Cold War
Amazon Studios | Release Date: December 21, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
90
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
45
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Original-CinLiam LaceyJan 24, 2019
We can see Cold War as a look back on recent history, not through the lens of realism, but as a Hollywood fantasy, a kind of romantic protest against a political nightmare. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrJan 16, 2019
Cold War is a ravishment, a cinematic feast for the senses, and it packs an epic inner landscape into a dense 88 minutes. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 16, 2019
Polish actress Joanna Kulig has been waiting for years to show what she can do, and in Cold War she gets the chance. She takes the role of a lifetime between her teeth, chomps on it, pounds it into the ground and never lets go for a second. Ferocity and intensity are present in every moment of her performance, even when she’s contained. With Cold War, Kulig breaks out as a lioness of international cinema. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayJan 16, 2019
A near-perfect film, an artfully crafted, flawlessly acted meditation on love, memory and invented history that’s both deeply personal and politically attuned. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 20, 2018
Passionate, tempestuous, haunting and assured, this latest from writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski explores, as did his Oscar-winning “Ida,” Poland’s recent past, resulting in a potent emotional story with political overtones that plays impeccably today. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 20, 2018
Like “Roma,” another glory of the current season, the film was shot in black-and-white; the shooter was Lukasz Zal, who was co-cinematographer, with Ryszard Lenczewski, on “Ida.” As in both of those films, the result here is mysteriously ravishing, so much so that you either forget it isn’t in color or take the rich blacks and radiant whites to be colors in their own right. Also, black is the color of the screen between the chapters of a story that takes bold narrative leaps off-screen; the impact of these ellipses is stunning. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comTomris LafflyDec 17, 2018
An aching film on such exquisite pains of impossible love, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War concurrently swells your heart and breaks it, just like the sore memory of a lover that drifted away from your life, or an intensely craved kiss that never was. Read full review
100
EmpireAndrew LowrySep 3, 2018
Pawlikowski is in complete control of the form, but this is no austere piece of work — he even finds time for a few good jokes. Accessible, humane and compassionate: what a treat this is. Read full review
100
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeSep 2, 2018
There’s a sustained tension between the concisely epic sweep of the narrative and boxy confinement of the 4x3 frame that perfectly matches the film’s twin themes of freedom and incarceration. Read full review
100
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMay 24, 2018
The Polish filmmaker has conjured a dazzling, painful, universal odyssey through the human heart and all its strange compulsions. It could be the most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year, or just a really painful reminder of the one that got away. Read full review
100
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganMay 17, 2018
Cold War is glorious, sophisticated film-making, shadowed by the spirit of Pawilowski’s Oscar-winning Ida. Lead actress Joanna Kulig is arresting. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 17, 2018
The crystalline black-and-white cinematography exalts its moments of intimate grimness and its dreamlike showpieces of theatrical display. It is an elliptical, episodic story of imprisonment and escape, epic in scope. Read full review
100
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 17, 2018
This is the refined work of an artist at the peak of his powers, and, dare we say it, a masterpiece. Read full review
100
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 11, 2018
It deftly walks the line between appropriately somber and great, sophisticated fun. Read full review
91
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerDec 24, 2018
There’s not an ounce of wasted motion to be found throughout Cold War. Pawlikowski moves at a fleet pace, trusting in his audience to fill in the gaps that the film’s understated storytelling leaves along the way. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd May 17, 2018
Pawlikowski, who doesn’t waste a shot (nor compose one that isn’t a work of art on its lonesome), creates a gripping present tense from the clarity and efficiency of his storytelling: No matter how often he lurches us forward in time, we remain locked into the emotional sphere of his characters. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 20, 2018
The movie is filled with ordinary and surprising beauty, with gleaming and richly textured surfaces, and the kind of velvety black chiaroscuro you can get lost in. Its greatest strengths, though, are its two knockout leads, who give the story its heat, its flesh and its heartbreak. Read full review
90
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 19, 2018
The writer-director based the couple on his own parents, who bear the same names as his characters. It’s not their story, he’s said — what he’s given us instead is a love story that’s as sexy as it is savage, as tough as it is tender. It’s a spellbinder with a fever that won’t quit. Read full review
90
Village VoiceBilge EbiriMay 17, 2018
Narratively, the music in Cold War is a means to an end; emotionally, however, it’s everything, often expressing what the characters cannot say themselves. Read full review
90
VoxAlissa WilkinsonMay 17, 2018
It’s a work of unspeakable beauty, one that doesn’t leave you when the film ends, and its deceptively simple focus on a love story can’t mask its cinematic achievement. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMay 17, 2018
Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski's latest film, is bittersweet and unbearably lovely, a sad ballad of two lovers who can't stand to stay apart but also sometimes can't stand each other either. Read full review
