Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
As the protagonists near their final destination, The Homesman offers a critique of civilization that's almost as pessimistic as its critique of frontier life, suggesting that in every corner of America there have always been more losers than winners.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Everyone has a favorite Tommy Lee Jones performance. Until now I didn't have my least favorite, but "The Homesman" provides it, and is ruined by it.

Name : Jon Frosch / Alias : The Atlantic
Jones continues to craft evocative, painterly images, and he takes real risks with tone, shifting from tragic to comic without the usual cues or transitions.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
For a movie headlined by two Oscar-winning Hollywood stars - and directed and co-written by one of them - "The Homesman" is awfully close to outsider art.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
An absorbing, melancholy look at the hard lot of women in the Old West.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Swank, an Oscar winner for "Boys Don't Cry" and "Million Dollar Baby," is outstanding, getting to the essence of Mary Bee's pride and pain. And in the showier role, Jones impressively peels away layers of rambunctiousness to reveal George's humanity.

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : NPR
The Homesman joins a stark, stripped-down beauty to a languid pace and a spare soundtrack to create an ambience that reeks of loneliness and alienation.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"The Homesman" may sound like a title conferred on a man, and George Briggs may be driving the wagon. But it is Mary Bee's persistence and prayers that carry the women, and the film, flawed as it sometimes is, home.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Unlike other actor-directors, Jones never seems to indulge excess on the part of his cast. Though the characters are strong, the performances are understated.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
At a certain point, The Homesman will take you by surprise. By the end . it will take your heart.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : Time Out New York
It doesn't help that Swank never finds a way into this highly unappealing character, or that Jones (mostly phoning in the pitiable surliness) avoids delving very deeply into the story's proto-feminist undercurrents.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
This fem-centric Western from actor-director/co-writer Tommy Lee Jones walks the tightrope between comic and tragic. Jones and Hilary Swank ignite combustibly.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Few will regret having seen "The Homesman," and yet it's not exactly an enjoyable experience.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
Some recent interviews with Jones paint him as a bit of a curmudgeon. But he's right to push back against being put into a box. "The Homesman" succeeds mainly because it and he don't neatly fit into one.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The Homesman aims for a story that's poignant and told sparely, but comes across as mawkish, tedious and self-indulgent.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The development probably works in Glendon Swarthout's novel of the same name, where Swank is nowhere in sight. But not in the theater. You're tempted to give up on the movie because it feels as if the movie has given up on her.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
It's as stubbornly and cantankerously eccentric as both its wagon drivers, not to mention driven to blaze its own trail through the narrative and mythological landscape of America's defining story form.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : Film.com
If this is a revision to the revisionist westerns ushered in by "Unforgiven," I'll stay back East(wood.)

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Newsday
Wanders along the lonesome trail, then heads off into the underbrush.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Title and director notwithstanding, Tommy Lee Jones' "The Homesman'' is very much a feminist Western - one painting a vivid picture of how difficult it was for even a strong and determined woman to survive in frontier days.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
The melancholic balance isn't always quite right and the momentum wanes when it should be gaining.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
A film that looks at first glance like a conventional Western but goes to unusual places.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The film has more surprising turns than a honeycomb has bees. Absurdity and calamity collide without warning.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
If only things had started out on more solid ground and headed toward some sort of resolution. If only.

Name : Elizabeth Weitzman / Alias : New York Daily News
There's a thrilling undercurrent of rebellion in the way this straightforward, seemingly old-fashioned Western takes up the feminist cause.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
A wrenching, relentless and anti-heroic western that stands among the year's most powerful American films. Not everyone will like "The Homesman," but if you see it you won't soon forget it.

Name : Pete Vonder Haar / Alias : Village Voice
Glendon Swarthout's 1988 novel offered a rare approach to . Old West stories by shifting the focus to the women and children who often bore its brunt the worst, and Jones has - for the most part - successfully captured this .

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
While the film is bathed in a beautiful magic-hour glow courtesy of cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, Jones' journey doesn't quite take off.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
A grand, shocking saga of a movie, The Homesman is the kind they don't make much anymore.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Certainly, there is a sturdiness to it, and a stubborn want of haste, that might have earned an approving growl from John Ford.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Integrity and personality can go a long way, especially in a movie as unquestionably flawed as The Homesman.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Right or wrong, "The Homesman" belongs to Jones and Swank, and for Western aficionados it's worth seeing.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Parts of The Homesman are a slog to sit through, but the movie ends on a note of absurd comedy that also breaks your heart, suggesting that some people, no matter the circumstances, are incapable of change.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
A strange, and beautiful movie, full of odd touches - a knife fight in the middle of a desolate wasteland, a gravestone made from a bed's headboard, a piece of embroidery that stands in for a much-missed keyboard - that haunt after the film's done.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"Tommy Lee Jones' riveting Western is bleak and very nearly misanthropic, but it's also passionate, earthy, unpredictable, sensitive, and gloriously distinct."

