Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo

Even if Hayao Miyazaki's career is complete, a work like this serves to remind us of the shining beacons he's left behind him, the testaments to pursuing beauty in the face of so much ugliness, themselves lasting reminders of the quiet rewards of determination.

Variety by Scott Foundas

Miyazaki is at the peak of his visual craftsmanship here, alternating lush, boldly colored rural vistas with epic, crowded urban canvases, soaring aerial perspectives and test flights both majestic and ill-fated.

Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman

The film is visually sumptuous, morally ambiguous, dramatic and dreamlike, with a narrative as engrossing as any live-action movie of 2013. It’s easy to follow yet hard to shake.

Tampa Bay Times by Steve Persall

This is a gorgeous production, even by Miyazaki's standards.

New York Post by Lou Lumenick

Miyazaki offers a vivid, at times fantastical view of Japan between the wars, wracked by the Great Depression, a fearsome earthquake that leveled Tokyo in 1923, a tuberculosis epidemic and the rise of fascism.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

To see The Wind Rises is to simultaneously marvel at the work of a master and regret that this film is likely his last.

Entertainment Weekly by Keith Staskiewicz

As gorgeously animated as any of his previous movies, Wind has Miyazaki trading in his more fantastical impulses for contemplative, old-fashioned drama and period detail.

The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton

It might not be the director's most immediately accessible films, but it's among his most fascinating and beguiling.

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

A very honest film from a great Japanese artist.

Time by Richard Corliss

It is vigorous, subtle, thematically daring, visually gorgeous.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

The grim subtext of The Wind Rises goes largely unacknowledged, leading to a gaping hole in this otherwise beautifully realized narrative that celebrates the power of curiosity as a motivating force.

Village Voice by Simon Abrams

An emotionally generous and expansively detailed romantic fantasy.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

There are visual flights of fancy here as glorious as anything Miyazaki’s studio has created, but the story is rooted in a country trudging towards its own destruction.

Time Out by Eric Hynes

Jiro’s genius is godlike, but his personality is nonexistent; time is too-briskly spanned, then ground into blow-by-blow melodrama.

The Guardian by Xan Brooks

A gorgeous yet ultimately frustrating tribute to the Japanese airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi.