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Last updated: 18 Jul 2026 at 18:51 UTC

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Empire of Light (2022) - Critic Reviews - Page 2 of 3

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Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Jack Smart (10) for The A.V. Club (5,644) on 08 Dec 2022

Mendes the first-time solo writer juggles too many disparate story elements, and the nagging sense they should cohere makes it all the more…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Marjorie Baumgarten (1,950) for Austin Chronicle (7,653) on 08 Dec 2022

We may come to Empire of Light like moths to a flame but, ultimately, the film’s glow lacks incandescence…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Richard Roeper (2,737) for Chicago Sun-Times (7,580) on 08 Dec 2022

For all its obvious love of movies and of the shared experience of watching movies, Empire of Light is a decidedly downbeat effort that tries…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Katie Walsh (1,279) for Los Angeles Times (12,977) on 08 Dec 2022

Deakins’ work is beautiful, Colman is incredible, and the role of Stephen proves to be a breakout for Ward…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By A.o. Scott (2,100) for The New York Times (9,847) on 08 Dec 2022

A film that had seemed interested in the lives and feelings of its characters, and in an unlikely but touching relationship between two people…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Ann Hornaday (1,919) for Washington Post (9,851) on 07 Dec 2022

Olivia Colman delivers an alternately delicate and ferocious performance as a cinema manager in Empire of Light, a tender, tear-soaked valentine…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Thom Ernst (141) for Original-Cin (1,156) on 07 Dec 2022

It’s possible to leave the theatre unaffected only to look back at Empire of Light with affection…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By James Berardinelli (4,524) for ReelViews (4,523) on 07 Dec 2022

Empire of Light offers an appetizer of nostalgia for those who remember theaters during the early 1980s but the main course isn’t the easiest…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Lindsey Bahr (430) for The Associated Press (882) on 07 Dec 2022

Empire of Light may be a love letter to the movies, but it’s a sad one in which one of the parties, the local, independent movie theater,…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Roger Moore (6,008) for Movie Nation (3,875) on 07 Dec 2022

Colman is brilliant, Ward brings a lovely wounded nobility to Stephen and the warm and cuddly Jones is set up to sum it all up…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Barry Hertz (792) for The Globe and Mail (Toronto) (4,018) on 07 Dec 2022

From the projectionist played by Toby Jones who regularly pops up to vocalize what everyone onscreen and the audience is already well aware…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Mick Lasalle (3,303) for San Francisco Chronicle (7,630) on 06 Dec 2022

By the time we get to the last 20 minutes, Empire of Light is so scattered, so without impact or focus, that every scene could be the last…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Siddhant Adlakha (174) for IGN (1,013) on 18 Nov 2022

Sam Mendes assembles a creative dream-team for Empire of Light, but ends up with one of the most soulless prestige pictures in years…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Richard Lawson (539) for Vanity Fair (761) on 30 Sep 2022

Whatever Mendes’s connection to the material, he’s made something humane and nourishing, a picture of rare thoughtfulness and decency…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By C.j. Prince (29) for The Film Stage (3,162) on 22 Sep 2022

Empire of Light would like to remind us of the power of movies when it does a far stronger job recalling better ones…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Ross Bonaime (185) for Collider (1,032) on 14 Sep 2022

Empire of Light ultimately becomes a confusing mixture of ideas that never congeal into one solid narrative…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Kenji Fujishima (277) for Slant Magazine (8,298) on 14 Sep 2022

In Sam Mendes’s film, the power of the movies comes off feeling disappointingly like an afterthought to the script’s more romantic and…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Fionnuala Halligan (367) for Screen Daily (1,021) on 13 Sep 2022

Empire Of Light is a sentimental film – the piano-heavy score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross advertises that from the opening bars –…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Tim Robey (1,578) for The Telegraph (1,120) on 13 Sep 2022

The film has a sheepish, hair-shirt quality, as if it wants credit for intersectional largesse…

Review of Empire of Light (2022)

By Peter Bradshaw (3,667) for The Guardian (2,969) on 12 Sep 2022

Empire of Light is a sweet, heartfelt, humane movie, which doesn’t shy away from the brutality and the racism that was happening in the streets…

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