the preceding praise sounds generic, so is the movie.
63
New York Post
Kyle Smith
Although the script works in a couple of pages of collegiate-level ethical debate about "the question of German guilt," what the movie is really interested in is the question of German sex. So think of it as "Schindler's Lust."
60
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Provocatively intentioned, The Reader is a movie worth seeing - the kind of film you'll think about for days afterward. But when all is said and done, you're likely to wonder why the impact wasn't greater still.
60
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
The film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it's about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation.
60
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
The cast is superb: especially Kate Winslet, who transcends, by far, the limits of her character's narrow soul. Yet The Reader remains schematic, and ultimately reductive.
60
Newsweek
David Ansen
The Reader can feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. The Reader asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy answers.
50
Time
Richard Schickel
Faithful both to the novel's plot and to its higher aspirations. This is not an entirely good thing. On the other hand -- and somewhat surprisingly -- it is not an entirely bad thing.
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
So why, despite everyone's best efforts, does all this bigness seem so small and unfocused and simply not up to the task?
50
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A film made with high aspirations and more than the usual commitment but one that, after an arresting beginning, changes into a passive rumination.
50
Village Voice
Ella Taylor
Like many narrative filmmakers who walk on their tippy-toes when dealing with the Holocaust, neither Daldry nor Hare seems eager to make the material his own.
50
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
The Reader feels weighty, all right; but it's an unsatisfying kind of weight, and Fiennes' presence, as the grown-up Michael, doesn't help much.
50
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.
40
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
For those who think of cinema as dramatic roughage, The Reader should prove sufficiently indigestible.
40
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
It appears that the filmmakers have taken Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil" way too literally.
20
Slate
Dana Stevens
Slow-acting poison. For the first third of the movie, you'll experience a not-unpleasant tingling in the extremities, giving way to an encroaching torpor. An hour in, your pupils will have shrunk to pinholes, and by the time the closing credits roll, you'll be capable only of a dim longing for the defibrillation paddles. Who would have thought a movie about a beautiful, frequently naked female Nazi could be so dull?
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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