Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
A fable so simple, so pure, it feels as if it has existed for hundreds of years, like a brilliant shard of sea glass rendered smooth and elegant through generations of retelling.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Like The Red Turtle's shipwrecked protagonist, you have to simply stop fighting the current and go with the flow.

Name : Eric Kohn / Alias : indieWIRE
This is a quiet little masterpiece of images, each one rich with meaning, that collectively speak to a universal process.

Name : Michael Wilmington / Alias : Chicago Reader
The film is shot with handheld cameras in the standard mockumentary style, but the content is often hilarious, especially when the trolls show up.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
This is what happens when the Norwegians try to make their own "Blair Witch Project": We get three-headed trolls that hate Vitamin D and references to "Deliverance."

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
With impressive technical credits, stunning fjord and forest locations and a winking ownership of its own absurdity, "Trollhunter" manages to be at once spooky, satirical and endearing.

Name : Nick Pinkerton / Alias : Village Voice
As de-mythologizings go, Trollhunter has neither the wit, nor art, nor social insight to honor the legacy of George A. Romero's Martin.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Andre Ovredal's enjoyably goofy scare-pic purports to offer real footage of real horror - in this case, a variety of forest and mountain trolls.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Trollhunter" has a lot of down time as the crew treks to the fjords, but it's also got dryly subversive humor and, eventually, some impressive special effects.

Name : Nigel Floyd / Alias : Time Out
Given that the cast improvised all the scenes live on set, the dialogue has a surprising ring of truth, and is shot through with an unexpected, often unsettling, humour.

Name : V.A. Musetto / Alias : New York Post
You'll want to catch this clever movie before Hollywood ruins everything with a dumb remake.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A monster movie with a love for mountainous, tree-lined Scandinavian scenery and an even greater love for setting memorably ugly, hulking and destructive mythological creatures against it.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Once again, material for a great short film has been expanded to feature length at its peril and ours. Still, this is clever stuff and surprisingly engrossing on its own terms.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Enormously entertaining chiller.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
An enjoyably off-kilter hybrid of The Blair Witch Project and Where the Wild Things Are.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Like the folks who dreamed up lycanthropy, the Trollhunter writers either have an abundance of imagination or they've been smoking a controlled substance.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
The film takes off into a witty realm of nonplussed responses and folklore made roaringly real.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
It can't seem to make up its mind about whether it wants to frighten us or make us laugh. It does a little bit of both, to be sure, but not nearly enough of either to make much of a lasting impression.

Name : Roger Ebert / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
They spend a great deal of time roaring, bleating, squealing and snorting at a very high volume, which is, after a point, too much of a muchness.

Name : Noel Murray / Alias : AV Club
Here's what's not so good in Troll Hunter: the actual troll hunting.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
As the stoic titular slayer, Otto Jespersen is the one actor who holds you.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
A drily comic blend of irresistible ingredients that gets better as it goes along.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Those fog-draped fjords provide a distractingly pretty backdrop to this tale of mysterious, massive creatures who roam the forest by night, searching for Christians on whom to munch.

Name : Mike Hale / Alias : New York Times
One of the many pleasures of the Norwegian director Andre Ovredal's clever and engaging mock documentary "Trollhunter" is the way it plays with the idea of the supernatural rule book.

Name : Peter Hartlaub / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Successful on multiple levels, with a brisk pace, excellent location work and a strong lead performance by Norwegian comedian Otto Jespersen.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
It's so steeped in troll and paranoia lore, it risks boring you with the details at times. But it also makes you more inclined to believe it, and the frights are real enough.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : NPR
Genially simpleminded and more sweet than scary, Trollhunter never settles on a tone. Fairytale fantasy, supernatural comedy, serious horror? All are sampled, to the detriment of the whole.

Name : Eric Kohn / Alias : indieWIRE
Yes, Troll Hunter is derivative, but Ovredal seamlessly assembles his reference points with a steady ability to do them proud.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Carney digs deeper than the usual universal love story to comment on Irish life in 1985 and sets it to a soundtrack that hits all the right notes for those with fond memories of Swatch watches and Trapper Keepers.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
"Sing Street" is just like the old singles it idolizes - sharp, slick, snappy. And it leaves you with nothing more than an urge to sit through it all again.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Sing Street has the potential to achieve unmistakable popularity with not only teens but also audiences of all ages.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
A surprisingly sharp and funny female-empowerment ensembler.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Sing Street knows what it takes to form your own band, made by a guy who really loves music.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
You've seen every element of Sing Street hundreds of times before-it's Carney's knack for assembling them that makes the difference.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
In three features, Carney has made his personal greatest hits album.

Name : Alison Willmore / Alias : BuzzFeed News
The film captures the earnestness and the silliness of the boys' efforts, but also how little that matters when you're discovering what it feels like to create something.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
If "Once" was a densely crafted album, "Sing Street" is more like a perfectly crafted single: "Crazy Little Thing Called Youth."

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Here [Carney's] got the balance just right, delivering a funny and heartfelt tale about a Dublin teen in the mid-80s.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
The fun of Sing Street, set during a big boom period for U.K. rock, is that it allows Carney's fond, romanticized memories of his glory days to double as a musical history lesson .

