Splendid.

First and foremost, Iris is a magnificent story about the enduring bond between two eccentric, astounding souls who somehow managed to find each other and hold on for dear life.

Director Richard Eyre has struck gold. Twice. Dench and Winslet are a riveting matchup.

Intelligent, poignant film.

A saga of unbearable sadness and romantic beauty.

Not just a fitting document of a life brilliantly lived but a vibrant, almost palpitating piece of cinema.

Despite the sad denouement, it's still the love story of the year.

It's a powerful, affecting tale that uses scenes of the young couple's new love as a counterpoint to Iris' final days - memories of a brightest spring echoing in the darkest depths of winter.

The union of thought and feeling becomes flesh and blood thanks to four brilliant performers in Iris.

The film is so crisply acted and smartly drawn that you barely notice the cracks in the veneer.

Suffers from PBS syndrome, but Dame Judi Dench cures with a moving portrayal of life with Alzheimer's.

Dench is wholly extraordinary in a characterization that is frequently muted, literally and necessarily.

The film is not a biopic or a portrait of a famous marriage so much as it is an imaginative essay on what made a union between two radically different people work as well as it did.

Iris is difficult to watch, given that it requires you to witness the transformation of the title character from a literate, vibrant woman to the ghost of her former self.