"USA Todays Claudia Puig writes, "Swarms of flies, oozing pustules, alligator attacks and gaggles of frogs are vividly rendered in three dimensions in 'Exodus: Gods and Kings.' And yet this biblical epic is still bland, overly long and otherwise forgettable. … Those seeking memorable performances and a fresh approach … will want to look elsewhere." Puig adds that the "expensive-looking, massively staged spectacle, with elaborate costumes and ornate production design, feels bloated, by-the-book and lackluster, and is dotted with risible dialogue. … None of this feels new or fresh.""

"While the visuals can only be described using superlatives, some bits involving interpersonal relationships could have been more developed. However, scenes involving Moses and Ramses are often electrifying. So is the 'burning bush' sequence. The battles will take your breath away – crashing chariots, splintering spears, flaming arrows, metal against metal and more gore than you'd expect to see. Ramses's cold-blooded disregard for human life is shocking. But then the Ten Plagues unleashed on the Egyptians by God as punishment are unrelenting in their devastation. The Nile runs blood red, overflowing with dead fish. Masses of flies spread dread and disease. Clouds of locusts ravage crops and a sinister shadow of death creeps across the accursed land like a cold hand. Exodus: Gods and Kings is 'spectacle' with a capital 'S' and in more ways than one, definitely epic."

"Although long enough at 150 minutes, Scott’s epic is over an hour shorter than DeMille’s, and key events — including the Israelites’ descent into idol-worshipping chaos — have been skillfully elided, perhaps awaiting a “Kingdom of Heaven”-style director’s cut. The result feels less like a straightforward retread of the biblical narrative than an amped-up commentary on it: This “Exodus” comes at you in a heady and violent onrush of incident, propelled along by Alberto Iglesias’ vigorous score, teeming with large-scale crowd and battle sequences (which take on an especially rich, tactile quality in 3D), and packed with unexpectedly rousing martial episodes, including one where Moses attempts to train his people for battle. Some may well desire a purer, fuller version of the story, one more faithful to the text and less clearly shaped by the demands of the Hollywood blockbuster. But on its own grand, imperfect terms, “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is undeniably transporting, marked by a free-flowing visual splendor that plays to its creator’s unique strengths: Given how many faith-based movies are content to tell their audiences what to think or feel, it’s satisfying to see one whose images alone are enough to compel awestruck belief."

"“I never realized that this character (Moses, played by Christian Bale) had such a massive story. I didn’t know that he was a soldier, I didn’t know that he could have been, was rumored to be, close to the pharaoh Ramses,” played by Joel Edgerton."

"With reference to the casting of white actors as Middle Eastern characters"

"If this estimable account of how God delivered His people out of Egypt feels like a movie for a decidedly secular age, its searching, non-doctrinaire approach arguably gets closer to penetrating the mystery of faith than a more fawning approach might have managed. Like “Noah,” the year’s other nonconformist Judeo-Christian blockbuster, this is an uncommonly intelligent, respectful but far-from-reverent outsider’s take on Scripture, although “Exodus” is less madly eccentric and more firmly grounded in the sword-and-sandal tradition than Darren Aronofsky’s film, and will almost certainly prove less polarizing among believers. Even with a hefty $140 million pricetag and a two-and-a-half-hour running time to overcome, Fox’s year-end release (opening Dec. 12 Stateside) should ride 3D ticket premiums and general curiosity to muscular returns worldwide, landing closer to “Gladiator” than “Kingdom of Heaven” territory in terms of audience satisfaction and commercial payoff."

"Banish all memories of a hambone, harrumphing Old Testament Charlton Heston as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, the 1956 campfest that TV shoves at us during religious holidays. DeMille’s once-thrilling parting of the Red Sea plays today like CG primitivism. Director Ridley Scott (Gladiator) is determined not to make his Exodus: Gods and Kings old-hat. But he’s after way more than FX pow – although wait until you see that Red Sea heave in 3D and the damage done by those 10 deadly plagues, from crocodiles, frogs and locusts to the death of every first-born in Egypt."

