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

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 : 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 : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
It's not often that faith-based films, competing in the same marketplace that rewards action, embrace the deeper, more difficult idea of meeting hate with love, but Risen tries.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Whether or not it triggers a craze for divinely inspired detective stories, "Risen" makes a decent case for itself as the "Columbo" of the genre: It's amiable, creaky and not remotely predicated on the element of surprise.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
A fairly ambitious picture tailor-made for that slice of the Christian audience accustomed to the tropes and beats of prestige cable dramas.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
What a good surprise it was to watch a biblical feature less preachy, less stuffy and more entertaining than most. "Risen" is an original crime-fiction take on a story as old as stories get.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
For a film that could have easily become bogged down in Sunday School reverence, or culture-war opportunism, Risen presents an intriguing, oblique approach to a Bible movie.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Fiennes sticks with the brooding, stoic performance, even when Clavius is undergoing some major changes. It's not his best work.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Risen" is a fascinating cultural artifact, but as a film, it's destined for no glory greater than as an appropriate cable rerun on Easter.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Whatever your religious affiliation, you will come away thinking that if all this did actually happen, it probably happened something like this.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
A low-IQ affair that supposes that the Gospels will sound more convincing if seen through the eyes of a skeptic. Instead, it seeks to improve the New Testament by putting a layer of Naugahyde upholstery on it.

Name : Kate Taylor / Alias : Globe and Mail
The film features a lush historical setting and some satisfying action scenes, but the dialogue is often laughable, a mix of the pseudo-archaic with oddly contemporary lingo.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Fiennes is superb, portraying a man slowly transformed by events that shake his beliefs about the world and his place in it to their core.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
The film ends up falling into a loop of abortive climaxes, set against an indistinguishable beige-gray backdrop of limestone, before the inevitable cheap-looking flash of CGI light in a scraggly field.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
We know how it turns out, but seeing from the point of view of someone who doesn't know and doesn't believe adds more cogency.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It's not especially challenging. But it is several steps up from some faith-based fare, and it will doubtless appeal to its target audience.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Reynolds' gets many things right: the blasted look of the desert, the dusty provincial look of a far-flung Roman outpost. And the story he tells is both serious and modest.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
It's intended primarily for an audience of Christian believers, but genuine drama precedes the preaching.

Name : Christian Holub / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Risen is more entertaining than Bible-adjacent stories are usually allowed to be.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
If you drink every time you're reminded of Monty Python's 1979 Judean jaunt, "Life of Brian," you might just make it through to the end.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"Risen" was never meant as anything but a tool for the converted. Talk about preaching to the choir.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Viewers already well-versed in the greatest story ever told might find their interest piqued by the filmmakers' unconventional take. It's unlikely, however, that "Risen" will preach to anyone outside the choir.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
While it descends too often into the melodramatic, it's a solid, smart picture and a welcome addition to the genre.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
It's nice to finally see the Messiah portrayed by somebody who'd probably get extra attention at a U.S. airport by Homeland Security.

Name : Michael Nordine / Alias : Village Voice
Despite not doing much more than preach to the choir, Risen is still more nuanced than the lion's share of recent faith-based dramas.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
It's pointed about how we treat today's zealots, as when Clavius likens the pain of crucification to "sucking air through a wet cloth" - a description of waterboarding.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Boston Globe
Witnesses takes us back to the turmoil in the Balkans. But the movie is not directly about the war. It's a cleverly told murder mystery.

Name : Roger Ebert / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The Witnesses doesn't pay off with a great operatic pinnacle, but it's better that way. Better to show people we care about facing facts they care desperately about, without the consolation of plot mechanics.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Spanning a year beginning in the summer of 1984, The Witnesses offers the considerable satisfaction of a beautifully acted ensemble piece built on the foundation of a serious subject%u2014the dawn of the AIDS crisis%u2014handled just so.

Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
What the characters in The Witnesses - and the audience - pay testimony to in Andre Techine's urgent, compassionate, and ultimately optimistic French drama are the toll the epidemic has rung, and the responsibility of the living to choose life.

Name : David Wiegand / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Some may think the metaphoric possibilities of an incurable illness that can be transmitted through sexual contact have been all but exhausted. Director Andre Techine almost proves otherwise in The Witnesses, a kind of film opera without music.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
The beautifully acted ensemble film The Witnesses sidesteps most of its opportunities for high drama, political sermonizing and the jerking of tears.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Techine's graceful, forceful drama has the tact not to play narrative games with its subject.

Name : Deborah Young / Alias : Variety
A fast-moving, engrossing multiple-character drama that brings the AIDS crisis of the 1980s into laser focus.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
The occasional voiceover from Beart and a slightly mournful score from Philippe Sarde offer some sense of lament, but mostly this unfolds in the moment and is urgent and engaging.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Washington Post
In The Witnesses, [director] Techine levels his gaze on the '80s, an era of seeming innocence, perhaps license, and one in which biological freedom has led to a loose, even sloppily knit fabric of humanity.

Name : Jan Stuart / Alias : Newsday
Andre Techine's The Witnesses is one of the finest fiction-film accounts of a free yet frightful moment in time, when the relaxing sexual liberties of the previous decade were being squeezed by the onset of an unforgiving new virus.

Name : Carina Chocano / Alias : Los Angeles Times
An ambling narrative, but an atmospheric one that feels authentic despite its unlikely character pairings.

Name : Andrew Sarris / Alias : New York Observer
Andre Techine's The Witnesses (Les Temoins) treats the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, first in the United States and then spreading to the rest of the world in 1984, as a devastating medical atrocity in a war that is still raging.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Director Andre Techine's story is one of subtle emotional tones that require the most of an actor, and the cast is uniformly compelling.

Name : Nathan Lee / Alias : Village Voice
Techine's triumph of compassion and craft shames the American cinema's indifference to gay history.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Excitingly convoluted.

Name : V.A. Musetto / Alias : New York Post
Andre Techine's film features a strong ensemble cast. The film pulls no punches in its depiction of lives in crisis.

Name : Marta Barber / Alias : Miami Herald
More than a thriller, the film is a portrait of the passions that drive ordinary people to kill and even worse, to accept the killing as something honorable.