Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
'Prisoners' director Denis Villeneuve returns with a blisteringly suspenseful, ever surprising cartel thriller.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
This dramatic thriller finds a spot somewhere between your brain and your stomach, and drills in.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Villeneuve, cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Johann Johannsson combine to make the action scenes gorgeous, scary and exciting, while the script by Taylor Sheridan is mordant and smart, with not a wasted word.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
A well-deserved showcase for Emily Blunt.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
An unforgettable motion picture that should be on the must-see list for anyone who appreciates films that deal in grays rather than blacks and whites.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Combining relentless action with the story of a woman confronting a corrupted system, it hits with the staggering energy of a visceral kick in the guts - causing a sensory recoil in every scene.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
With a taut and timely screenplay by Taylor Sheridan, Sicario is a brilliant action thriller with the smarts of a message movie.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The first hour of this latest film from French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve is sleek, terrific pulp.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This is suspenseful stuff, but hanging over the action is the pungent smell of social failure, as the drug war turns both sides into monsters.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Sicario paints the bleakest of portraits of a realistic situation, drawn from headlines about Mexican cartels that stack bodies with savage efficiency.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Time Out
Denis Villeneuve takes on the Mexican drug trade in this stern, robust, abandon-hope-all-ye-who-enter thriller.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
There are no rules, and no reason, in this world of death and revenge, and we see it through Kate's eyes: fascinated, repelled, ultimately haunted.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
We can thank Villeneuve and rookie screenwriter Taylor Sheridan's tight script, but also Blunt, Brolin and Del Toro, each of whom has never been better.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Denis Villeneuve's film turns out to be a stupendously unnerving descent into moral chaos, our presumed action hero Alice in Cartel-land.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
If "Sicario" does not collapse under its own grimness, that is because of the pulse: the care with which Villeneuve keeps the story beating, like a drum, as he steadies himself for the next set piece.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Villeneuve's proven he's got a strong punch. The trouble is, he barely aims.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
One can easily ignore the film's ambitious subtext and enjoy it strictly on the basis of its terrific performances and nonstop intensity.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
If the film is a little too macho and far too Anglo to tell the full, ugly story of all the villains and victims, it is, like all of Villeneuve's films, a bravura piece of filmmaking.

Name : Sandy Cohen / Alias : Associated Press
Villeneuve has crafted a compelling, unflinching look at the deadly and complicated war on drugs, one that will challenge the attitudes of even the most straight-edged and law-abiding viewers.

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
Director Denis Villeneuve, aided and abetted by cinematographer Roger Deakins, fills Sicario with dread and a violence that happens to be stunning to look at.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
[Villeneuve] hasn't forgotten that he's making a thriller, and he's made one that's both nerve-shatteringly suspenseful and, thanks to noted cinematographer Roger Deakins, gorgeous to watch.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
After a while these sounds and images start to feel like expressions of technique, and they become at once numbing and sensational, and instead of a movie about violence we're watching another violent movie, after all.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Succeeds in evoking the anarchic violence of the drug wars raging on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The violence of the inter-American drug trade has served as the backdrop for any number of films for more than three decades, but few have been as powerful and superbly made as Sicario.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
Villeneuve's movies occupy a spectrum between thought-provoking and mind-bending, and it's clear that he wants to guide Taylor Sheridan's script into similar territory.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It has a screenplay of freshness and audacity that's brought to life by a director who understands its every psychological undercurrent. We might hope this kind of thing would happen all the time, but it's rare.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan aren't selling more than a tautological action movie with the dread and body count of a horror film.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Far from being just another crime story, "Sicario" is cinema at its most ambitious.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
Director Denis Villeneuve delivers screenwriter Taylor Sheridan's story layer by layer, never overwhelming the audience while still challenging it to pay attention.

