Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Jon Stewart's filmmaking debut "Rosewater" has much in common with "The Daily Show" - it's blaringly obvious, it's naive, it plays to the cheap seats and it's enamored with cheap jokes.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Rosewater" is a reminder that America may have its critics, but at least there's little danger of the average citizen being arrested for appearing on a fake news show.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The film goes slightly beyond rigorous earnestness and settles into a kind of stubborn atonement.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Stewart acquits himself solidly, though not thrillingly, as a beginning director .

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Newsday
Earnest, well-acted, less than urgent, but more than a vanity project.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Stewart does a credible job of maintaining the story's immediacy, but I must say I felt relieved that the film wasn't a masterpiece. If it was, we'd have more reason to fear Stewart will leave The Daily Show.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
In outline, Rosewater sounds earnest, one-note, relentless - something you'd watch out of a sense of duty. But it turns out to be a sly, layered work, charged with dark wit along with horror.

Name : Tomas Hachard / Alias : NPR
The result neither portrays the suffering of Bahari's incarceration adequately nor lampoons the absurdities of the situation.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
For a first effort, Stewart hasn't done a bad job. There's just the nagging feeling with "Rosewater" that a better movie was possible.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Though at times Rosewater is clearly the work of a first-timer still finding his voice, Stewart is indisputably a real filmmaker.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Mr. Stewart's interest in the material is obviously personal, but his movie transcends mere self-interest.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
A solid, powerfully acted political drama about human endurance in the face of ideological oppression.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Rosewater certainly has merit as an act of atonement on Stewart's part and a tribute to people like Bahari. In the end, however, the movie needs to stand on its own, apart from its noble intentions and the popularity of its writer-director.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Stewart does a solid job of handling the facts of the time; it feels true to the moment, like a filmed Newsweek story. Creative acting, dramatizedthemes, gifted cinematic styling? Not so much.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Rosewater is an earnest picture, but it's also got some juice - there's vitality and feeling in it, the secret ingredients so often missing from even the most well-intentioned first features.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
What makes "Rosewater" different from similar entries in what might be called the Triumph of the Imprisoned Spirit genre is that the hero is hardly an ideologue, despite having sympathy for the Iranian reformers and the Green party.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : Film.com
"Rosewater" marks the debut of a director whose brains and guts are the equal or the better of his eye and heart .

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is Jon Stewart's directorial debut; the talk show comedian has a handle on the material and conveys it clearly.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Stewart's enthusiasm for his story and passion about injustice ring clear, but throughout what could have been a dreadfully somber film, he remembers to breathe.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
A clear-headed, sensitive and thoroughly impressive directorial debut for the Comedy Central host.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
The virtue of this movie is its commitment to political ambiguity and emotional truth.

Name : Esther Breger / Alias : The New Republic
The main question Rosewater grapples with is whether Stewart can hack it as a filmmaker. The answer: sort of?

Name : Mary Houlihan / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
With Rosewater, Stewart proves he can pull back from the satirical comedy and become a thoughtful, incisive and questioning filmmaker.

Name : David Denby / Alias : New Yorker
The hard-focus clarity of the images (Bobby Bukowski did the cinematography) leads to an intimacy with anguish that passes into expressionism.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
While the film keeps telling us that Bahari survived his ordeal by freeing his mind from imprisonment and eventually outsmarting his rosewater-scented interrogator, we are told that he's doing so more than we're seeing it.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Stewart has created an informative, dark and witty story imbued with black humor surrounding Bahari's confinement.

Name : Joe McGovern / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Rosewater, starring the geeky-charismatic Gael Garcia Bernal as Bahari, is a gripping drama, smartly calibrated for Western audiences who still need an education in the bright, progressive, fight-back impulses in Iranian culture.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out New York
The film settles into the kind of sobriety you've seen too often .

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
That the movie is as tense and chilling as it is owes much to first-time director Jon Stewart's keen eye for the way humor surfaces even in the dark places.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Rosewater . has an urgency that's all about the storytelling smarts of its first-time writer-director.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
A strong, striking political drama.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Stewart lets the truth roll out, the best he can, believing in the sanitizing effect of sunlight and the inevitable fate that awaits all despots.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
A finely wrought, powerful drama that tells the true story of an Iranian-born journalist's imprisonment and torture by the Islamic regime in Iran.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Centrist mush-basic, boilerplate human-interest stuff that's too shapeless to completely work as drama, and too depoliticized to be taken seriously as anything else.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
"Rosewater" doesn't hector, nor does it giggle about the issue of press freedom. It's an impressive and important piece of storytelling.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Stewart proves to be an able filmmaker in "Rosewater." But he also shows hints of being something more.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
A persuasive production despite its limited budget .

