Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
[Nair] manages to do justice to these people's lives, and when, at the end, the real-life characters show up on-screen and stand smiling beside their actor counterparts, the screen lights up along with the audience.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Predictable and very Disneyfied, but Mutesi's remarkable story carries the day.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Hits every note of plucky positivity so squarely on the head that it leaves little room for audience involvement.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : Village Voice
Queen of Katwe is a true-life tale transformed into an inspirational fable. That's not novel for the movies, but in this director's hands, the results are mostly enchanting.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The film as a whole conveys a strong sense of discovery, and humanity.

Name : Eric Kohn / Alias : indieWIRE
By treating its outcome like a foregone conclusion, Queen of Katwe underserves the built-in power of its exultant tale.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Sometimes, it's enough to walk out of a film with your heart warmed - even if your brain's still craving a little something more.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Chess is not the most visual of games, but Nair makes these competitions come alive. She also gets the most out of her mostly nonprofessional African cast, not to mention her two stars, Oyelowo and Nyong'o.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Tribune News Service
An uplifting and emotional story rendered with a lively vibrancy by Nair and her stars

Name : Geoff Berkshire / Alias : Variety
Quietly radical in enough ways to make you cheer despite the cliches.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
The story is true, and the message it delivers-with care and help, the disenfranchised can become role models and inspire others-is unabashedly sentimental, but in a good way.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Nair's film, her best in a long time, is hardly the first to use a chessboard as a symbol of one life's struggles. It is, however, one of the best.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Ultimately, Queen of Katwe fosters a belief in the triumph of merit and talent. And that message is definitely applicable - to Western kids.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Directed by the great Mira Nair, the film hits you like a shot in the heart. Nyong'o and Oyelowo are both extraordinary, giving newcomer Nalwanga a chance to shine as Phiona grows into her own woman.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
What redeems "Queen of Katwe" is the performance of Oyelowo, who imbues Katende with an exhilarating blend of humor and humanity.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
It deals in a world of pawns rather than punches but Queen of Katwe is just as uplifting and feel-good a sports drama as any Rocky movie.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Although the script is a little flat - just because the story is true doesn't mean it should feel so predictable - Nair gives the film tons of energy and joy.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong'o are reliably superb in the critical supporting roles of Mutesi's chess coach and young mother, respectively.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
In the movie, Phiona can see eight moves ahead, and "Queen of Katwe" often feels the same: You know what's coming, but it doesn't dilute the feeling of victory.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : TheWrap
This humanistic tale, helmed by a masterful filmmaker, offers a potent - and yes, inspirational - story of triumph against huge odds.

Name : Katie Rife / Alias : AV Club
Director Mira Nair has a proven ability to find beauty in the most desperate of circumstances, and Queen Of Katwe is no different.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
If there is anyone out there capable of remaining unmoved by this true-life triumph-of-the-underdog sports story, I don't think I want to meet that person.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
While it hits predictable beats of uplift, the triumphs are often measured out painfully, and the heroine faces barriers of class, gender, and crippling self-doubt.

Name : Joe McGovern / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Nyong'o's gravitas is undercut by a script teeming with wooden platitudes, special lessons learned, and the overbaked dialogue of a Joan Crawford melodrama.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
There are no real villains, save for a few snobby bureaucrats. Emotional buttons are occasionally pushed a little hard. But true to her reputation, Nair delivers something a little better than one expects of the genre.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
Prepare to have your heartstrings plucked.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
What sets Queen of Katwe apart from other inspirational stories of its kind is that Phiona's dreams are a double-edged sword.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
Subtlety isn't the strong suit of "Queen of Katwe." But beneath the hackneyed aphorisms, there's a thrilling story worthy of our attention.

