Lo imposible 2012

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: I hesitate to use this term, since it is so often equated with hokey, but The Impossible is life-affirming. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: ''The Impossible'' is about as subtle as a wall of water. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: An earnest, extremely grueling, prodigiously crafted true-life drama that takes one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history and reduces it to a bad day at Club Med. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: 'The Impossible' is a confounding misfire: so much artistic vision, combined with moral and emotional shortsightedness. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: There is a troubling complacency and a lack of compassion in "The Impossible," which is less an examination of mass destruction than the tale of a spoiled holiday. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: An unforgettable film that combines epic spectacle with the intimacy of loving relationships in a celebration of the invincible human spirit. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: A thrilling, if also punishing, tale of heroic endurance. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The Impossible is a nimbly acted drama that is at once a stellar visual achievement and a life-affirming story of familial love and courage. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Filmed with urgency and remarkably realistic special effects, "The Impossible" moves breathlessly through its story. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: The Impossible confirms that Bayona is a major talent, with a skill for constructing sequences that build tension as masterfully as Steven Spielberg did in his '70s heyday. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: "The Impossible" is one of those movies that's good, but leaves you with the nagging feeling that it could have been better. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: A Saw movie for middlebrows. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: With a mixture of practical and digital trickery, we experience the unthinkable in "The Impossible" firsthand. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The tsunami sequence is amazing, right up there with the one Clint Eastwood staged in Hereafter. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Naomi Watts gives one of her finest, most physically commanding turns. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: This is a movie about the will to survive that physically acknowledges that will may not be enough. Read more

Cary Darling, Dallas Morning News: Perhaps Jaws and Open Water are the only other movie experiences that might engender more fear of the sea. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Say a prayer that The Impossible is the closest that you or I or anyone anywhere will get to the kind of catastrophe that makes this movie so harrowing, riveting -- and uneasily "uplifting." Read more

William Goss, Film.com: ...veers between being overwhelming and overwrought. Read more

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter: A tremendously realistic disaster movie has an intense emotional payoff. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: It is the kind of ode to the human spirit that you hope comes along, and not just during the holiday season. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: While it may have been changed for the screen, this story of a family's ordeal is one from which any parent - any person, really - can't turn away. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: The tsunami comes to life more vividly than the characters, though Watts and young Holland, as her son, deliver strong performances. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: Alas, the movie tells a rather commonplace story. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: If you really are going to push the stories of nearly 220,000 people into the background, you need a much better one than this to put into the spotlight. Read more

Jeannette Catsoulis, NPR: Visually stunning but manipulative in the extreme - try not to roll your eyes as the various family members miss one another by inches - The Impossible nevertheless contains two of the year's best performances. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: When it's over, you will feel enlightened, drained and grateful just to walk away. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: "The Impossible'' is worth checking out for the acting and effects, but it's a shame that Bayona couldn't have approached the story with the same subtlety and rigor as his outstanding first feature, "The Orphanage.'' Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: The Impossible is primal stuff, a tribute to the power of family, to the determination of a mother and father, defying nature, defying the odds, driven by hope. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The Impossible's strength is its conveyance of the loneliness and chaos that settles in the disaster's aftermath. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: This is an unforgettable tribute to the determination of a very special family. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Here is a searing film of human tragedy. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: The film is a remarkable visual achievement, made more affecting by the depth the actors bring to their characters. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: An intense and compelling family melodrama from Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona that sets a new standard for disaster cinema. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Bayona's skill is evident from the movie's first moments. Read more

Dan Kois, Slate: The movie is not, as the trailer suggests, a tale of the triumph of the human spirit. It's about luck. It's about sadness. But it's also about the way that victims of the disaster -- of any disaster -- band together. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Bayona uses pummeling subjective camera work and sound design to plunge viewers into the visceral terror of a universe gone mad. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: In the hundred-year history of cinema, few thrillers have been as emotionally compelling as "The Impossible." Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Urgent yet measured, like the onrushing tide, The Impossible is a real-life disaster flick with a compelling twist. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: For all the visually impactful moments that all but put an audience directly into the horror of the Boxing Day tsunami in The Impossible, the true test of this drama comes in the emotion conveyed in its simplest moments. Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: In the end, Bayona's film is more frustrating and exhausting than inspiring. Read more

Eric Hynes, Time Out: When it comes to human emotions ... the filmmaker is all thumbs, crassly fumbling for audience response via cliched uses of dropped-out sound and the occasional twinkling piano. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: The most harrowing disaster movie in many a moon, The Impossible marries a tremendous feat of physical filmmaking to an emotional true story of family survival. Read more

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: [Its] horrors, and the absorbing performances of Watts and McGregor, will soon be undermined by a surfeit of sentiment. Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: Although it's ostensibly based on true events, The Impossible is not so much an inspiring tale of survival as it is an action flick. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: It's not a momentous story about heroism writ large, but an intimate tale of the small acts of kindness and connection that can occur when people are most desperate. Read more