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Stewart's wryly observant qualities as a TV star serve him well in his feature film debut.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Stewart and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski cover it all in a straightforward, watchable way, the performances are all sincere and solid and the situation is easy to respond to emotionally.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
It's a movie made for people who prefer to take their politics while sitting on the couch.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
While it may seem like another triumph-over-adversity tale, the movie is really about what sustains us during impossible moments.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Stewart can never quite answer the question: Why this man's story, of all the ones that should be told? And why now, five years later?

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's a movie with a lot of things to say, but walking out, you feel like you're still waiting for it to say them.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : TIME Magazine
Yes, such things happened. Gavron's touch, though, renders them melodramatic.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Suffragette expends its energy selling us on what we already believe rather than examining the way these activists pressed the world into believing it.

Name : Sasha Stone / Alias : TheWrap
The supporting cast, including Helena Bonham Carter, Romola Garai and Anne-Marie Duff, are all top notch, and a reminder of how few films like this exist anywhere.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's a movie that's easier to respect than love, but it is something to respect.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An intriguing premise dampened by thin characters and a formulaic story.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"Suffragette" derives its considerable intellectual and emotional might from recognizing the symbolic nature of the vote. . That practical view makes the [film] not just an urgent history lesson but also a perceptive human drama.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Though ably acted and indisputably on the side of the angels, "Suffragette" as directed by Sarah Gavron is more dead-on earnest and schematic than it needs to be.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
It's always compelling; you feel grateful, watching, that this story is being told at all.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The movie does well to shine a light on the venerable struggle, but its beam is narrow, and often pallid.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
As a period piece, Suffragette captures and preserves the pulse and passion of a past era, yet strengthens the vibrant urgency of a cause that continues to inform the future.

Name : Kristin Tillotson / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Mulligan, in particular, delivers, bringing believability to a role that's quite a stretch, given the transformation her character has to go through from workaday mum to first-wave feminist superhero.

Name : Karen D'Souza / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
"Suffragette" urges us to look at the dynamics of gender, class and power then and now with fresh eyes.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
It depicts an important movement that remains relevant today as a historical obligation of a movie, dutiful and often surprisingly dull.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
A picture whose politics prove rather more commendable than its artistry.

Name : Sarah Bryan Miller / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Morgan's writing is occasionally pedestrian, but the sweep of the story, the performances and Gavron's vision make up for it.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
If we now take a woman's right to vote and to hold public office for granted, Suffragette reminds us that it wasn't that long ago when things were different.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Suffragette has the power to shock even those familiar with the early days of the feminist movement it dramatizes.

Name : Stephen Farber / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A rousing, relevant slice of feminist history.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Despite Mulligan bringing her A-game, the film falls short of its potential.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
This period drama shows how awful it was to be a working-class woman at that time. [but] scenes dramatizing the political organizing and protests are less effective, bogged down by pedantic dialogue and historical generalizations.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
In a sea of Hollywood escapism, Suffragette - flaws and all - is a movie that matters.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
[Mulligan is] a fiercely intelligent performer, and that suits her here. She gives some human weight to Maud's big moments, especially when they veer dangerously close to hokum.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"Suffragette" is an absorbing, ultimately moving portrait of thwarted ideals that rings all too true today.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It riles you up and at times may move you to tears of rage.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The script, by Abi Morgan, filters out the contextual complexities of politics, and Sarah Gavron's direction reduces difficult situations to simple sentiments.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
Gavron splits the difference between didactic history lesson and "relatable" storytelling without quite reaching either goal.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
Suffragette, like Maud, is modest in scope and ambition, and is more emotionally affecting for it.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
From a historical perspective, Suffragette is riddled with inaccuracies, but that's less of a problem than its questionable dramatic arc.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
It's a shame that, despite some excellent performances, this urgent, well-intentioned film feels so conventional and stolid.

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
Suffragette is easy to look at, populated by strong actors who move through a world furnished with lovely period detail, but it feels hollow at the centre.

Name : Julia Cooper / Alias : Globe and Mail
Mulligan's performance, coupled with a solid script by Abi Morgan, shows us just how much is at stake when a woman decides to wage war.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
In Suffragette, which without [Mulligan] would be a far, far less compelling movie, she doesn't merely entertain us with her skill. She brings to vibrant life an important part of our global history that's easy to forget.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Stirring and cleareyed - the best kind of history lesson.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
Suffragette occasionally turns hard truths into platitudes. But the story is inspiring, buoyed by a fine cast, a pointed, important examination of the price paid for a shot at equality.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
In minimizing the usual scenes that fill this sort of film - terribly awkward breakfasts at the country house, men wagging their chinwhiskers at each other - Gavron finds room for others.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
It's a tremendous, awards-worthy performance from Carey Mulligan.