Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out New York
The film settles into the kind of sobriety you've seen too often .

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
What makes "Rosewater" different from similar entries in what might be called the Triumph of the Imprisoned Spirit genre is that the hero is hardly an ideologue, despite having sympathy for the Iranian reformers and the Green party.

Name : Esther Breger / Alias : The New Republic
The main question Rosewater grapples with is whether Stewart can hack it as a filmmaker. The answer: sort of?

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Centrist mush-basic, boilerplate human-interest stuff that's too shapeless to completely work as drama, and too depoliticized to be taken seriously as anything else.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Mr. Stewart's interest in the material is obviously personal, but his movie transcends mere self-interest.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
For a first effort, Stewart hasn't done a bad job. There's just the nagging feeling with "Rosewater" that a better movie was possible.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Stewart does a credible job of maintaining the story's immediacy, but I must say I felt relieved that the film wasn't a masterpiece. If it was, we'd have more reason to fear Stewart will leave The Daily Show.

Name : David Denby / Alias : New Yorker
The hard-focus clarity of the images (Bobby Bukowski did the cinematography) leads to an intimacy with anguish that passes into expressionism.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Though at times Rosewater is clearly the work of a first-timer still finding his voice, Stewart is indisputably a real filmmaker.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
While the film keeps telling us that Bahari survived his ordeal by freeing his mind from imprisonment and eventually outsmarting his rosewater-scented interrogator, we are told that he's doing so more than we're seeing it.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
The virtue of this movie is its commitment to political ambiguity and emotional truth.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Stewart proves to be an able filmmaker in "Rosewater." But he also shows hints of being something more.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
A strong, striking political drama.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
A clear-headed, sensitive and thoroughly impressive directorial debut for the Comedy Central host.

Name : Mary Houlihan / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
With Rosewater, Stewart proves he can pull back from the satirical comedy and become a thoughtful, incisive and questioning filmmaker.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Jon Stewart's filmmaking debut "Rosewater" has much in common with "The Daily Show" - it's blaringly obvious, it's naive, it plays to the cheap seats and it's enamored with cheap jokes.

Name : Tomas Hachard / Alias : NPR
The result neither portrays the suffering of Bahari's incarceration adequately nor lampoons the absurdities of the situation.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
It's a movie made for people who prefer to take their politics while sitting on the couch.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Stewart and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski cover it all in a straightforward, watchable way, the performances are all sincere and solid and the situation is easy to respond to emotionally.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : Film.com
"Rosewater" marks the debut of a director whose brains and guts are the equal or the better of his eye and heart .

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Stewart does a solid job of handling the facts of the time; it feels true to the moment, like a filmed Newsweek story. Creative acting, dramatizedthemes, gifted cinematic styling? Not so much.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Stewart lets the truth roll out, the best he can, believing in the sanitizing effect of sunlight and the inevitable fate that awaits all despots.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
That the movie is as tense and chilling as it is owes much to first-time director Jon Stewart's keen eye for the way humor surfaces even in the dark places.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Stewart has created an informative, dark and witty story imbued with black humor surrounding Bahari's confinement.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Rosewater" is a reminder that America may have its critics, but at least there's little danger of the average citizen being arrested for appearing on a fake news show.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Stewart's wryly observant qualities as a TV star serve him well in his feature film debut.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Rosewater certainly has merit as an act of atonement on Stewart's part and a tribute to people like Bahari. In the end, however, the movie needs to stand on its own, apart from its noble intentions and the popularity of its writer-director.

Name : Joe McGovern / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Rosewater, starring the geeky-charismatic Gael Garcia Bernal as Bahari, is a gripping drama, smartly calibrated for Western audiences who still need an education in the bright, progressive, fight-back impulses in Iranian culture.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Newsday
Earnest, well-acted, less than urgent, but more than a vanity project.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Stewart acquits himself solidly, though not thrillingly, as a beginning director .

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Rosewater . has an urgency that's all about the storytelling smarts of its first-time writer-director.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Rosewater is an earnest picture, but it's also got some juice - there's vitality and feeling in it, the secret ingredients so often missing from even the most well-intentioned first features.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
A finely wrought, powerful drama that tells the true story of an Iranian-born journalist's imprisonment and torture by the Islamic regime in Iran.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
In outline, Rosewater sounds earnest, one-note, relentless - something you'd watch out of a sense of duty. But it turns out to be a sly, layered work, charged with dark wit along with horror.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
A solid, powerfully acted political drama about human endurance in the face of ideological oppression.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is Jon Stewart's directorial debut; the talk show comedian has a handle on the material and conveys it clearly.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
"Rosewater" doesn't hector, nor does it giggle about the issue of press freedom. It's an impressive and important piece of storytelling.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Stewart can never quite answer the question: Why this man's story, of all the ones that should be told? And why now, five years later?

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The film goes slightly beyond rigorous earnestness and settles into a kind of stubborn atonement.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
A persuasive production despite its limited budget .

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
While it may seem like another triumph-over-adversity tale, the movie is really about what sustains us during impossible moments.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Stewart's enthusiasm for his story and passion about injustice ring clear, but throughout what could have been a dreadfully somber film, he remembers to breathe.