"Blood! Boils! Locusts! Humongous, ship-devouring Nile crocodiles! Great white sharks! Whoever thought overwrought biblical epics were dead deserves a face-full of locusts and will get one watching Exodus: Gods and Kings. Ridley Scott’s grand and goofy take on Cecil B. DeMille’s holiday chestnut, The Ten Commandments, is a scant two-and-a-half hours compared to Paramount Pictures’ 1954 three-hour-plus marathon, and while Exodus is not quite as much fun (the reflective properties of Yul Brynner’s pate are sorely missed), it is very much in the tradition of Fifties and Sixties-era Biblical epics – and much more entertaining than Darren Aronofsky’s recent Noah (2014 film)."

"At once honoring and eclipsing the showmanship of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956), the final hour of “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is a sensationally entertaining yet beautifully modulated stream of visual wonders that make it all but impossible to tear one’s eyes from the screen. In one of his boldest strokes, Scott dramatizes the 10 plagues in a seamless, vividly realistic domino-effect montage — the bloody despoiling of the Nile (which takes a surprising page from “Jaws”) naturally giving way to a proliferation of gnats and frogs, boils and locusts — that truly does seem to capture the intensity of God’s wrath in one furious, unrelenting deluge. In keeping with the momentum established by Billy Rich’s editing and the superb vfx work, this Moses does not return to Ramses day after day with fresh entreaties of “Let my people go,” but instead remains in hiding, watching ambivalently as the Lord does their fighting for them. “You don’t always agree with me,” God says to Moses, effectively inviting all viewers, regardless of persuasion, to wrestle with their own conflicted impulses. Scott, a self-professed agnostic whose films have nonetheless betrayed a restless spiritual dimension (particularly “Prometheus”), seems to have been inspired by his distance from the material, placing his identification with a hero who never stops questioning himself or the God he follows. Not unlike Russell Crowe’s Noah, and rather unlike Charlton Heston’s iconic barn-stormer, Bale’s Moses emerges a painfully flawed, embattled leader whose direct line to the Almighty is as much burden as blessing — and who wearily recognizes that once the Israelites have cast off the shackles of slavery, the truly hard work of governance, progress, repentance and faithfulness will begin."

"That’s not to say faith leaders are going to urge congregations to flock to the theatres, however. Scott offers a secular out for every instance of the legendarily miraculous. Thus, the burning bush and everything that follows can be attributed to Moses (Bale, well-cast with his glower dialed up to 11) getting conked on the head by a falling rock after he’s cast out of Egypt by Pharaoh Ramses (Edgerton, resplendent in gold and kohl). There’s a wonderfully droll scene in Ramses’ court as his physician (Bremner, Trainspotting’s Spud) attempts to explain the finer points of how one plague logically leads to the next, via what we now call “bacteria.” Scott and his quartet of writers squeeze the Book of Exodus down to its most basic tenets, rendering it both a story of God-crossed pseudo-siblings and a thunderous series of generally awesome (as in “awe-inspiring”), CGI-assisted, action set-pieces. The parting of the Red Sea is preceded by a shot of Moses sleepily catching a glimpse of what appears to be a meteor crashing far out into the waves, which raises the question: Yahweh or tsunami? Or both? It doesn’t matter; the watery result is everything “epic” should be."

""Exodus: Gods and Kings" is one film where spoiler alerts aren't necessary. Both the Bible and the big screen have so prominently featured the story of fearless prophet Moses and hard-hearted Pharaoh's refusal to let his people go that the events depicted in this latest reenactment will not be news to anyone. But that familiarity doesn't mean there aren't surprises to be had, and not always welcome ones. Gone, gone, gone is the traditional depiction of the Almighty as an unseen voice in the clouds: A snarky, querulous 11-year-old boy gets the call instead. Even more unsettling, the Red Sea doesn't dramatically part the way we've gotten used to; it just kind of fades away, only to come roaring back when no one is expecting it. Some nerve."

