The Reader Critic Reviews

Bernhard Schlink's highly regarded novel "The Reader" receives a graceful, absorbing screen adaptation by director Stephen Daldry.Read the full review

Though the effort is uneven, it's a well-acted romance that becomes a less compelling courtroom drama.Read the full review

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?Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

It is only, frankly, the strength of Winslet's performance that rises above conventional surroundings and makes The Reader the experience it should be.Read the full review

An engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review