Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
It starts with gunshots - a Mercedes and its driver are riddled by motorcycle-riding assassins in broad daylight - and the pace of "The Connection" is bang-bang brisk most of the rest of the way.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
There are no elaborate car chases or dizzyingly choreographed shootouts. Yet it's nonetheless a compelling portrait of two men in a specific time and place.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
While the story lacks focus here and there, the film never feels overplayed. It's a work of bloody style and solid substance.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
Jimenez, making his second feature, fails to provide the regular jolts of electricity this material needs.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
A common problem in crime-centric movies: The bad guys are almost always more fascinating than the good guys. Dujardin's bull-necked, hard-charging performance makes Pierre a worthy adversary.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Jimenez's sprawling cat-and-mouse thriller loses momentum and focus in the homestretch, but until then its '70s sun-and-sin-on-the-Cote d'Azur vibe is electric.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Jimenez adopts a vintage-kitsch sensibility, taking a disappointingly generic approach to his hard-to-follow narrative.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Gangster movies should not be mildly interesting.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
"The Connection" isn't all that different from a lot of police procedurals that have come before, but there's something about this particular gritty true-crime story that still fascinates all these years later.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Sports the most schnozz-tacular array of craggy-faced macho men this side of Easter Island.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The film is engaging, propulsive, cut with rare brio, chockablock with consummate tough-guy business.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Despite the pedestrian screenplay (by Jimenez and Audrey Diwan), Dujardin and Lellouche are magnetic performers who slip easily into their antagonistic roles.

Name : John DeFore / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A procedural epic whose complicated narrative is propelled by visceral action sequences and an unusually thrilling soundtrack.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Riveting from its first moments, "The Connection" is fascinating in its presentation of character, as well as for its glimpse into the workings of an international drug empire and into the ways an imaginative cop found to chip at its power.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
How can you dislike a film that signals a killing with "Bang Bang" and a villain with "The Snake"?

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It's a stylish affair, very solidly made if not exactly breaking new ground in our understanding of events or in the way the movies depict them.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It may prove too slow for some and the meandering can be a little maddening, but overall it's worth the effort.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
By the end, The Tribe has revealed itself as so original, and so chilling, it's likely to leave you speechless.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
An utter astonishment.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
So vigorous are those signs, and so unmistakably sore is the inflammation of feeling behind them, that, far from being shut out, we are pulled all too fiercely into the drama's heart.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
It's something of a formal tour de force, a triumphant overcoming of self-imposed cinematic challenges.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It toys with our pity, then it toys with our outrage, then it toys with our identification. Before we know it, we've been sucked into its wicked, all-too-human drama.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
The Tribe is a singular, fascinating experiment, but that's about all it is. It gives gimmicks a good name, without ever transcending its own.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
It's a staggering film, but not a brilliant one - a superior version would have played more with the gulf between our senses and theirs.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The use of sign language, deafness and silence itself adds several heady new ingredients to the base material, alchemically creating something rich, strange and very original.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
Beyond the film-stealing, hypnotic use of sign-language, what we get is a bleak vision of a society gone to pot.

Name : Farran Smith Nehme / Alias : New York Post
Story-wise, "The Tribe" is yet another art-film wallow in cruelty, not nearly as unique as its looks and its world.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Actions, emotions and desperate impulses speak far louder than words in The Tribe, a formally audacious coup de cinema that marks a stunning writing-directing debut for Ukrainian filmmaker Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy.

Name : Joe McGovern / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
As an amazing piece of pure cinema, The Tribe needs to be experienced. And talked about.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Filmmaker Jesse Moss frames his shots beautifully; the landscapes look like Andrew Wyeth paintings.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
Through patience, skill, discretion, and trust, Jesse Moss has taken a seemingly small town story and turned it into both a microcosm of today's most urgent issues and a portrait of a single suffering soul.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
So much of "The Overnighters" tells all sorts of truths, and Moss earned the trust of his subjects, whatever they might think of the result.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
Composed of multiple layers - more than one of which might bring tears to your eyes - this shape-shifting documentary begins as one thing and ends as quite another.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
Moss uses images of drill towers or blistering flame as visual metaphors for other things transpiring on screen: the fracturing of a family, the heated fury that comes with a sense of betrayal.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
[A] tough-minded, admirably unresolved film .

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A sobering must-see, The Overnighters speaks to the eternal dilemma of doing the right thing in a community beset by suspicion and fear.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The film features stunning third-act revelations that compel viewers to rethink its characters' actions and motivations.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
A classic example of a documentary that discovers its subject in the process of its making.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
If John Steinbeck were writing in the second decade of the 21st century, "The Overnighters" is precisely the story he'd want to tell.

Name : Trevor Johnston / Alias : Time Out
An urgent portrait of compassion under fire.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
The Overnighters sounds like the sort of dry news blurb you'd skim over in the Sunday paper, but it unfolds into an epic tragedy.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Moss uncovers something greater than a vision of a divided community; he's made a drama as prickly and surprising as any fictional character study.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
It develops into a study of obsession, hypocrisy, righteousness and self-doubt, questioning motive and then gob-smacking the audience with the wholly unexpected.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Moss was basically a one-man production crew, which explains how he was able to film such intimate, painful conversations. His work is haunting - one of the best documentaries of the year.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It's the rare documentary in which truly unpredictable events unfold and no assumption is safe.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The movie might seem like just another liberal do-gooder profile, yet a shocker ending throws new and disturbing light on the situation, amplifying the Christian themes at the heart of the story.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
"The Overnighters" is commendable for many reasons, not the least of which is the way it allows complex issues to remain complex. There is a clear conflict between the pastor and the town, but there's no good vs. evil.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A scenario with present-day echoes of "The Grapes of Wrath" yields perceptive insights into the way we view outsiders.