Name : Mark Olsen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script by Taylor Sheridan, the film manages to somehow be sleek and sprawling, focused and cagey at the same time, often in the same scene.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
This is not the first movie about the war being waged across the U.S.-Mexico border over the drug trade, but it's the first film in which the aura of constant menace and threat lingers and follows you home.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
Villeneuve handles action scenes with impressive flair, but also understands that the key to effective action is to build up to it slowly and inexorably.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
This is one of the best movies of the year.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Within this dark epic of American failure lives an effective but decidedly minor vigilante flick.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
A gripping and tension-packed spin through America's covert War on Drugs. Prepare to be haunted for a good long time.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
Sicario is a remarkable, thrilling, intermittently brilliant film-and yet nonetheless a mild disappointment.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Sicario opens on a power chord of fear, nausea, and dread that resonates throughout the whole movie.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
By the end, it packs a death stare so potent it will make you want to turn a blind eye to the shadowy brutality of its real-world horrors.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Mixes arthouse and grindhouse into a most satisfying cocktail.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The Age of Adaline has a fundamental weakness: The tepid romance is supposed to structure everything else, so the film feels disjointed - a series of good, sometimes even great scenes in search of an organizing principle.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
The makings of an interesting movie are here, but the script, written by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, collapses on itself in the third act.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
Lively glides across the screen from scene to scene - like the ballroom of a grand old hotel with a suitor in hot pursuit - with all the emotional weight of a model in a perfume commercial.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
For a movie that emulates literature, The Age Of Adaline never fits comfortably into a particular form-literary or cinematic.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A preposterous premise treated with great solemnity. Lively shines, though, as does Ford.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Okay, it's hooey. "Adaline" is not a documentary. What it is, though, is seductive.

Name : Jon Frosch / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Lively is an odd screen presence - somehow both warm and cold, accessible and recessive. She's long been ripe for a breakthrough lead role that allows her to stretch and surprise.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
For a movie about a 106-year-old - albeit one trapped in the body of a 29-year-old - "The Age of Adaline" doesn't have a lot of wisdom.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Plausibility, shmausibility. This is pretty schmaltz done right.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Adaline is consistently gorgeous to look at-and a good reminder that love, even when it's complicated or painful or doesn't last, is a whole lot better than immortality.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A sweeping romance beautifully wrapped in classy couture and slightly suspect in the way it uses metaphysics to manipulate matters of the heart.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Ultimately, you believe Lively as an old soul in a young body, carrying a heavy secret; you hope, somehow, that love will bring her a happy ending.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
Lovers of the genre will find plenty to love about the stylish Age of Adaline and may find themselves rooting through pockets for a tissue at points, a romance movie equivalent of a standing ovation.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Someone should steal this concept and make a decent movie out of it.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Burstyn is as beautiful and emotionally present as always and Ford - after so many years of grumpily picking up paychecks - seems delighted to be acting again, and in a real movie.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
The film is as tender and endearing as a lamb, a lamb at rest in a fragrant atmosphere. It's a film that has a determined, unironic respect for things past.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Blake Lively's subtle, expressive performance sets the tone for this thoroughly ludicrous, thoroughly enjoyable romantic drama.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Starved of sufficient comedy or drama, "The Age of Adaline" is a pipsqueak.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Far too often here, Adaline's parade of period dresses, coats and handbags stand in for the richness of human experience.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
The Age of Adaline is a modern romantic fairy tale set in San Francisco, marred by bad narration and an unnecessary desire to overexplain random magic.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Leave it to Harrison Ford to pull off a rescue that one of his signature heroes might envy. In a deftly crafted supporting role, Ford does as much as Lively herself to shape Adaline's strange predicament into something genuinely resonant.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
Lively's never been better, but "Adaline" is more interested in what she's wearing than what her character's thinking.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
"The Age of Adaline" works best as a simple story of boy meets girl; girl falls in love; girl mulls whether or not to reveal that she'll stay young forever. Everything else is just a lot of unnecessary noise.

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
Again and again, director Lee Toland Krieger (Celeste & Jesse Forever) allows shades of a more nuanced movie to pop up along the margins, only to steer instead toward innocent niceties.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Lively's performance is appropriately mysterious but too shallow to allow audiences to empathize with her character. The fault lies more in the screenplay, which doesn't give her character much depth.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
It fails to pursue any of the fascinating questions its premise raises. Instead, it dives headfirst into Nicholas Sparks territory and explores, though not without some charm, Adaline's romantic life.