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The whole film is unlikely, a joyous story of youth, innocence, sweet earnestness, charming ineptitude and a shaky but productive belief on the hero's part that he can do anything he pleases.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Built out of crowd-pleasing elements as durable as a lacquered, sky-high '80s hairdo, writer-director John Carney's coming-of-age musical is a synth-drenched joy: a tuneful, deeply personal ode to the impulse that forges a high school rock band.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
These are some great actresses, and with writer-director-producer Perry displaying some rare focus, you're intrigued at first by the possibility of watching them interact for a couple of hours. It doesn't last.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
[T]his is a film about catharsis and camaraderie, not logic.

Name : Sheila O'Malley / Alias : RogerEbert.com
"The Single Moms Club" is almost good.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Though Sing Street is much more stylized and broad than Once, it remains true to Carney's fondness for grounded fantasy.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
With its intriguing characters and exhilarating music, "Sing Street" is the best film about being young, gifted and Irish since "The Commitments."

Name : Steve Pond / Alias : TheWrap
It starts out fun and then sneaks up on you for a final stretch that is both rousing and genuinely emotional.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A rite-of-passage romance wrapped in a let's-make-a-band scenario, the disarming film colors its social realism with the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy often found in a four-minute music video.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
A good-natured, old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing Irish pop musical that doesn't go anywhere unexpected but has a great time getting there.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Singing, dreaming, making out: Despite some familiar formula, these characters make all three feel new again.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Warm, ingratiating, with a beat you can dance to, "Sing Street" is a feel-good movie that never demands to be liked. Instead it asks, politely and irresistibly.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
I could scarcely be more delighted to report that Carney has rediscovered the magic of Once with Sing Street, another tiny, winsome charmer set in Dublin.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Just wondering, but if these sisters are indeed capable of doing it for themselves as the film insists, why can't at least one of them do it without a man?

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
The movie understands how enchantment and disappointment go together, like the A and B sides of a single that won't leave the turntable.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
It quickly becomes a by-the-book, overly-simplified look at a quintet of single moms who find common ground coping with the challenges of raising middle-school age children and finding romance.

Name : David Hiltbrand / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The moral here is that no challenge is insurmountable if you form a club. And keep a wine opener handy.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
As a testament to the power of music, the bond of brotherhood and the boundless possibilities of youth, "Sing Street" just plain works.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
It's all too sweet and easy, and the band's music-which is composed by John Carney, the movie's writer and director, and Gary Clark-is bland and overproduced.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
In Tyler Perry's latest opus, "The Single Moms Club," he demonstrates how disparate stereotypes can find common ground through the power of a single cliche.

Name : Bill Zwecker / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
While the subject is very timely and worthy, this lame tale just falls completely flat.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A veritable farmyard of fun.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Carney understands how music not only provides a soundtrack for a life, but can change a life, too.

Name : Walter V. Addiego / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Don't be deterred by the timeworn material - as a romantic vision of youth and rock, "Sing Street" is number one with a bullet.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
A delightful film that is almost impossible to watch without a smile on your face.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Lightning strikes thrice as Irish writer-director John Carney's let's-make-a-band formula once more yields winning results.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A sweetly funny, charming and poignant depiction of this very specific time in life - at once universal and specific - when anything seems possible. And with killer pop tunes to boot.

Name : Sheila O'Malley / Alias : RogerEbert.com
Carney has a humorous and loving eye for detail, an intuitive ear for dialogue, and the film is extremely personal in a way that is universal.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
Those put off by the prospect of a musical in the '80s pop style of Duran Duran or Pet Shop Boys should cast their prejudices aside when it comes to John Carney's "Sing Street." You might find yourself singing along.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Carney has an uncanny way of telling a story through music. "Sing Street" reminds us of being young and lost in a song, realizing with a jolt that someone else had the same feelings we did.

Name : Scott Marks / Alias : San Diego Reader
John Carney (Begin Again) once again tries to reheat a Once souffle and instead serves up a flat, cheerily antiseptic period musical.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : indieWIRE
Once with a bigger budget and smaller actors, this is a winsomely entertaining musical tribute to how passion can pave the way towards a better life.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
For Illumination Entertainment, "Sing" is a game-changer, underscoring why company founder Chris Meledandri is the hottest name in animation today.

Name : Frank Scheck / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
This is a club that you don't want to join.

Name : Nicolas Rapold / Alias : New York Times
Mr. Perry's latest film touches upon some recognizable and realistic challenges with efficient compassion, but there's probably more dramatic tension in a car pool than in this film's collection of predicaments.

Name : Tim Grierson / Alias : The New Republic
The beguiling modesty of the film ends up being even more important than its music or incredibly likable characters. Like most of the bands it honors, "Sing Street" may be a bit disposable, but its electric emotions linger like a warm memory.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Fans of Carney's lush romanticism and hook-laden lyricism will be thrilled to add this one to their playlist.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
In any other movie, the filmmaker would rightly be accused of trafficking in lazy stereotypes, but lazy stereotypes are the beachhead into which Tyler Perry has firmly planted his flag.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
While this darling film is inspired by a year in the sentimental filmmaker's own early life, it is founded on the hope and charm of song.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
Sing Street feels personal, as well as universal, and it captures the warring factions of youthful euphoria and despair.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
This is How Stella Got Her Groove Back for the Pop-Tart crowd, a wish-fulfillment weepie that narrowly clears Perry's low bar, thanks mostly to Wendi McLendon-Covey and Cocoa Brown

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Sing Street is the most romantic movie you'll find anywhere these days, brimming over with music, fun and the thrill of first love.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club is a sitcom masquerading as a feature film. And given Perry's snowballing small-screen presence, an eventual TV show of it would be no surprise.