Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
The themes are life and death, but the tone stays breezy.

Name : Mark Matousek / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
How refreshing for a film to stare death in the face and find compassion reflected in its gaze.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
It never lapses into mawkishness, but remains clear-eyed and compassionate. It's not coldly clinical; instead, the characters are treated with grace and respect.

Name : Vadim Rizov / Alias : AV Club
The Farewell Party leaves no doubt as to where it stands on the right to die with dignity when facing terminal illness, but it's so clumsily made that it serves only to exasperate.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
For all its talk of death, The Farewell Party, featuring a terrific ensemble cast, is a story about life. Always honest, graceful and funny it explores with deep compassion its characters familial and romantic relationships.

Name : Abby Garnett / Alias : Village Voice
The Farewell Party makes drama out of right-to-die politics and asserts that just about everyone who makes it past a certain age will have to contend with the issue in one way or another.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
A bittersweet, wryly comic, keenly observed look at senescence from Israeli directors Sharon Maymon and Tal Granit.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
It's taking a strong stand on the morality of mercy killing, no doubt, but it also acknowledges the precious glory of life. It's a rare film that can smile while studying suffering.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
I can't recall any film ever making me laugh and cry in complete comic and dramatic balance like "The Farewell Party."

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
For all its sensitivity to the subject, "The Farewell Party" makes a number of tonal missteps .

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The gags in the movie's first half are so unapologetically mordant that I was disappointed to see them dwindle to nothing in the second, as so often happens in stories like this one.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A gentle but pointed work that walks a particular line to create a specific tone, a consistently warm and comic film about an unmistakably serious subject.

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The drama falls somewhere on the spectrum between Michael Haneke's devastating Amour and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies, but the result is a film that's frank about death without leaving you cold.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
This is straight-up commercial comedy, low-keyed division, and while it can't hold a candle to recent, dark-comic Israeli achievements such as Joseph Cedar's "Footnote," the actors more than save it.

Name : Tasha Robinson / Alias : AV Club
After an hour and a half of mechanical 10-minute action cycles that start with, "Maybe we're safe now, for the moment," and end with "Aaaah! Run!" the pattern gets as wearying as the level of emotional brutality.

Name : Michael Sragow / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The first "Maze Runner" film was a wilderness saga refitted with robotic monsters. "The Scorch Trials" is a "Mad Max" film on foot.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
If it sounds like there isn't an original thought in The Scorch Trials' scripted head, you're right. But at least you won't be smacking yourself in the head trying to figure out what's going on.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The teen dystopian franchise continues to play rough, and now even rougher, with satisfying results.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
This time around, the kids have been turned into wind-up figures whose only function - taking the title a tad too literally - is to RUN!

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
The latest 'Maze Runner' movie succeeds well enough as derivative survival-horror-action thrillers go, but makes for an unsatisfying, confusing sequel.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
With minimal plot development and far too much running around in dark corridors, The Scorch Trials has a poor story:filler ratio. And much of what happens is poorly thought-out.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
The young leads lack charisma, and the veteran supporting players seem to be phoning it in.

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The Scorch Trials wanders between YA cliches - there's a Resistance, but it's unclear what they're resisting - and zombie movie tropes, with the obligatory a zombie bit our friend scene.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
The movie may feel tonally consistent with the first, but it's also overlong and thoroughly routine.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Action overflows, some of it neatly staged but none of it telling us anything beyond "Go! Go! Go! Run! Run! Run!" Stay home, stay home.

Name : John Williams / Alias : New York Times
The many chases and ludicrous narrow escapes offer respectable doses of adrenaline.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The material may be cardboard, but the actors do what they can.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Lacks a . sense of originality and urgency, undercut by overly familiar characterizations and dilatory pacing.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
There's no flare of strangeness or freshness here, just a pile of images and ideas stolen from smarter people's second-hand bin banged into each other for a numbingly dull 132 minutes.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
"Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" crams in more lore, supporting characters, backstories and motivations to the extent that it becomes difficult to get a grasp on anything.

Name : Andrew Parker / Alias : Globe and Mail
The sequel is terrible and all my original criticisms for the first film still stand, but at least it's a more entertaining kind of awful.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
This story was better off back in the maze.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Yes, these "Trials" go on too long. But they're never dull, and the kids are always good company.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Essentially, The Scorch Trials makes up for the humdrum YApocalypse of its first half by going a little bonkers in its second.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
It's exhausting, yet emotionally unengaging.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Maze Runner's action, suspense and twists give movie fans of all ages a chance to embrace their inner on-the-run teenager.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Director Wes Ball's film is a mad dash from one place to the next, with little time in between for rest, recuperation or plot development.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
To wait a movie and a half for a big reveal and have it turn out to be a zombie plague is like waiting until March for your Christmas present, and it turning out to be a three-pack of white Hanes T-shirts.