Name : Brian Tallerico / Alias : RogerEbert.com
The story of Phiona Mutesi is a fascinating one on its own, but what could have just been an extended "30 For 30" feels lived-in, compassionate and truthful.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
There's much to cheer about a movie with such a diverse cast of talent both familiar and new, set in a land that all too often is depicted on screen as a place of war and hopelessness.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Queen of Katwe's originality comes not in its story but in its setting, explored by Nair with her usual skill at establishing a sense of place.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
Director Mira Nair knows just how to deploy her excellent cast, giving weight to the drama of both Mom and coach without ever forgetting her sweet young queen.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
It's a team effort, and even though we know this playbook by heart, cheers all around.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Just try to resist the charms of Mira Nair's "Queen of Katwe," a triumph-of-the-human-spirit movie that's ultimately, well, triumphant.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
It's a gritty, confident portrait of a man whose life may have been somewhat messier than this Hollywood version.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
This movie is drowning in duty - to say nothing of hoary storytelling devices and one embarrassing scene after the next for Sienna Miller as Mrs. Kyle.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
There's no freshness in either the domestic scenes or the combat sequences.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Though it never uses the term "PTSD," American Sniper, at its best, is a devastating portrait of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Mr. Eastwood's film lets this good and anguished man speak for himself, and discover himself, at his own pace.

Name : David Denby / Alias : New Yorker
Both a devastating war movie and a devastating antiwar movie, a subdued celebration of a warrior's skill and a sorrowful lament over his alienation and misery.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
It's clearly Cooper's show. Substantially bulked up and affecting a believable Texas drawl, Cooper embodies Kyle's confidence, intensity and vulnerability.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Less a war movie than a western - the story of a lone gunslinger facing down his nemesis in a dusty, lawless place - it is blunt and effective, though also troubling.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out New York
Just as only Nixon could go to China, only Clint Eastwood could make a movie about an Iraq War veteran and infuse it with doubts, mission anxiety and ruination.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
American Sniper lifts director Clint Eastwood out of the doldrums that have plagued his last few films.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A taut, vivid and sad account of the brief life of the most accomplished marksman in American military annals, American Sniper feels very much like a companion piece-in subject, theme and quality-to The Hurt Locker.

Name : Elizabeth Weitzman / Alias : New York Daily News
The best movies are ever-shifting, intelligent and open-hearted enough to expand alongside an audience. "American Sniper," Clint Eastwood's harrowing meditation on war, is built on this foundation of uncommon compassion.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
After 40 years of Hollywood counterpropaganda telling us war is necessarily corrupting and malign, its ablest practitioners thugs, loons or victims, "American Sniper" nobly presents the case for the other side.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Eastwood's impeccably crafted action sequences so catch us up in the chaos of combat we are almost not aware that we're watching a film at all.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
American Sniper is imperfect and at times a little corny, but also ambivalent and complicated in ways that are uniquely Eastwoodian.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
As a piece of direction, it's as taut as anything [Eastwood's] ever done.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Clint Eastwood has directed war movies before, but never one that focused on a single warrior. And he has an amazing one here .

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Cautiously, Eastwood has chosen to omit Kyle's self-mythologizing altogether, which is itself a distortion of his character. We're not watching a biopic.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Bradley Cooper, as Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, and director Eastwood salute Kyle's patriotism best by not denying its toll. Their targets are clearly in sight, and their aim is true.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
This harrowing and intimate character study offers fairly blunt insights into the physical and psychological toll exacted on the front lines, yet strikes even its familiar notes with a sobering clarity .

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The film's just a repetition of context-free combat missions and one-dimensional targets.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
But the adrenaline can't replace perception, and despite Eastwood's deft staging of the Iraqi scenes, they don't bring viewers any closer to understanding why Kyle insists on repeatedly returning to the war zones.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Cooper nails the role of an American killing machine in Clint Eastwood's clear-eyed look at the Iraq War.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"The result is not unlike watching a suspenseful but highly repetitive video game, especially since nearly every Iraqi is seen through Kyle's highly perched rifle scope."