Winter in Wartime Reviews
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
A most involving and touching coming of age tale set in a time and place when childhood was a luxury few families or nations could afford.
Sacramento News & Review
... strong and natural performances ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Capital Times (Madison, WI)
Sometimes familiarity is a good thing, and Koolhoven combines two familiar kinds of stories - the resistance drama and the coming-of-age drama - in a compelling way.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
...a naive story that has some of the dreamy qualities of a remembered myth
Full Review
| Original Score: 86/100
Entertainment Spectrum
The acting is superb, with Lakemeier the anchor surrounded by a talented ensemble. The soundtrack is effective in ratcheting up the suspense. Other strengths are the cinematography, sound and production design.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Kansas City Star
Director Martin Koolhoven, adapting Jan Terlouw's 1972 novel, maintains the constant tension of a world where every stray word or glance could lead to tragedy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Austin Chronicle
This is an often emotionally harrowing depiction of a young idealist running smack into the brutal reality of occupied life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Las Vegas Weekly
Winter in Wartime doesn't reinvent the World War II drama, but it doesn't have to; it works solidly within the genre with affecting if predictable results.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
tonymacklin.net
Winter in Wartime is an evocative Dutch movie about Michiel, a youthful adolescent coming of age in Nazi-occupied Holland in January 1945. The film is full of symbols that give depth and texture to Michiel's fateful journey.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Top CriticWriter-director Martin Koolhoven hits just the right balance of domesticity and oppression here, setting up the film's tense second half with sweet early touches of naivete.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
It's got a grown-up artfulness, but "Winter in Wartime" could become a lot of boys' favorite movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Tampa Bay Times
Nothing about Koolhoven's film is stunning, but it's a solid piece of work, occasionally feeling as tense as life-and-death situations with Nazis should be.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
What makes "Winter" really special is its complex exploration of the theme of heroism.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Director Martin Koolhoven's film about one boy's struggle to make sense of the absurd - of the inhumanity of war and its effects on everyone around him.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
Oregonian
Koolhoven doesn't take many narrative chances, but the somber, steely cinematography and convincing performances help to carry the day.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Winter in Wartime benefits from top-notch production values and a sturdy performance from its young lead, Martijn Lakemeier.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
One Guy's Opinion
A solid, unhurried piece of work that doesn't provide the adrenaline rush its subject would seem to invite, but may be all the more powerful for its deliberation.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Jam! Movies
All in all, Winter in Wartime is an eminently watchable movie, with some complex elements injected into the one war that, in our cultural mythology, is supposed to embody good and evil, black and white, pure and simple.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
eye WEEKLY
An adaptation of a well-loved Dutch young-adult novel by Jan Terlouw, Winter in Wartime embodies both a traditional style for WWII dramas and a more troubling contemporary strain.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