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Swank and Streep are big stars with famous faces, and yet disappear into their roles; these characters convey both quiet strength and gentle kindness.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"The Homesman" is both a captivating western and a meticulous, devastating feminist critique of the genre.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
I was impressed with how Jones's uncomfortable mixing of tones in the first half of the film gave way to something more elegiac and evocative by the end.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
The Homesman is a western hard and true, one that probably comes closer to depicting the hardships of frontier life than any number of more conventional oaters.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
With incredible attention to detail and an unwavering commitment to the world he has created, Eggers slowly, surely builds tension until it's almost unbearable. And that's delightful, if you're a horror fan. It's a terrific film.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
The Witch immediately joins the pantheon of great horror movies, with the caveat that it's just barely a horror movie at all.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
One often enters the theater hoping to discover an innovative talent who could be "one to watch" or "the next big thing." Wait no longer, Eggers has arrived.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
The first great film of 2016 is a horror flick with Puritans, possessed kids, naked forest women and a haunting goat named Black Phillip.

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The Witch is a stressful movie to watch, and that's meant as the highest praise.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
All the dour zealotry is enlivened by horror elements that edge The Witch toward a welcome pulpiness - and greater honesty about what hokum the film actually is.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An unsettling journey back to a time when Satan seemed much closer to our world.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Slate
Robert Eggers' uncompromising directorial debut is a bracingly new experience that boils with the primordial fever of America's original sins.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
The Witch" isn't typical gorehound material; it has an art film prestige and a commitment to period authenticity.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
What makes The Witch more than a mere museum reclamation project is Taylor-Joy.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
Like the Puritans themselves, the movie shuns drama. It has too much moral virtue for jump scares.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
The Witch has been made with extreme care, and part of what makes its supernatural elements so terrifying is that Eggers is also in tune with the more ordinary challenges of just being human .

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
This phenomenal debut feature by Robert Eggers has a singular style and tone, and its horror flows from the deepest wellsprings of human nature.

Name : David Sims / Alias : The Atlantic
The movie's first-time director, Robert Eggers, blends authenticity with black magic, and the result is giddying.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
[Eggers] proves to be an original and accomplished storyteller with much more to offer than cheap shocks.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
For once in a modern horror film, the tactics and developments are simple yet surprising, and the filmmaking captures its chosen time, place and dark corners beautifully.

Name : Bill Zwecker / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
From the very opening scene in The Witch, we are immediately thrown into an ominous journey that conveys pending doom.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
For fans of horror at its most sinister, "The Witch" is not to be missed. It casts a spell that lingers long after its most disquieting mists have cleared.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
It's a creepy little gem, and its imagery will stay with you long after you've left the theater.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
As a horror movie . the film's only flaw may be that that's how it reductively sees itself - as just a horror movie.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It isn't engineered for hopped-up date-night scares, but its blanket of moonlit dread is certainly form-fitting .

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Eggers doles out the horror sparingly and eerily: an image of blood in a milk pail, a moving shape in the shadow of a barn. The movie uses lamplight and hearth light to conceal as much as they reveal.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
As straight horror, The Witch is something special, transporting audiences to a bygone era that would look plenty frightening even without the paranormal activity that engulfs it.

Name : Dan Callahan / Alias : TheWrap
Isn't afraid to go to some dicey emotional and sexual places in its pursuit of its theme, and it has the sense to let some things remain unexplained because they are scarier that way.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
This bravura first feature by writer/director Robert Eggers leaves the viewer shaken and wondering, "What just happened?"

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's clear that this beautifully made film wants to root its horror in the less-is-more approach. But in this case, less is often just less.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
With a gentle rap-rapping, Mr. Eggers intensifies the shivers with art-film moves, genre shocks and an excellent cast that includes a progressively rowdy menagerie.

Name : Ethan Sacks / Alias : New York Daily News
There's not much of a coherent plot that's been summoned up to go along with those impressive visuals.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
A feature debut of startling confidence, Robert Eggers's The Witch is not only an excellent horror film, but also a captivating study in extreme paranoia and the fragile bonds of family.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Writer-director Robert Eggers is said to be detail-obsessed, and it shows.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
"The Witch" feels at once sticky with tangible detail and numinous with suggestion.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Building his film on the diabolical aftershocks of Puritan repression, Eggers raises The Witch far above the horror herd. He doesn't need cheap tricks. Eggers merely directs us to look inside. Be warned: It'll scare the hell out of you.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
Like any truly successful horror film, "The Witch" operates on various levels at once and is open to interpretation.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
To my taste, the movie finally feels rather one-dimensional, basic. But there's no disputing its awful power - it gets under your skin .

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
I would prefer seeing a failed attempt at something different than a regurgitation of every modern horror trope. Yet The Witch proves unable to capitalize on being different.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Writer-director Robert Eggers makes an impressive feature debut with this gripping historical horror-thriller.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Eggers creates a special feel and ambiance in his first feature after a couple of shorts.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
For anyone seeking an intelligent, atmospheric American horror story reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe, Hawthorne and the Brothers Grimm, "The Witch" is the kind of pure movie magic that sends chills up the spine.

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
Helped by along by a great cast, a haunting soundtrack and terrific attention to period detail, The Witch is an auspicious feature debut for writer-director Robert Eggers.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
What makes this chillingly creepy little black-magic folk tale work so beautifully is its evocative sense of time and place . Well, that and composer Mark Korven's unsettling soundtrack full of screechy, dissonant strings.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Eggers' depiction of the family's psychological decay and his relentless piling up of deeply disturbing imagery make "The Witch" an unnerving and fresh-feeling horror masterwork.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Minimalist, slow to burn and utterly confident in its style and tone, Robert Eggers' Colonial New England fairy tale earns its chills the old fashioned way, through timing, atmosphere and skill.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
The Witch is wrapped up in its own views of religion, of sin, of feminine power, but more than anything else, it is wrapped up in itself.