Metacritic reviews

Reflective, deliberate, building gradually to a climax that left me touched.

Fails to completely engage the viewer at the basic level of story.

Not a crowd-pleasing, or even audience-oriented, movie; it's a two-hour-plus mood piece.

Has to fight to hold our attention and it doesn't always succeed.

For all the beauty it struggles to bring forth, Snow Falling on Cedars is painfully prosaic.

Movies made from serious novels are often ridiculed as unworthy of their sources, but this one may be too worthy -- too reverent, too showy, too earnest.

This badly muddled adaptation of a complex novel chases after Guterson's many skeins and themes with no unifying principle in mind.

All shots and no scenes, which is nice for a picture book but deadly for drama.

Admirably high-minded and visually gorgeous but fatally anesthetized by its own grandiosity.

Trying to act in this movie is like trying to stand upright in a blizzard.