1. "The Immigrant" is marvelous. James Gray has meticulously crafted a handsome, very rewarding and rare dramatization of something that, although distant, should remain familiar to all of us.
2. One of those prickly period pieces about hard times that gets under your skin and leaves you unsettled long after.
3. The film is earnestly and unabashedly melodramatic to an extent that may baffle audiences accustomed to clever, knowing historical fictions. But it also has a depth and purity of feeling that makes other movies feel timid and small by comparison.
4. A magnificently lush, broody period piece that harks back to the great maternal melodramas of the mid-20th century.
5. What predominates is a dully morose, overheated and implausible story.
6. Rarely has the promised land looked quite so unpromising, even within the geographically consistent and consistently moody oeuvre of James Gray.
7. James Gray is a classicist whose fondness for old movies -- particularly old melodramas -- is apparent in his films' every frame.
8. It's Cotillard, recalling icons of the silent screen, whose face reflects the bruised heart of The Immigrant, a timeless film from a director whose work rewards the closest attention.
9. Stories like Ewa's are the foundation of the American family, reverberating through the generations that follow. Gray ensures those echoes are heard loudly.
10. James Gray's film sticks in your head both for the images it creates, and for those triggered in myth memory, of the immigrant experience in America.
What is the critic consensus?
A: Beautiful visuals, James Gray's confident direction, and a powerful performance from Marion Cotillard combine to make The Immigrant a richly rewarding period drama.

1. There are some quiet, keenly observed scenes of family life in Everlasting Moments, but they don't go anywhere, and ironically, the movie diagnoses the reason why.
2. The three principal actors are powerfully effective, particularly Heiskanen.
3. Troell knows that what we want from our photographic memories and the stories they prompt is a special kind of emotional precision: a permanent one.
4. There's a luminous purity to this film...quietly eloquent, both in subject and cinematic expression.
5. A movie like Everlasting Moments comes along maybe once in a decade.
6. Arguably, the pacing of this Swedish import is agonizingly slow and self-indulgent. (It's safe to say that if you find the films of Ingmar Bergman and other Scandinavian directors a bit dull and stuffy, you'll feel likewise about this one.)
7. [Director] Troell lovingly re-creates a time when socialism and Charlie Chaplin movies represented the ways forward, and he anchors his social panorama in the meek, stubborn stare of an unnoticed woman possessed with looking at everything.
8. Everlasting Moments ... returns the viewer to a time before reproduced images had saturated our culture...
9. Everlasting Moments skillfully showcases the power of artistic expression.
10. Benefits from a scrupulous emotional realism even as it jumps ahead several years at a time.
What is the critic consensus?
A: Elegant and intimate, Everlasting Moments moves at the deliberate and gentle pace of a classical European period drama.

1. The sheer scope is astonishing, as is the fact that even after nearly three hours we don't want it to end!
2. An intellectually rigorous but enjoyable essay on the way the city of angels has become Hollywood's favourite location.
3. Required DVD viewing for anyone interested in the cinema of L.A. -- its 'look,' its politics, its lies (both artistic and inartistic) -- as well as for the director's pervasively judgmental tone.
4. Absorbing and revelatory, this is film criticism of the highest order.
5. Andersen's key accomplishment is to profoundly alter the viewer's assumptions of what is good in movies.
6. A terrific cinematic essay that will have a very, very long shelf life.
7. A windfall for serious film fanatics, the documentary is a visually rich, highly personal and opinionated meditation on the role that Los Angeles has played in film history and in a multitude of features.
8. I think [Andersen's] attitude is prudish, even a bit loopy, yet maybe it took a cracked Los Angeles fetishist to make a chronicle of pop geography as obsessively entertaining as this one.
9. What Andersen does best is capture the sense of growing up and living among the landmarks of Hollywood's authentic back lot.
10. Addressing the interplay of reality and representation in the city's geography, architecture, political history and omnipresent film culture, Andersen's movie is enormous in scope yet thoroughly engaging.
What is the critic consensus?
A: A treat for cinephiles, this documentary is a comprehensive, academic, and enlightening film essay concerning Los Angeles and its depiction in the movies.

1. Amy Adams is strawberry bubble gum and doesn't just chase after the performance, she boards it like a rocket and blasts off. It's equal parts adorability, cunning allure, and million-dollar charm.
2. ...a lighter than air concoction that plays like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes crossed with Pocketful of Miracles. This broad farce is an enjoyable meringue of a movie albeit one of little staying power.
3. As light and pleasant as a summer breeze and almost as weightless.
4. An effervescent romantic comedy that sparkles and delights.
5. The screwball comedy's charm verges on frothy wish fulfillment, but gets anchored by Amy Adams' refusal to play shallow
6. A lot of actresses might have shrunk from the challenge of matching her performance, but McDormand is terrific. And her British accent is subtle enough to work.
7. The era, costumes, sets and music make Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day feel like a classic film of the 1930s or 40s in which comedy mixed with drama and the end came too quickly.
8. Movie-making at its zenith.
9. Although it's small-scale, the film has a sumptuous sheen.
10. more than the sum of its facile narrative parts.
What is the critic consensus?
A:
Miss Pettigrew is a breezy period comedy carried by the strong performances of Amy Adams and Frances McDormand.