Frost/Nixon 2008

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Like Doubt, this week's other stage-to-screen adaptation, director Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon pours old-fashioned theatrical juice into a cinematic bottle and lets the actors drink it up. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: The result is involving, engrossing cinema -- more thrilling, in fact, than Howard's The Da Vinci Code -- filmmaking of a type rarely seen anymore and sorely missed. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Nixon lands his blows, Frost counters. And Ron Howard? He gets the decision, but it's just a decision on points. Read more

Ben Lyons, At the Movies: I thought Ron Howard did a wonderful job. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: That this much drama can be wrung out of the Frost/Nixon conversations is no small achievement. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Each man sees this as his personal moment of Rocky glory -- the movie did come out the year before -- and while the metaphor is over-played, it's apt. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Frost/Nixon is unsatisfying even if, like me, you're a lifelong aficionado of Nixon-bashing. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: With the awards season swirling around us, Mr. Langella and Mr. Sheen will be hard to overlook when all the prizes are dispensed. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: What Ron Howard gets, to a degree that's astonishing in a two-hour film, is the density and complexity, as well as the generous entertainment quotient, of Peter Morgan's screenplay. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Howard gives it all an appealing, speedy pace, but most important he gives his two lead actors room to create their complicated, showy characters. Read more

Jonathan F. Richards, Film.com: Langella inhabits the pouchy skin of the man he's playing, until soon any meaningful distinction between actor and subject disappears. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: To luxuriate in Langella's magnificent performance -- as a man unable to small-talk, unable to pet a dachshund convincingly, who can feel only privately -- is to appreciate how movies can ennoble even the worst of us. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: Frost/Nixon finds an intriguing new angle on one of history's most documented and fascinating figures. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Howard keeps the pace brisk, light when it needs to be, heavy when that's called for. Along with Langella, he turns Frost/Nixon into one of the most entertaining history lessons imaginable. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Despite a moving, canny incarnation of the man by Frank Langella, despite a slickly entertaining coffee-table production as only Ron Howard knows how, the movie feels cooked up. In the name of dramatizing history, Frost/Nixon sacrifices it. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: All this makes for great entertainment on the big screen, though the real legacy of the Nixon interviews is more vexing than Morgan would have us understand. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: When the movie sticks to its central dramatic conflict, it can be spellbinding. Read more

Tom Charity, CNN.com: In its glib and reductionist way, it works like a charm. Or better yet, like television. Which, finally, is a compliment. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: It's a smart and entertaining show, and it harks back to a time when politics and television were still feeling each other out, looking for an opening, a knockout punch. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Frost/Nixon is a stylish, smart film. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Both a crackerjack entertainment and a sharp look at the roots, and limitations, of ambition, while stars Frank Langella (Nixon) and Michael Sheen (Frost) put on the year's most provocative and finely tuned display of dueling egos. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Frost/Nixon surges with an energy and visual verve that improve the play and enhance the themes of dramatist Peter Morgan's script. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: You never feel like you're watching a play on film: The way Morgan has opened up the proceedings in his screenplay feels organic under the direction of Ron Howard, who has crafted his finest film yet, and one of the year's best. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Sheen and Langella originated their respective roles in the play, and it's clear why Langella won a Tony for his. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: On Broadway, Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon made for a deliciously smart and dramatic mano a mano. The surprising news is that Frost/Nixon works even better on screen. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: One of the virtues of Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard's adaptation of Peter Morgan's hit play, is that it brings the intelligence back to the forefront without dispelling the elements of menace and fraudulence that were also part of Nixon's temperament. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: It wasn't really Frost who did Nixon in: It was Nixon's old nemesis, the TV camera — that unblinking eye, capturing every bead of perspiration, every nervous shift of posture ... Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: This is Langella's show, and he makes the movie his own without using a single dirty trick. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Whatever problems Nixon might have with Nixon/Frost, Langella's magnetic performance would probably bring a smile to Tricky Dick's famously perspiration-dappled face. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: It's twinkle versus glower in the big-screen edition of Peter Morgan's theatrical smackdown Frost/Nixon. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: A must-see for political junkies, history buffs, and folks still fascinated by the paranoia-fueled follies of the twitchy, sweaty, decidedly uncharismatic 37th president. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Howard and Morgan have transformed this story into something more than an embellished re-telling of recent history. They have shaped a tragedy that is almost Shakespearean in force Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Nixon is infinitely more complex than George W. Bush, which is probably why this one slice of his life is more intriguing than "W," which covers decades. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The film begins as a fascinating inside look at the TV news business and then tightens into a spellbinding thriller. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: A film version of a play about two talking heads. Please. It shouldn't work at all. But it does work, spectacularly, as a matter of fact. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Howard has made a picture for grown-ups, a well-constructed entertainment that neither talks down to its audience nor congratulates it just for showing up. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The sheer fun of Frost/Nixon -- and fun is the right word -- is not only in watching these men in collision. It's also in watching them together, in the same frame, as two contrasting aspects of humanity. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Taking its cues from Rocky rather than All the President's Men, [Peter] Morgan's compact, satisfying drama presents presidential interviewing as a gladiatorial event. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Despite a cavalcade of talent, Frost/Nixon is a middling thing. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Plays often lose their energy when adapted for the screen. But even on the stage, Frost/Nixon had a cinematic dynamism, and Howard has only enhanced that quality. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Shakespeare would have delighted in the chapter, especially in the antagonist, but not at the expense of the longer and darker and still-unfinished book. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Langella is not a natural Nixon; he has a voluptuary's face and a self-assurance the president only dreamed of. So he burrows into Nixon and comes out with a figure who is less a simulacrum than the definitive interpretation. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: The outcome isn't half as conflicted as you might imagine, though it's hard to argue that Howard brings anything new to Morgan's play. Read more

Christopher Orr, The New Republic: This is the irony of Frost/Nixon: Though it chronicles the moment when (in theory) the 37th president of the United States was cut down to size, the movie's presentation of him is utterly larger than life. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: An absorbing film replete with telling moments and powerful performances. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Although it all pays off in a potent and revelatory final act rife with insights into the psychology and calculations of power players, the initial stretch is rather dry and prosaic. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Frost/Nixon's main attraction is neither its topicality nor its historical value, but Langella's re-creation of his Tony-winning performance. Read more

Philip Kennicott, Washington Post: It isn't Shakespeare, but it is drama at a level one doesn't often get in movies. Read more