Oranges and Sunshine 2010

Mark Feeney, Boston Globe: The sincerity of feeling is unmistakable. So's the flat-footedness of the writing. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: As the story ricochets between Britain and Australia, the film often loses track of time and becomes fragmented as it struggles to integrate too many subplots. What holds it together is Ms. Watson's calm, sturdy performance. Read more

Sam Adams, Time Out: The movie belongs to Hugo Weaving and David Wenham, both playing what one newspaper dubs "the lost children of the Empire," men broken by the appalling conditions that met them in their new homeland. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The result is a problem drama with more problem than drama. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The most powerful sequences in the movie are the linked vignettes involving Margaret and the various grown-up children whom she attempts to help in their search for -- what, exactly? Closure? Catharsis? Read more

Natasha Senjanovic, Hollywood Reporter: Jim Loach (son of Ken Loach) has his heart in the right place for his feature debut, but a plodding script and muted staging strangely strip away the emotional punch. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: Sometimes the facts can get in the way of the drama, and that's the central problem here. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Once, very early on, the secret deportations have been exposed there aren't many new places for the film to go - just more scenes of an increasingly tired-looking Emily Watson trudging around with an armful of file folders. Read more

Jeannette Catsoulis, NPR: It's all very stiff-upper-lip, when what the subject cries out for is a rant. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Well-meaning but blandly executed, smothering potentially powerful scenes with earnest do-gooder-film moments. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Making a true story of social injustice into a gripping narrative requires more imagination than is contained in this well-intentioned but uninspired effort. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: If larger truths have been overlooked, the subject is still wrenching enough to make Oranges and Sunshine an inspired work of dignity and purpose. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Emily Watson, a delicate English rose, has never seemed more sturdy than here. Read more

Leba Hertz, San Francisco Chronicle: Emily Watson, who always brings a special grace to the screen, gives a multilayered performance to the role of Margaret Humphreys, who not only puts her own family dynamic at risk but finds herself physically threatened. Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: Loach has made a film uncluttered by an obvious director's stamp, peopled by sympathetic characters and driven by a desire to say something about the world without losing sight of human experience. Read more

Richard Kuipers, Variety: A deeply moving study of emotionally scarred adults who were illegally deported as children to Australia from Britain in the 1940s and '50s. Read more

John Anderson, Variety: Read more

Ernest Hardy, Village Voice: Oranges and Sunshine is thrillingly efficient filmmaking. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: It's powerful, gut-wrenching stuff, and it doesn't need tarting up. Read more