Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 24 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 22 Ratings

  • Starring: Fernanda Montenegro, Vinícius de Oliveira
  • Summary: A young boy's (Oliveira) mother is killed in front of Rio de Janeiro's Central Station. Homeless and with nowhere to turn, he is reluctantly befriended by a lonely and cynical woman (Montenegro). Resisting her initial impulse to make a quick profit off the child, she commits to returning him to his father in Brazil's remote Northeast. The trip becomes a quest for their own identities: one boy's search for his father, and one woman's search for her heart. (Sony Pictures Classics) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 24
  2. Negative: 0 out of 24
  1. Fernanda Montenegro gives a landmark performance.
  2. Reviewed by: Joshua Klein
    80
    While the cinematography is gorgeous and the script extremely sharp, Central Station owes much of its strength to its two mismatched leads.
  3. Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    80
    Filled with moments of real poignancy and gentle epiphanies, the film is also marked by strong Christian undercurrents, but, like everything else in Salles's film, they're handled with extraordinary delicacy and never feel exclusionary.
  4. This 1998 film held my interest for two hours, even taking on an epic feel when it turns into a road movie. It's not bad by any means, but it also happens to resemble a lot of other movies.

See all 24 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 10
  3. Negative: 1 out of 10
  1. The best brazilian movie of all time and count with the extraordinary performance of Fernanda Montenegro, who should did win Oscar. Simply wonderful!!! Expand
  2. Welington
    10
    A masterpiece!!!!!
  3. JimG.
    7
    Enjoyable portrait of the universal search for family.
  4. DougS.
    1
    This a terribly amateurish boring movie that I would not wish on anyone. Don't waste your time, get something else.

See all 10 User Reviews

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