Name : Dave Kehr / Alias : Chicago Reader
Griffith's later films are unquestionably superior. But here, in a very real sense, is where the movies began, both as an art and as a business.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Debuting writer-director Nate Parker stars in this searingly impressive account of the Nat Turner slave rebellion.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The film offers up more than enough in terms of intelligence, insight, historical research and religious nuance as to not at all be considered a missed opportunity .

Name : Alison Willmore / Alias : BuzzFeed News
Turner deserves this treatment; he deserves a film that doesn't soften the era or apologize in any way for his anger; and he deserves a salute for making it happen.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
Problematically, Birth of a Nation wasn't just a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art - in effect, the founding work of cinematic realism, albeit a work that was developed to pass lies off as reality.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
More than a movie about a slave rebellion, it's about the difficulty of reconciling the great moral chasms between thought, vision, and deed.

Name : Variety Staff / Alias : Variety
Birth of a Nation is a great epoch in picture making; it's great for pictures and it's great for the name and fame of David Wark Griffith. When a man like Griffith in a new field can do what he has done, he may as well be hailed while he is living.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Bridge of Spies" is a moral drama driven by an insurance lawyer. That it works at all is a miracle - or would be, if anyone other than St. Steven were involved.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
I liked the movie a lot - it's one of Spielberg's most measured and most adult films in years, with production values every bit as good as you'd expect.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
It's the very definition of meat and potatoes: While not phenomenal, especially compared to the rest of the Spielberg oeuvre, Spies still hits the spot.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
The skill with which Hanks navigates the intricacies of the plot amount to some of the best work of his career.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
This is a film that, though its story (inspired by true events) begins in 1957 and spans a period of about five years, uses that era to hold a mirror to our own.

Name : Bruce Kirkland / Alias : Toronto Sun
This intriguing story of a high-level swap of spies is virtually unknown today - but the film is inspirational enough that viewers might do their own out-of-theatre research and learn a lot more.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Like everything about Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies," Hanks' performance makes relaxed professionalism and genial decency look easy.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
"Bridge of Spies" isn't conventionally exciting, and isn't intended to be. Instead, it's satisfying-thoroughly and pleasurably so.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
An ode to holding fast to moral principles, geopolitics be damned, becomes a hurrah for old-fashioned big-screen storytelling.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
It's a riveting film and I understood every word.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
There are no extraneous elements in this carefully structured docudrama, which juxtaposes East and West with parallel scenes and emulates vintage Hollywood fare as painstakingly as it reconstructs 1957 Brooklyn and 1962 Berlin.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Steven Spielberg is so smooth, so good at what he does, that his best movies have a way of seeming inevitable, when they're the furthest thing from it.

Name : Gwyneth Kelly / Alias : The New Republic
The details of the story in Bridge of Spies are specific to their time, but the broader conflicts from which they stem remain pertinent.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Bridge of Spies" is a consummate professional's tribute to a gifted amateur, a smooth entertainment with a strong but subtle political subtext that's both potent and unexpected.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Despite its genre constraints, "Bridge of Spies" is among Spielberg's finest achievements - and a reminder that the past is much more than just a repository for nostalgia.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Sober but stirring .

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Bridge of Spies, which waxes poetic - and occasionally cynically - on patriotism, honor, and duty, echoes in your mind long after the credits roll and begs for a second viewing.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Spielberg's best since 'Saving Private Ryan' stars a flawless Tom Hanks in an engrossing old-school thriller.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Steven Spielberg's latest is a solid, quietly made drama carefully wrapped around a civics lesson.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
A riveting, feel-good time for the whole family .

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Apart from Hanks, and an understated, scene-stealing turn by Mark Rylance as the Soviet spy Abel, Bridge of Spies mostly settles for being solidly told and atmospheric.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
For all Spielberg, his star-packed cast, led by Tom Hanks, and his on-screen and off-screen team (Joel and Ethan Coen co-wrote the screenplay) bring to the table, Bridge of Spies is remarkable only for how stuffy and surprisingly inert the film becomes.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
In terms of the director's oeuvre, this will likely be remembered as one of his "minor" productions. (Think Always, The Terminal, and War Horse.)

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Hanks and Rylance deliver golden performances as natural combatants who find common cause in seeking honest justice, even if only they realize it.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
When a film is as enjoyable as this one, its timing so sweet, and its atmosphere conjured with such skill, do you really wish to register a complaint? Would it help?

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Spielberg can't help but make the kind of inspiring, classically constructed drama that we keep being told Hollywood doesn't produce anymore. Thank goodness he still does.

Name : David Sims / Alias : The Atlantic
Spielberg and Charman frame Donovan as a thin bulwark against the American government's attempts to work around its own supposed ideals at the height of the Cold War.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's a salute to nostalgic, idealistic patriotism that Norman Rockwell, Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart would applaud. With Franz Kafka.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Tom Hanks lends his considerable Honest John appeal to this fascinating cold war drama.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Using a screenplay polished and honed by the Coen Brothers, Spielberg dips into John le Carre territory .

Name : Kate Taylor / Alias : Globe and Mail
Rylance's performance is particularly interesting as he infuses Abel's dry understatements on his predicament with just the right dose of quiet irony.

Name : Nancy Churnin / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Authentic re-creations of the period, including duck-and-cover clips about a nuclear holocaust that frightened young students, serve as a reminder of a time, not unlike our own, when the threat of terror kept a steady and disturbing beat.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
A film that is so old-fashioned and comforting that, for much of the time, watching it feels like cuddling up under a soft good-movie blanket.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
If you can overlook the three or four endings, each more overdone than the last, there's a lot to like here.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
A crackling Cold War espionage thriller that thrums with suspense and fleet precision.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
An absorbing true-life espionage tale very smoothly handled by old pros who know what they're doing.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Bridge of Spies has been described as a minor work from a major filmmaker, but the film is too personal to dismiss as a curiosity, and its overall theme blends right in with many of Spielberg's previous pictures.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
A mature drama that demands rapt attention and prefers studied execution over frenetic pacing.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Bridge of Spies connects Cold War paranoia to today's terror. That's a bridge worth building.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : TIME Magazine
In his fourth pairing with Hanks, Spielberg again examines the furtive face of justice and issues another masterful ruling.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Who doesn't like to cozy up to an old-school spy thriller that knows how to build tension and tighten it?

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
When the titles of the five-plus films nominated for best picture are announced, it will be a surprise if Bridge of Spies doesn't make the cut.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Steven Spielberg's period drama works as glossy entertainment but also draws subtle parallels to the present.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Hanks has never seemed more like a modern Jimmy Stewart, drink in hand, just looking to get home to his bed, as the script leans into its cavalcade of slightly bizarre negotiations with Eastern European goons.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
"Bridge of Spies" is, like most of Mr. Spielberg's films, a consummate entertainment that sweeps you up with pure cinema.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Bridge of Spies is solid and uplifting, but it doesn't extend Spielberg's range.