Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
We don't need movies to tell us war is hell. But at their best, they humanize its unfathomable losses in a way that history books never quite can.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
This is World War I from a woman's point of view, a different perspective than we usually see. It's the story of someone who doesn't fight . but for whom the horrors of war are just as vivid and devastating.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
From first to last, "Testament of Youth" sweeps you away.

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : NPR
Vikander crisply holds the screen as a naive rebel transformed by unspeakable suffering into a mature, independent young woman who remains open to the possibility of a new love and a rebuilt England.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
This is Vikander's film and she is very good here.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
[D]elivers one rich and emotional scene after another

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Tough-minded and sometimes harrowing.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Vera Brittain's celebrated memoir of the British home front in World War I gets a polished Masterpiece Theatre treatment that fails to diminish the story's wrenching emotional content.

Name : Marsha McCreadie / Alias : Village Voice
Without the epic sweep of a Doctor Zhivago, it's an intellectual and emotional landscape Vera traverses: grief to survival and, finally, pacifism.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
Evokes the march of history with a balance and restraint exhibited by few movies with such grand ambitions.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
As Vera, the rebellious, moneyed young woman whose dream of graduating from Oxford is deferred when the war breaks out, Alicia Vikander is such a ferociously intuitive performer that you can't take your eyes off her.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : AV Club
There's a good movie in Brittain's story, but you wouldn't know it from this lethargic, BBC-produced bore.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
A beautifully acted but disappointingly stiff period drama.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Vikander and Harington provide the spark this World War I epic needs to get us through the tribulations and tragedies that pile on with numbing regularity.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
In World War I, a generation learned that war was not the answer. In World War II, another generation learned that pacifism was not the answer. It would seem that there just isn't an answer.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
In what is a well-acted but fairly typical prestige period drama, it's Vikander's nuanced performance as the resolute but still-vulnerable Vera who gives the film its depth.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
[Vikander's] performance is a subtle tour de force of feeling and restraint, made all the more remarkable by the whiplash highs and lows of this true but melodramatic tale.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Kent presents the female experience of war with crisp, tactile practicality . Unabashedly romantic the film may be, but little about Brittain's grief-ridden personal awakening is needlessly romanticized.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Striking an elegantly sustained balance between intimacy and historical scope, director James Kent's WWI-set epic Testament of Youth encompasses nearly all of the virtues of classical British period drama and nearly none of the vices.

Name : Elaine Teng / Alias : The New Republic
Just once, it would be refreshing to see Britain look like something other than a country-living catalogue.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
The World War I-set "Testament of Youth" makes a passionate and sensible case for [pacifism] through devastating, melancholy, persevering drama.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
The film is elegantly done, mainly because it wisely expends most of its energy on Alicia Vikander's face.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
The book is still is in print to this day, selling like crumpets at high tea. The movie is a proud collation of its reflected glory. Don't miss it.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Mournful, very fine .

Name : Katie Rife / Alias : AV Club
Split is a solid example of the type of elevated B-movie potboiler at which Shyamalan excels, and to which he thankfully seems to be re-committing his energies.

Name : John DeFore / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The director ties themes together at the end with more finesse than usual, letting a couple of meaningful visuals speak for themselves where he might have thrown in a line or two of explanatory dialogue.

Name : Jette Kernion / Alias : indieWIRE
Only James McAvoy's multi-faceted performance saves the movie from complete mediocrity.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Man" is a celebration of a time when secret agents dressed impeccably, bantered with style, and had exceptionally cool toys. That the movie is almost instantly forgettable is part of the pleasure.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Composer Daniel Pemberton's evocations of early '60s "danger" music respect the period, which is more than can be said for Ritchie's hatchet-style of staging and editing.

Name : Mark Olsen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It all winds up feeling hollow and even slightly oppressive, an enforced sense of fun jabbed within quotation marks. It aims for a silky lightness of touch but lands like a dropped slab of concrete.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
This is a movie whose charm sneaks up on you, like a spy in the night.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
Mesmerizing and clever, but more style than substance.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Ritchie is a director with no instinct for the audience, and he can't hold things together for an entire film. He seems at a loss, from moment to moment, as to what he should emphasize.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
U.N.C.L.E. has enough style and smarts to make it an amusingly louche summer movie: a cultivated mix of action and wit, suits and cities.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
The Cold War returns full force on the big screen, though by the end of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., you might want to put it back in the fridge.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Cavill's Solo, and the movie, are aggressively quippy, which is what happens when screenwriters set out to be funny but give up when they're halfway there.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Not an update of the old TV show but a revival, with dazzling sets, period outfits and wonderfully implausible action. It's an Atomic Age blast.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
This is like an Austin Powers movie directed by Wes Anderson, although Ritchie's personal style is very much in evidence.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
It's not bad but not quite good enough either.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
The threat that this mess of a movie might be followed by a sequel is enough to make anyone cry uncle.

Name : Chris Klimek / Alias : NPR
What substance it has could be dissolved in a shot glass. But so what?

Name : Michael Granberry / Alias : Dallas Morning News
It's got all the ingredients - improbable romances, partial nudity, ridiculous escapes - that make it little more than big-sound and big-picture fodder for the Imax screens it will appear on throughout the country.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
It's slow, lethargic, utterly lacking in charm and undeserving of the Cold War setting that is its best trait.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. feels fun even when it lacks a particular reason for existing.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
a moldy 1960s TV series that comes to the screen with no Mission: Impossible update or makeover. That's right - it's still moldy. But in a way that's escapist, retro fun.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Guy Ritchie makes the kind of enjoyably disreputable movies that are fun to watch until they're not.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's breezy and elegant - so breezily elegant it can make you laugh out loud from frame to frame.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Long on style but short on substance, Guy Ritchie's ring-a-ding-ding Cold War spy thriller attempts to resurrect a mothballed '60s TV series the way that Mission: Impossible did. It doesn't work this time.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. plays like a lower key, vintage edition of a Mission: Impossible movie. It's a good movie with a great look.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
A lot of energy and effort has gone into this endeavor, and I can't say some of it's not fun. But more of it, alas, is just tedious.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Though it's made with lots of modern tricks and technology, it's old-fashioned in the best sense, and not just because it's set in the Sixties.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It almost works. Actually, it does work, hitting the requisite number of hip notes. It just doesn't dazzle, and that's kind of a surprise.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
An unusually restrained Guy Ritchie serves up solid entertainment with a classy touch, but bland leads and no-sizzle chemistry make this slick '60s TV adaptation forgettable.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Holding out for a fun summer film? Resist no longer. Just say "U.N.C.L.E."

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Alas, the movie doesn't fulfil the tease of the opening sequence. From there it devolves into a series of revelations with diminishing returns.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
As for Cavill, let us just say that the line between phlegmatic suavity and downright dullness is rather more easily breached than the Berlin Wall.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
The picture is quite clever and light on its feet.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is one of those rare instances when a sequel wouldn't just be warranted - it would be welcomed.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
While it looks good - Ritchie has always been a slick visual stylist - it's ultimately as passive as an old rerun.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Exactly no one was asking for this. So it's a surprise to discover that the bar for this movie is low enough to conga under.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
With brisk pacing, and a cast this attractive parading the kinds of fashions that will remind you how much you miss Mad Men, most of the movie boasts a Mod crispness.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Whose idea was it to make a cold war thriller for a generation that doesn't know what the cold war was?