Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : TIME Magazine
A movie of (increasingly rare) truly indie sensibility, made by women who are confident about healthy feminine resilience.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Writer/director Marielle Heller, in her captivating debut film "The Diary of a Teenage Girl," hits exactly the right tone for a complicated balancing act, and for a film that could very easily have gone wrong.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
An honest and personal and unblurred examination (even through that druggy blur) of a tricky voyage into womanhood.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
For a movie about such fraught topics, sometimes rendered with admirable and non-squeamish explicitness, Diary often eschews melodrama; when the plot turns, it does so abruptly, providing a credible simulation of real-life tumult.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
Seldom has teenage sexual awakening been covered from a female perspective - with a fickle alternating confidence, self-doubt and voracious appetite - quite so frankly or delicately.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
The Diary of a Teenage Gir is the kind of movie that seems a lot more adventuresome than it is.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
The loose quality makes for a bit of a shaggy story with some rough edges, but the bursting, youthful heart throbs with that mix of longing and triumph that is first love.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
Heller's debut directorial effort is incisive and universal, despite its very specific and detailed setting.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
a riveting, resonant first feature from Marielle Heller, with a breakout star performance from Brit actress Bel Powley.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Films often fail to capture the turmoil of being a teenager - but not this one.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
I made it two-thirds of the way through the routine sexual coming-of-age yarn "Diary of a Teenage Girl" when it occurred to me that anything else I could conceivably be doing would be more interesting.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Working from Phoebe Gloeckner's 2002 graphic novel/memoir, Heller gets the shabby glamour and bleached sunshine of '70s San Francisco just right, coloring several scenes with vivid blooms of animation.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Heller approaches the film in just the right way: As an absolute outgrowth of arty Minnie's own pent-up creativity.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The film is harsh but wonderful. It shouldn't be funny, too, but somehow it is, and somehow it's the right kind of funny.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's work, but it's ultimately rewarding work. It tackles some truths that other movies wouldn't touch, not even with a stick and thick gloves.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The novel is life-specific, but what makes Minnie - on the page and now on the screen - greater than any one girl is how she tells her own story in her own soaringly alive voice.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Heller and Powley present a journey that, stripped to its most basic emotional elements, is timeless and universal.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
Thank goodness the irreverent but earnest Diary of a Teenage Girl avoids the moralizing that would usually accompany a film about young people, sex and drugs.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
What a ballsy film - and honest too.

Name : Dennis Harvey / Alias : Variety
A fine adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner's autobiographical novel about a sexually precocious 1970s adolescence.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The first thing to know about The Diary of a Teenage Girl is that young British actress Powley is staggeringly good in it.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A strikingly intimate look at a teenager's sexual life in an outstanding debut film.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Any woman who survived puberty knows that girlhood is all about obsession - just ask Justin Bieber, One Direction, New Kids on the Block, or the Beatles.

Name : Rebecca Keegan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Big summer action movies can be thrilling, but if you really want to feel your heart pounding out of your chest, try being a 15-year-old girl for 101 minutes.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"The Diary of a Teenage Girl" is a breakthrough moment in the culture in that it depicts youthful female sexuality . not just with the unapologetic frankness the boys usually get, but with an awareness of all the places a girl's urges will take her .

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
It dares to show the heroine as something more complicated than a victim. As a result the movie lands somewhere outside the battle lines of contemporary gender politics, which may be why it feels true.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Frank, poignant and daring, "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" invites you into the mind-set of a sexually adventurous 16-year-old girl - and suggests you leave your judgment at the door.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Expect to feel uncomfortable watching Diary of a Teenage Girl, which is precisely the point of this finely etched debut feature by writer/director Marielle Heller.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Heller's empathy and, let's be honest, her denial of prurience appears to free Powley from embarrassment. She's seizing this part, not shrinking from it.

Name : Kristin Tillotson / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The Diary of a Teenage Girl" is as rewarding as it is squirm-inducing for its honesty, audacity and artful portrayal of adolescence from a girl's point of view.

Name : Elaine Teng / Alias : The New Republic
It's unlikely to make a box office splash, but it's a startlingly tough, authentic depiction of budding womanhood.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Deep - deep! - in this impenetrable block of ice is an actual, OK story. But the patience it takes to get to it? The return on investment just isn't there.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Like a car mirror warning that objects may be closer than they appear, director Claudia Llosa's chilly New Age drama gives off a deceptive sense of depth.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
For all its brooding atmosphere and visual poeticism, the film offers a perspective on the lives of its characters that feels narrow and superficial.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
The truth is elusive, and so is Aloft. Maybe viewers will figure it out cleaner than this reviewer did. And maybe the best answers aren't served on platters.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
One problem with "Aloft" is that the audience is never made to care about Ivan. All we know is that he's repellent.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
The story doesn't add up to much, but the stark natural imagery and frank discussions of spiritual longing leave strong impressions.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Llosa's film pushes its enigmatic and quietly brooding qualities to the point that it's inaccessible, despite some mildly intriguing spiritual story elements and skilled performances .

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
The majority of the film strives for ethereal lyricism but the melodrama of these lives never proves strong enough to anchor any real emotional connection.

Name : Michael Nordine / Alias : Village Voice
Ambitious aesthetics aren't matched by Llosa's overly opaque approach; what's meant to seem artfully understated most often results in confusion over basic details.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"Adrift" is a more fitting title for this unmoored and glacially paced star vehicle, which prizes exasperating inscrutability over effective storytelling.

Name : Bruce Demara / Alias : Toronto Star
It's a meditative and intriguing tale filled with mystical imagery that never reveals all of its secrets. That's a good thing.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
The characters in "Aloft" seem to float over their strong passions, like birds riding on columns of air, without ever alighting.

Name : Rebecca Keegan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Aloft" sets up a compelling mystery - how could a loving mother abandon her son? - and then, frustratingly, refuses to solve it.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Llosa's tableaus are also striking - there is a suggestion here that this is an impoverished, futuristic wasteland - but their back story is elusive to the point of meaninglessness.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Aloft is ultimately a movie about our need to keep moving and searching. And at times, it's quite a lovely one.

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
The entire flashback structure is building toward one of those twist endings that the characters would already know, but that's being deliberately withheld from the audience in an attempt at suspense.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Some movies practically dare you to give up. "Aloft" is a beautifully shot, frustratingly vague and deeply ponderous mystery/spiritual journey about terminally unhappy souls.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Even those incapable of getting ahead of the film's big reveal . will probably lose interest before all the cards are laid on the table. What's really been withheld, in this dreary drag of a movie, is a reason to care.