90
TheWrapSteve PondMay 17, 2018
If it doesn’t feel as fresh and bracing as “Ida” did, that film may have been the perfect combination of form and content. Cold War, which is Pawlikowski’s first entry in Cannes main competition, is in some ways more familiar, but the spin he puts on it is distinctly and beautifully his own creation. Read full review
90
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 17, 2018
Cold War may return to “Ida’s” meticulous monochrome aesthetic of “Ida,” but it’s a companion piece with its own tonal and structural energy: less emotionally immediate, perhaps, but immersively informed by the broken jazz rhythms beloved of its protagonist. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaMay 11, 2018
Pawlikowski understands the mythic, destructive pull such narratives have on us — as audience members and those swept up ourselves. Read full review
89
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpDec 20, 2018
Pawlikowski leaves it to the viewer to determine for themselves the fate of his Cold War proxy parents, and to glean purpose from the film’s gaps in time, its reticence, and even its black-and-white palette. Married with the Academy ratio, the color scheme makes the film feel classic, but Pawlikowski’s desire to plumb his past makes it timeless. Read full review
88
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonFeb 5, 2019
Cold War, a love story about music and musicians, is for people who found A Star Is Born way too cheerful and optimistic. It’s pretty downbeat, but it’s also another black-and-white (subtitled) marvel from Pawel Pawlikowski. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 17, 2019
Kulig comes with everything the role of this sullen, reckless siren demands, and then some. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldJan 16, 2019
Cold War seduces its viewer, in its brief running time. You might find, in the quiet of its poignant ending, that it has left its mark on your heart. Read full review
88
The Associated PressJake CoyleDec 20, 2018
It’s Pawlikowski second-straight masterwork, only one with a critical if seldom-seen error. His movie is too short. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJan 25, 2019
What struck home the most forcefully for me in Cold War is its depiction, insidious and unrelenting, of how artists under communism suffered for their art. At its best, the film is like a bulletin from a benighted world. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 19, 2018
Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War resembles a waking dream. And a ravishingly romantic one at that. Read full review
83
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 17, 2018
If talk is cheap and deceptive — maybe even dangerous at times — in Cold War, music certainly is not. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghJan 16, 2019
It’s clear from the opening shots that a physically and psychically savaged post-war Poland is impossible ground for love to flower, and it’s a testament to Pawel Pawlikowski’s talent that this fatalism makes us more, not less, invested in the romance. Read full review
80
Film ThreatFilipe FreitasJan 1, 2019
Wrapped in deepest melancholy, Cold War has no idle or frivolous scenes since everything fits and flows under Pawlikowski’s masterful direction. Read full review
80
CineVueMaximilian Von ThunAug 30, 2018
Cold War’s main weakness is that despite the political stakes, it fails to make us truly care about Wiktor’s and Zula’s relationship. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 17, 2018
Music has a vital role all the way through, inspiring the film’s rhythm and flow, its time jumps and nomadic shifts in location, its very destiny. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedDec 21, 2018
The two stars deserve bigger vehicles in grander epics, Pawlikowski cements his reputation as a major filmmaker to reckon with, and although it leaves you wanting more, Cold War is a film that is both illuminating and haunting at the same time. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 18, 2018
Cold War features a few too many ellipses and occasionally substitutes operatic tragedy for credible motivations. This results in a film that, although breathtaking to watch and emotionally wrenching, is strangely unsatisfying. Read full review
75
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 17, 2018
It’s a brave thing, to tell a story by omission, but Pawlikowski almost pulls it off. Read full review
75
The PlaylistJordan RuimyMay 17, 2018
The minute-to-minute detail is absolutely stunning, from the period costumes to the on-set locations, there’s a searing authenticity to the time period that is undeniably absorbing. However, the almost too tightening restraint he gives his film forces us to quickly witness its events rather than be enveloped or moved by them. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineSam C. MacMay 11, 2018
The film is most exhilarating as a breathless vessel for mood, one that just so happens to conduct itself within reconstructed period settings that are as obsessively detailed as the reverently curated soundtrack. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJan 23, 2019
Fans of wartime romances like Casablanca and Doctor Zhivago are sure to swoon over the fate of Cold War’s divided lovers. Read full review
67
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsJan 10, 2019
The sense of enclosure, of these two lovers pushed into discomfiting, dangerous proximity when we see them together, is immediately striking. But so is the sense that the director has squeezed all the gritty, more specific sense of conflict out of his movie. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 2, 2019
The leads are showcased engagingly, the locations — even ruined a bombed out Polish church, but including Paris, Yugoslavia and Occupied Berlin — rendered in romantic tones. But there’s not enough connection between those leads to generate the level of heat aimed for here. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorSep 8, 2018
Form and content seem oddly divorced, but music – the Polish folk tunes, communist-propaganda anthems and Parisian torch songs – sets the mood and saves the day. Read full review
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