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80Lush, even juicy entertainment.
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80Charlotte Gray is not a subtle movie, but it is an honorable and surprisingly gripping one.
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80Has an intoxicating, old-fashioned feel about it. We are instantly lost in the period, thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe's almost haloed images and Joseph Bennett's authentic, restrained production design.
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75Cate Blanchett has the title role, and she does wonders with it, bringing a degree of passion but also suggesting something essentially unevolved in Charlotte's character.
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75Displays so much promise with its beautiful cinematography and superb portrayal by Cate Blanchett that you scarcely notice (or even care) that the story is a bit thin.
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75An old-fashioned romantic adventure film strongly acted, ably directed and written with stolid sobriety, the film feels, save for a few moments of verbal or physical intensity, as if it could have been made 60 years ago with Ingrid Bergman in the lead.
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63This is a movie that, for all its often high intelligence and skill, seems emotionally underdone, bogged down in tony literary and cinematic cliches.
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63From a purely technical perspective, Charlotte Gray is expertly made -- the cinematography and music are evocative, and lead actress Cate Blanchett has no problem holding our attention. But, while Armstrong gets the notes right, she fails to play them with inspiration.
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60The radiant Blanchett makes Charlotte's individual journey from lovelorn lady to independent woman believable and involving, and that's ultimately what counts the most -- even if the destination is less than ideal.
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50Blanchett, Crudup and Gambon stand above and somehow apart from the absurdities of the screenplay.
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50The story has inherent emotional power, but Jeremy Brock's formula-bound screenplay rarely soars beyond cliches.
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50The setting and circumstances of the war overwhelm the personal story and diminish the dilemma of the title character's love life.
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50Not a movie, it's a museum catalog of gorgeously rendered portraits and landscapes. What a crashing disappointment.
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50Rarely has a movie that looked so good on paper fallen so flat as the aptly named Charlotte Gray. It's not a bad movie. Bad movies have more flavor.
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50Director Gillian Armstrong drains all the emotional energy out of the people who dot her movie's lovely landscape.
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50Armstrong is fortunate to have the luminous Blanchett, who, along with her equally fine supporting cast, helps compensate for what the film lacks.
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50A frustratingly inert story, a bookend to last year's wooden ''Captain Corelli's Mandolin.''
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50It's ultimately just numb, a sober wartime romance roused only by Blanchett's intensity and Crudup's passionate swings between righteous anger and moral zeal. The rest is just tired melodrama.
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50The narrative is unexpectedly sleepy, excepting the occasional flashy set piece.
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50Those who do go with the fantasy are probably hopeless romantics.
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40Undone by Blanchett's dull, wooden delivery. She's the pap that kills the pulp the rest of the film is bellowing out to be.
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40Charlotte Gray, for all Blanchett's radiance and intelligence in the title role, is a bore.
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40A bland and dour screen version of Sebastian Faulks' highly engrossing bestseller.
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40Never rises above the level of a 1950s-era adolescent romance novel.
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40I never thought that a thoughtful director like Gillian Armstrong would get trapped in such Euro-nonsense, but I guess there's a first time for everything.
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38It isn't as ridiculous as this year's other version of a local best seller set during WWII ("Captain Corelli's Mandolin"), but it's arguably even less entertaining.
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30The movie works so diligently to convey a spirit of heroic uplift and fails so completely that it feels like a tragic misfire.
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20Director Gillian Armstrong turns Sebastian Faulks' pungent novel about World War II into a soporific.
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lia10I Love it.