"Nigel Whitmey — General Thomason"

"Philip Bretherton — Bill Keller"

"Lydia Leonard — Alex Lang"

"Hera Hilmar — Wikileaks staffer"

"These are revelations which pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding this war, hiding a more-complete portrait of events we thought we understood, but we may not have known at all."

"If we can find one moral man, one whistleblower, someone willing to expose all these secrets, that man could topple the most repressive of régimes."

"Alexander Beyer — Marcel Rosenbach"

"Alexander Siddig — Dr. Tarek Haliseh"

"Carice van Houten — Birgitta Jónsdóttir"

"Stanley Tucci — James Boswell"

"Peter Capaldi — Alan Rusbridger"

"Laura Linney — Sarah Shaw"

"Anthony Mackie — Sam Coulson"

"David Thewlis — Nick Davies"

"Moritz Bleibtreu — Marcus"

"Dan Stevens — Ian Katz"

"Alicia Vikander — Anke Domscheit-Berg"

"For a movie about a larger-than-life personality who shook up the world with his brazenness—and since has had to seek political asylum because of it—"The Fifth Estate" feels unfortunately small and safe."

""The Fifth Estate" seems more interested in contributing to a cult of personality, rather than cultivating a serious debate."

"Assange has gone to great lengths to discredit the movie. Considering that its portrayal of him is less than flattering, that's not surprising. The story closely follows the source material but there are open questions about the factual accuracy of those books. Condon uses a late scene in the movie to address Assange's criticisms by having the character, as played by Cumberbatch, complain about "the upcoming Wikileaks movie." It's a curious moment that seems to have been incorporated as a concession. It's the first time I can recall (at least in a serious-minded film) a character openly referring to the movie in which he is appearing. Cinematic recursion."

"How Wiki Leaks uncovers the secrets of the World"

"There is no proof that anyone came to any harm as a result of the full disclosure of the unredacted documents published on the WikiLeaks website. Not one shred of evidence."

"As long as you keep searching, you are dangerous to them."

"You can't expose the world's secrets without exposing yourself."

"Bill Condon's movie, which badly wants—and fails—to ape the suave approach of "The Social Network," streams with data and leaps from one city to the next, as the Times and other newspapers follow the lead of WikiLeaks. Whether you view Assange as a freedom fighter or as a sinister paranoiac is beside the point; however balanced the script, and for all the dexterity of Cumberbatch, the look of the film is entirely under his spell, and the result is as nervy and as excitable as the trade that it depicts."

"Who ever thought that we'd need extra servers to fight censorship attacks from the "bastion of free speech"?"

"It takes two things to change the world, and you'd be surprised how many people have good ideas, but—commitment? true commitment?—that's the hard one. It requires sacrifice."

"The video shows the brutal slaughter of two Reuters reporters. Here, we have firsthand evidence of the barbarity of war. A man, going to drop his children at school, sees another man bleeding to death on the pavement, stops to aid this civilian, and, in the process, is killed, and his vehicle turned one-hundred and eighty degrees by the sheer force of the Apache helicopter's thirty-millimetre bullets ripping into the side of the vehicle, miraculously not killing the two children inside."

"Courage is contagious."

"And if the whistleblower's identity is secret, then he has nothing to fear."

"Revolution is the struggle between the past and the future, and the future has just begun."

"Benedict Cumberbatch — Julian Assange"

"A government, destroyed by tyranny, rebuilt under a glass dome so the whole world could look in: there's an ideal to aspire to."

"Daniel Brühl — Daniel Domscheit-Berg"

"Samuel Page — James"

"Nikolai Kinski — Tony"

"100 Years After The Armenian Genocide You Can't Escape The Past"

"How can the past, be it hidden or overt, have such power over us in the present, and what are the secret ways in which we deal with it? What happens when the truth is denied, and what happens when it is confronted? These are the mysteries at the heart of 1915. The story is set in 2015, on a day much like this one, exactly 100 years after the genocide. It is about a haunted man who stages a controversial play in a haunted theater – the historic Los Angeles Theatre in downtown, founded in part by Charlie Chaplin – to bring the ghosts of his past back to life, and to somehow change the course of history."

"Simon Abkarian — Simon"