The Immigrant 2013

Wesley Morris, Grantland: The film is an achievement. Its complex reckoning of moral decency deserves a bigger audience. Read more

Matthew Kassel, New York Observer: Neither Ewa nor Bruno has much depth and often come off as stock characters in a movie with little new to offer about the immigrant experience. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: This rich, beautifully rendered film boasts an arrestingly soulful performance from Marion Cotillard. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: Gray is the most underappreciated of this country's major filmmakers; his movies distill a century's worth of American feature film-a little late silent cinema here, a little New Hollywood there-into a distinctly personal style. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Steeped in period atmosphere, "The Immigrant" tells the story of one woman's struggle, and it is a struggle indeed, to find her way in a new country. Read more

Peter Keough, Boston Globe: Gray, despite the rough edges, manages to meld decades of melodrama into a film that is at once simple and complex, morally black-and-white and psychologically ambiguous. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: Beautifully shot (by Darius Khondji), designed, and performed, this may well be Gray's masterpiece. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Gray and his cinematographer Darius Khondji and production designer Happy Massee have done a magnificent job of re-creating this Lower East Side melting pot -- the best I've seen since the De Niro flashbacks in The Godfather II. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: It's the stuff of melodrama, elevated by Gray's sure hand and made more by Phoenix and Cotillard, lovers and haters and something beyond. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: The best movie of its kind since Elia Kazan. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: Marion Cotillard scores another triumph as a Polish woman whose welcome to 1920s New York could scarcely be more trying. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: One of those prickly period pieces about hard times that gets under your skin and leaves you unsettled long after. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The Immigrant is the fourth collaboration between Gray and Phoenix, and it's their most fruitful to date. Read more

David Thomson, The New Republic: This is Gray's most mature work, and the picture raises Cotillard to a select pantheon. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Its portrait of early 20th-century New York, a melting pot on a relentless simmer, feels wrenchingly real. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: The ambient fury of the director James Gray's teeming historical drama is built into the very fabric of his tensely unbalanced wide-screen images. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: The physical look of the movie is a revelation of a lost past. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Call it a novelistic film, if you must. But know that it is a cinematic film, too. And above all - a James Gray one. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: A magnificently lush, broody period piece that harks back to the great maternal melodramas of the mid-20th century. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: 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. Read more

Michael Sragow, Orange County Register: I can't think of another actor today who could vitalize the character of a virtuous, wronged woman as vividly and unsentimentally as Marion Cotillard does in The Immigrant. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: It's a little freaky to watch Phoenix go at it, a smooth-talking beguiler who suddenly turns stumblebum. But there's nothing freakish about Cotillard. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: 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. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: From Ellis Island to Central Park to middle-class Brooklyn to the crowded streets of the Lower East Side, Gray delivers a gritty, muted portrait of Roaring '20s New York, photographed in monochrome tones by master cinematographer Darius Khondji. Read more

G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: An astonishingly beautiful, irresistibly grim movie ... Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: I wanted to fall under this movie's spell as if watching one of those early 20th-century immigrant melodramas-instead, it felt like visiting a meticulously appointed but too-tidy historical museum. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "The Immigrant" is one of those rare, strikingly beautiful film experiences that transport you to another world. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: From the Caruso serenade for the new arrivals at Ellis Island to the discordant reality on the other side of the golden door, "The Immigrant" has a ringing message: Succeeding in America is a dream act. Read more

Jon Frosch, The Atlantic: An old-fashioned but subdued melodrama, with a pleasingly ripe musical score and scenes full of big emotions performed at a hushed pitch. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Globe and Mail: Gray's movie is an almost flawlessly articulated example of the kind of thing we like to say they just don't make any more: serious, adult, character-driven and impassioned. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: At times, Khondji's golden portraiture can make the characters seem encased in amber. But there's a tremendous payoff for the patient. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: The shock of the old made new, a miracle achieved, a great movie rising before me-like a delusion, like a dream. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: What predominates is a dully morose, overheated and implausible story. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: Gray has said he was inspired by Puccini, and with a staggering last shot, "The Immigrant" reaches a crescendo of operatic beauty. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: It's as if the ghosts of an older, vanished New York have been freed from the tyranny of faded photographs and allowed, once again, to move, think, and feel. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The movie earns its dissonances. It's richer than anything onscreen right now. Read more

John DeFore, Washington Post: Gray directs this handsome and evocative film with emotional restraint, making its archetypal title character a living individual whose moral journey is never simple. Read more