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100A fierce, brilliant film that breaks (and then mends) your heart.
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100A pungent, powerful film that points an accusing finger not at religious beliefs but at flawed human institutions. It also targets social and cultural mores that are almost medieval in their patriarchal bias against girls and women.
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100Blistering and brilliant work.
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100Although this ain't Hogwarts, there's full-scale witchery being practiced behind Magdalene's locked doors.
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100The rare movie that turns cruelty into art.
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91A picture so powerfully harrowing, its slight shortcomings are forgettable compared to the entire film's cumulative effect. It's that searing.
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90Graced with performers who bring a purity of emotion to their work, the film is always dramatically convincing. There is a fundamental air of truth about it, a sense that, horrific though things seem, this is how it must have been.
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90Both a masterpiece and a holy hell: Watching it, you feel you're being punished for a crime you didn't commit. Which puts you, come to think of it, in the same frame of mind as those poor Magdalene girls.
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90See The Magdalene Sisters for its own sake; the performances alone are inspirational. But see it too as an example of how powerful a feature film still can be in the hands of an impassioned filmmaker.
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90A stirring, emotionally galvanizing film, not only due to its shattering subject matter but thanks to Mullan's spot-on eye for casting and fluid, uncoercive style.
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90Mullan's movie is admiringly uncompromising. He refuses to augment the horrors with relief.
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89While it’s perhaps not the best date film of the year, it is a grim and unmistakable masterpiece of bleak, black sorrow.
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88A harrowing look at institutional cruelty, perpetrated by the Catholic Church in Ireland, and justified by a perverted hysteria about sex.
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88The whole system was sadistic and indefensible, and the church, looking the other way as long as profits rolled in from the laundries, deserves the scorn that Mullan and his fine cast heap on it.
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88The cast is amazing -- two of the lead actresses are first-timers.
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88It is an unsettling tale told simply and chillingly by director Peter Mullan, with stand-out performances, an evocative soundtrack and spare, haunting visuals.
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88The picture has immediacy, force and humanity. It's a muckraking work of art.
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83It is passionate and angry and rousing where you might expect it to become numbing and depressing.
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80A rip-roaring feminist yarn that should offer relief to viewers anxious for an alternative to the boys-with-guns flicks of summer.
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80When it comes time for some of the girls to flee, the result is one of the most emotionally satisfying of all prison breaks.
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80Grim, grueling and triumphantly powerful.
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80The Magdalene Sisters would be too painful to watch if it didn't have a silver lining. Suffice it to say that it is possible to fly over this religious cuckoo's nest and remain free. All it takes is courage and the timely kindness of strangers.
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80Mullan's increased maturity as a director is evident in his skill at manipulating light and dark dramatic tones, and shifting between moods of anger and plaintive melancholy.
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80Why was this film made after the homes had already been abolished? One reason, hardly trifling, is that it was made excellently. Thematically, however, it stings -- as a reminder that Catholicism is only one religion that is dominated by males and that this domination is proprietary.
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80Its brutal take on living under totalitarian rule periodically suggests Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Mullan makes the authority figures (such as the nun played by Geraldine McEwan) grimly believable, but as in "Orphans," there are times when he doesn't know when to quit.
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75Mullan errs by making all the sisters dragon ladies. Still, the film gets to you; it's a powerhouse.
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75If The Magdalene Sisters occasionally flirts with cartoonishness, the movie is tempered by Mullan's considerable filmmaking skills.
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75A film of haunting eloquence and justifiable fury.
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75A powerful document of cruelty and sadism.
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75A disturbing and compelling motion picture that depicts the forces that try to suppress the human spirit, and the strength of these girls in overcoming it.
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75The film is beautifully acted by all, but Nora-Jane Noone, as the sloe-eyed orphan Bernadette, is first among equals here, and a genuine find.
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75The film is an attack on religious hypocrisy, mixing melodrama and black humour in a volatile blend.
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70Generations of healthy spirits were twisted and deformed by the good Sisters of Mercy, all in the name of salvation.
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70Though it has a tendency to leave characters undeveloped and storylines empty, the overall portrait is significant.
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70The film might have been more powerful, not to mention fair, if the nuns believed they were doing right; only on movie night, when McEwan sees herself in Ingrid Bergman in "The Bells Of St. Mary's," does Mullan grant her so much as the delusion of rectitude.
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70This shocker is often shameless, not least in the climactic confrontation with Sister Bridget, but it's impossible not to be moved by the ending -- if only because the torture is finally over.
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70The horrors therein are vivid, even if the movie is a bit plodding.
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70Nobody does shrewishness better than McEwan. [8 August 2003, p. 84]
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 16 out of 17
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Mixed: 1 out of 17
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Negative: 0 out of 17
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SarahO.10
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chunt9Excellent film- made better by using unknowns....excellent acting....makes me embarassed to be a Catholic....and they did not close until 1998!