Infamous

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Infamous gives you the unique opportunity to see how two sets of filmmakers can take exactly the same story, make extremely tough though different choices in emphasis and tone and achieve brilliant movies.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Less a parable of literary ethics than a showcase of literary personality, and it is in the end more touching than troubling.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Jones gets everything--the gestures, the generosity, the mean streak, the bending of the ear to recitals of woe, whether across a lunch table or a prison cell. He even nails the voice, like that of a chorister caught running a racket with the incense.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Dizzy with celebrity, New York society and gay life (if all that isn't the same thing), Infamous is more fun. But "Capote" is a better movie.

Empire Will Lawrence

While less beguiling than "Capote," Infamous remains a soulful and searching portrayal of the writer, carried with immense charm and vivacity by its leading man.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Though it's not as good as the brilliant "Capote," it's nevertheless a riveting, well-made picture.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Infamous is the better Capote film, yes, but also the less easily digestible one, the more eccentric one and -- yes -- the gayer one.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Infamous successfully captures a sense of the loneliness of a writer's life.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

I don't know if that makes Infamous a better movie, but it's certainly as good and a lot more fun. British actor Toby Jones is so physically right in the role, you'll think Capote is playing himself.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Watch Infamous on its own. It's a worthy film in its own right, with its own virtues.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Overall, McGrath's film has superior star power (including Gwyneth Paltrow in a one-scene role as a Peggy Lee-like chanteuse), is franker about the sexual nature of Capote's fascination with the murderous Smith and his sad, strangled dreams, and spends more time establishing Capote's glittering New York life before setting him adrift in the heartland.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The pleasure of Infamous is in its gallery of larger-than-life portrayals.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

"Capote" is serious, deep and unadorned in the manner of the 1967 movie adaptation of the writer's true-crime novel "In Cold Blood." And Infamous boasts the high-gloss frivolity of the 1961 film version of Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

ReelViews James Berardinelli

"Capote" is the more intellectual of the two films; Infamous is the more emotional. They exist to complement, not eclipse, one another.

USA Today Claudia Puig

It's a stellar cast, but you can't help but lament the bad timing.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

Ultimately, the problem with Infamous isn't that it revisits Capote's turf--it's that it does the same things well, and leaves the same unsatisfying holes.

Variety David Rooney

Writer-director Douglas McGrath's boldest stroke is to impose a more overtly gay interpretation on a central relationship in which the attraction was generally supposed to be unspoken.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

It's just a lesser version, light in weight and absent the ache that permeated the movie for which Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Academy Award. It can't withstand the comparisons. It's good, especially during its first half, just not good enough.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Neither movie (Capote/Infamous) gives you the whole picture, but it's fun to see them both and rearrange the pieces in your head.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

McGrath says that he considers his film to be lighter in tone than TC 1, which is baffling. The reverse seems the case.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The film benefits from three splendid performances: Toby Jones as Capote, an aggressively gay elf exuding a tosspot charm; Sandra Bullock as Nelle Harper Lee, a novelist who uses spoken words with quiet precision, and Daniel Craig as Perry, a deluded monster who is nonetheless forthright and strong.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A garish and fascinating little movie that comes bouncing in the wake of Bennett Miller's "Capote" like a yipping puppy trying to keep up with an elegant show dog.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The added value that writer-director Douglas McGrath has in mind is gossip -- and a goggly interest in gossip becomes the glittering gimmick of Infamous.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Compared to "Capote," this new film is altogether lighter.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The only difference between the two films is that this one chronicles Capote's New York environment in more detail (and with humorous interludes), and it's a tad lighter in tone and perhaps a bit less high-horse condemning of its subject's literary ethics.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Understanding what McGrath is trying to pull off is not the same thing as McGrath pulling it off; as ambitious as it is, Infamous falters in execution too often to create a lasting impression.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Though stylistically all over the place, it's not without interest.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The film's most pleasing surprise is the beautifully nuanced portrait of Capote's confidante, "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee, by Sandra Bullock. You heard me. Bullock gives the film what it otherwise lacks: the ring of truth.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Flashy, fun, shallow, easy-going and without a hope of brilliance.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Infamous, which mines almost the exact same ground as "Capote," comes up 300 days late and artistically close to bankruptcy.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

McGrath makes literal what the other movie only hinted at -- that Perry falls in love with Capote -- turning the relationship between author and subject into something far less complicated and more mundane.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Infamous has dramaturgical strengths, whether or not it gets the facts right. Jones's performance as Capote tends to be delivered in a monotone, yet thanks to Craig all of their scenes together are potently realized.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It bears roughly the same resemblance to the Bennett Miller-Dan Futterman-Philip Seymour Hoffman masterpiece as the now-forgotten "Valmont" did to "Dangerous Liaisons."

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The problem is that the first half of Infamous is nowhere near as comic as McGrath intends. Instead the picture gives off a tone of arch stylization that plays as artificial, overwrought and off-putting.