Agora: Critic Reviews

The skeptical and the secular also need stories of martyrdom and rousing acts of cinematic preaching.

Alejandro Amenabar has made an ambitious, cerebral and complex movie set in fourth-century Alexandria, the era in which the famous library was destroyed.

Agora, Alejandro Amenabar's absorbing historical drama, proves that, in an era of movies made for iPhones with artistic ambitions to match, there are still filmmakers willing to swing for the fences.

It's still more than watchable thanks to the ministrations of a talented director, Spain's Alejandro Amenabar, but the togas seem to have brought out the stiff, declamatory earnestness in everyone.

To its credit, the film calls out Christianity's ignominious imperialism and locates a valid historical analogue to the religious extremism of today. Yet good intentions shan't save Amenbar from his own ham-fisted methods.

Given all the weighty colloquia, Agora has remarkably few bad laughs, and the CGI re-creations of ancient Alexandria are so detailed I wanted to freeze the frame and linger on the city's layout.

I went to see Agora expecting an epic with swords, sandals and sex. I found swords and sandals, some unexpected opinions about sex, and a great deal more.

With fire in her eyes and the riddle of the solar system in her brain, Weisz struggles in fleshing out a historical character well worth a movie, though frustratingly sketchy as written here.

This Spanish-produced period drama is pretty dreadful: the drama is torpid, the astronomy lessons pedantic, and the spear-and-sandal production values flat-out cheesy.

Agora is entertaining, and even at times illuminating.

Some may consider "Agora" sound history, others may label it heresy, but I call it thumping good drama.

Manages to mix philosophy, history, hysteria and a love triangle and still be something of a bore.

The mother of all secular humanists fights a losing battle against freshly minted religious zealots in "Agora," a visually imposing, high-minded epic.

There are a few exciting battle sequences and the sets are lavish, but mostly the film meanders aimlessly for more than two hours. No wonder new sword-and-sandal movies are in short supply.

The biggest problem is that Gil and Amenabar haven't been able to make the script hold together and there are times, especially with the love triangle, when things veer into the cheesy.

Although the movie's history is spotty, its dialogue is sometimes clunky, and time frames are telescoped, its overall impact packs a powerful punch.

"Agora" occasionally hints at the interesting material embedded in its central conceits, but never manages to enliven it.

This lavish Spanish production begins to plod after a brisk, lively first half.

The human story of Agora is not only smaller in scale than the sweep of geohistory but considerably less interesting.

A great example of bravura filmmaking by a gifted young international filmmaker.

Ambitious, sprawling and melodramatic, this sword-and-sandal epic lacks subtlety and struggles to provide much charm - ultimately dissolving into a rather obvious morality tale about the rise of fundamentalism.

Un digno retrato de epoca - no exento de ciertas simplificaciones - que logra recuperar con interes un periodo historico y una figura olvidada como la de Hipatia (buena labor de Rachel Weisz).

Agora could have been a powerfully subversive feminist film, but while it does have its moments it never truly lives up to its ambitious potential.

Somehow sessions of platonic inquiry interleaved with scenes of battle and riots do not make for a very gripping film. This one is sludgy in the extreme.