Schindler's List (1993)

All Critics (75) | Top Critics (17) | Fresh (83) | Rotten (2) | DVD (40)

More than any previous non-documentary Holocaust movie, this one convinces through the accumulation of such detail.

May 6, 2013 Full Review

John Hartl

Seattle Times

Top Critic

Schindler's List is filmed in black and white, but the triumph of Neeson's portrait and Steven Zaillian's screenplay is that Oskar Schindler remains gray and enigmatic.

May 6, 2013 Full Review

Desmond Ryan

Philadelphia Inquirer

Top Critic

What the visual immediacy of Schindler's List does is to prod each of us to fill in the gaps of emotion for ourselves. To put this another way, the more you are able to invest in this superb, demanding film, the more you are likely to get back.

May 6, 2013 Full Review

Jay Boyar

Orlando Sentinel

Top Critic

Few American movies since the silent era have had anything approaching this picture's narrative boldness, visual audacity, and emotional directness.

February 22, 2013 Full Review

Terrence Rafferty

New Yorker

Top Critic

What Spielberg has done in this Holocaust story is simply and forcefully place us there.

January 16, 2013 Full Review

Gene Siskel

Chicago Tribune

Top Critic

Schindler's List is a film whose meanings are to be found less in its uplifting outline than in its harrowing flow of images -- images of fear, hope, horror, compassion, degradation, chaos, and death.

November 6, 2009 Full Review

Owen Gleiberman

Entertainment Weekly

Top Critic

Spielberg never solves the Schindler riddle, which keeps this from being a truly great picture. He does bring to Schindler's List the technical skill and dazzling smoothness of a movie-making natural.

May 6, 2013 Full Review

Gary Thompson

Philadelphia Daily News

The movie exudes an inescapable realism. Unlike a pastiche of newsreel footage, however, Spielberg craftily imbues Steven Zaillian's masterful screenplay with an emotionally charged examination of calculated brutality.

May 6, 2013 Full Review

Roger Hurlburt

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

It looks, without ever averting its gaze, at the darkest of the dark.

May 6, 2013 Full Review

Stephen Hunter

Baltimore Sun

Very classy blu-ray package, with an amazing reference quality transfer for one of the greatest movies of the last 30 years. The only extra is old Voices from the List Documentary in fuzzy SD and a Digital Copy/UltraViolet version of the movie.

March 14, 2013 Full Review

Michelle Alexandria

Eclipse Magazine

Steven Spielberg's controversial, defining work on the limitations of success arrives on Blu-ray with a fantastic A/V transfer and a modest helping of contextual extras.

March 12, 2013 Full Review

Chris Cabin

Slant Magazine

Schindler's List is one of Steven Spielberg's most powerful films, capturing the tragedy and horror while still finding room to inspire and move generations.

March 9, 2013 Full Review

Jeremy Lebens

We Got This Covered

The moving film may be arduous to watch, but brilliantly acting and painstaking accuracy make it a must-see.

March 6, 2013 Full Review

Phil Villarreal

COEDMagazine.com

Profoundly moving, profoundly shocking, profoundly important.

February 22, 2013 Full Review

Total Film

Ultimately, the film is memorable as much for simple testimony as for the cinematic art it displays.

February 22, 2013 Full Review

Derek Malcolm

Guardian [UK]

Schindler's List serves up three full hours of brilliant storytelling that's as humane and compassionate as it is gripping and provocative.

February 22, 2013 Full Review

David Sterritt

Christian Science Monitor

There are a few moments -- a handful, out of a three-hour film -- in which Spielberg does push the story into melodrama. As for the rest, though, Schindler's List has a real and unexpected integrity.

January 15, 2013 Full Review

Stuart Klawans

The Nation

Accurate, heartbreaking masterpiece about the Holocaust.

December 18, 2010 Full Review

Heather Boerner

Common Sense Media

Schindler's List, because it is so finely crafted and authentic, truly allows one to experience the devastating, calculated breakdown of a Polish Jew in 1939 through the end of the war.

December 2, 2009 Full Review

Jordan Hiller

Bangitout.com

In a film that is mostly black and white, small touches of color -- a candle flame; a child's coat, bright red -- bring the enormity of the tragedy into excruciating focus.

October 29, 2008 Full Review | Comments (5)

Steven D. Greydanus

Decent Films Guide

• 1. Oskar Schindler: I know you have received orders from our commandant, which he has received from his superiors, to dispose of the population of this camp. Now would be the time to do it. Here they are; they're all here. This is your opportunity. Or, you could leave, and return to your families as men instead of murderers. [the guards gradually exit; he addresses the workers again] In memory of the countless victims among your people, I ask us to observe three minutes of silence.
  – Submitted by Adam O (3 months ago)
• 1. Oskar Schindler: The unconditional surrender of Germany has just been announced. At midnight tonight, the war is over. Tomorrow you'll begin the process of looking for survivors of your families. In most cases... you won't find them. After six long years of murder, victims are being mourned throughout the world. We've survived. Many of you have come up to me and thanked me. Thank yourselves. Thank your fearless Stern, and others among you who worried about you and faced death at every moment. I am a member of the Nazi Party. I'm a munitions manufacturer. I'm a profiteer of slave labor. I am... a criminal. At midnight, you'll be free and I'll be hunted. I shall remain with you until five minutes after midnight, after which time - and I hope you'll forgive me - I have to flee. [He addresses the factory's SS guards]
  – Submitted by Adam O (3 months ago)
• 1. Amon Goeth: You're giving them hope. You shouldn't do that. *That's* cruel!
  – Submitted by Sayed A (4 months ago)
• 1. Itzhak Stern: Herr Direktor, don't let the things fall apart. I worked too hard.
  – Submitted by Alex K (7 months ago)
• 1. Oskar Schindler: Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.
  – Submitted by Alex K (7 months ago)
• 1. Amon Goeth: Today is history. Today will be remembered.
  – Submitted by Alex K (7 months ago)