Popular reviews

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  Review by Marcissus ★★★★★ 13

  Baby, you are gonna miss that train.

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  Review by Stephanie ★★★★ 4

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I don't think there will be a cinematic gesture as tender and heartbreaking then when one character puts their hand on the shoulder of the person they love because they can't give a proper goodbye

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★★ 10

  100/100

  For all the romances the movies have given us, there are precious few in which you really witness two people gradually falling in love, as opposed to the insta-passion shorthand that's usually employed (or the comic convention in which it's a final-reel revelation). Certainly it's never been more exquisitely realized than it is here, in all its glory and misery. Hard to believe Coward originally wrote it as a play, as so much of its emotional power derives from the device of having Laura narrate the story—in her imagination only—to her devoted husband; all the "opened-out" scenes seem essential, and there may be no finer moment in British cinema than the one in which the potential cuckold perceives his…

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  Review by Lucy ★★★★

  “i’ll forgive you if you’ll forgive me”

  love really is so universal, isn’t it?

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  Review by Scott Tobias ★★★★★ 5

  A killer. So many great touches here: The narration as imagined confession, the framing scene that adds so much significance once we circle back to it, and just the passion with which these two throw themselves into an affair that they know is not sustainable.

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  Review by brendan o'hare ★★★★ 1

  If you're like me, you probably thought the two main characters weren't going to talk about Donald Duck at any point. But they did

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  Review by Patrick Willems ★★★★½ 11

  How can you not be romantic about trains

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 10

  92/100

  Feels like a genuinely fascinating (but simple in its normalcy) relationship unfolding and collapsing onto itself, especially when Robert Krasker's crisp B&W images enhance the melancholic shame and fearful yearning. Brief Encounter isn't so much a "romance" film as it is a piece of cinema about the gradual fluttering of feelings within a culture of preconceived notions. Not that the film promotes any sort of adultery, far from it. It's more of a vision of connection between two settled souls that works within the confines of a deeply-repressed society.

  In fact, there's something revolutionary about how David Lean works with a "flashback" format, but it's so impeccably established while viewing that it doesn't detract from the graceful delicacy that…

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  Review by KYK ★★★★½ 2

  “this overwhelming feeling we have for each other... it is true for you as it is for me, isn’t it?” 

  
  the ecstasy of being loved and the torment because he loves back — all expressed so vividly in celia johnson’s big eyes

  35mm. FSLC.

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★★

  The shot of Laura staring out a train window after she and Alec confess their love for each other, gazing at her reflection just to see the look of barely contained glee and ecstasy on her face as the window starts to project her wildest romantic fantasies, is one of the most thrilling moments I've ever seen. It perfectly encapsulates Lean's simultaneous attention to his actors' expressions and his own visual élan, a shot that does not move yet contains a level of movement wildly outsized to its composition, all without ever losing the crucial image of a woman facing up to her warring instincts of propriety and longing and briefly, wholly indulging in the latter.

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  Review by Muriel ★★★★★ 2

  love..... i would love to experience it one day

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  Review by Jizzmonkey ★★★★★ 3

  My brief encounters at train stations are not nearly as romantic.