Although the film offers no solution to the pained questions of culpability and intention, its haunting effect is undeniable and will leave you pondering for days to come.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 5, 2024

Morally devastating and thought-provoking, but not emotionally demanding enough to attain instant masterpiece status.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 28, 2020

Kate may get her kit off for the lad, before donning a latex body suit in later scenes to portray Hannah in her sixties, but she reveals far more than skin in a searching performance that ranks among the finest of her career.

Full Review | Nov 22, 2020

David Hare's script is easily one of 2008's most involving and intelligent works.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 21, 2020

As such, its strength lies almost solely in [Kate] Winslet's performance; it is an astonishing and compelling portrayal of a complex woman.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 30, 2019

Where The Reader fails most is in its inability to get into the characters and push them to become more than depressive people with sagging hearts.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 2, 2019

Screenwriter David Hare deftly navigates the tricky moral waters with the same poetic eloquence he brought to The Hours.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 6, 2019

You can't fault the performances. They're all top-notch, particularly that of young Mr. Kross, who is a real find, and Miss Winslet, who does her best to augment the script with her expressive face.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 12, 2018

If this film were a meal, it would be like having your pudding first, and then having to chew through one hell of a lot of wet spinach.

Full Review | Aug 28, 2018

Though Daldry's film comes across as too long, disjointed and detached to achieve greatness, to its credit, The Reader asks tough questions and doesn't give easy answers.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 8, 2018

A classy drama with a literary twist, charting the strange, strained relationship of Hannah (Kate Winslet) and Michael (David Kross).

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 11, 2018

The Reader trips over itself now and then, but it remains wonderfully acted and beautifully realized. And it has something profound to say about shame, confidence and justice.

Full Review | Feb 3, 2018

The film's exploration of the Holocaust's fallout on subsequent generations is harrowing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 29, 2012

A holocaust movie with a deep, twisting dive into a dense tangle of thorny moral, ethical, situational and emotional issues.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 28, 2011

Winslet fashions Hanna as the most banal and mundane of evildoers.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2011

A film that will haunt you for months with its fleeting and subtle examinations on morality, love and guilt.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 24, 2011

Manipulative and flawed, but interesting and occasionally moving.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 20, 2010

A British movie of a well-reviewed German novel about issues both moral and bookish.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2010

There's something missing from screenwriter David Hare's adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's Oprah selection, The Reader.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2010

Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2010