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One of the most complex and powerful literary scripts in recent times.
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100An actors' feast.
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100Achieves its exquisite tension--deepening beautifully from a "Death in Venice" setup to an imaginative meditation, on art and life, of uncommon sensitivity.
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100The film, built around McKellen's magnificent performance, is a sleek and deceptively artful work, a bio-pic that manages to encompass the whole of a man's rich life by concentrating solely on the final months of it.
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90A profoundly moving human drama, a quasi love story about two lost men who form an unlikely friendship.
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90Elegantly witty and haunting . . . McKellen gives the performance of his career . . . and Brendan Fraser excels.
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90A strange and lovely combination of cinematic nostalgia and offbeat (gay) love story.
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90In a performance of enormous complexity and nuance, emotions seem to race across McKellen's face like hurrying clouds.
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88It has the most beautiful ending of any American film in years, a coda of reconciliation and remembrance set in a gentle L.A. rain.
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88Chances are, the more you love classic cinema, the more you will find Gods is your cup of tea.
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80Witty and beautifully textured.
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80Curiously, one of the film's stranger effects is that it's more convincing as a meditation on desire and Hollywood than as a biographical exploration.
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This chamber drama is a deeply felt and oddly moving reverie on death and the process of taking stock of one's life.
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80There are so many colors to McKellen's performance, so many diverse emotions fleetingly play on his face, that resisting his art is out of the question. Better work by an actor will not be seen this year.
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80What especially elevates it is the razor-sharp cleverness of McKellen's performance, which brings unusual fullness and feeling to a most unusual man.
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80Doesn’t always convince, particularly in the last lap. But it’s an engrossing, unusual, imaginatively executed bit of psychological gamesmanship nonetheless.
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80Eminently watchable thanks to strong performances from its three leads (McKellen, Redgrave, Fraser).
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78So much of the credit must be laid at the feet of Ian McKellen, whose portrait of Whale is a study in acting excellence.
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75Gods and Monsters is not a deep or powerful film, but it is a good-hearted one.
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75An engaging character study full of lyrical images and strong performances. It's an exceedingly well-made film.
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75Although the film doesn't probe Whale's personality as deeply as it might, the acting is excellent and movie buffs will enjoy its behind-the-scenes references and nostalgic film clips.
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75A rich, multi- layered portrait of a director from Hollywood's Golden Age whose own life was as interesting as any of his movies.
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70A showcase for a uniquely sympathetic virtuoso performance by legendary stage actor Ian McKellen in an otherwise minor film.
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70While McKellen's sharp performance provides the main attraction, the film wouldn't work without both Fraser, who brings something extra to a character who could easily have been a mere lunk, and director Bill Condon's careful integration of larger themes.
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70The relationship is touching, painful, revealing, and often funny, which is true of the film as a whole as well.
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70Beyond the fantastic contrivances of Gods and Monsters, these performances are startlingly human.
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70Condon's obvious attempts to draw parallels between Whale's life and his work tend to be heavy-handed, and detract from an otherwise intriguing film.
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63As a portrait of a deliciously eccentric individual, Gods and Monsters features a vivid performance from Ian McKellen that makes you think not of James Whale but of Ian McKellen.
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55There's a great movie to be made with this story.
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50Lynn Redgrave is nearly incomprehensible as the housekeeper with some sort of housekeeperly accent. [Dec. 14, 1998]
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50I'm too big a fan of director James Whale (1896-1957) to take a film about him lightly, and I'm afraid this speculative 1998 movie about his last days won't do.
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30Psychologically thin, artistically flabby, and symbolically opaque.
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Positive: 3 out of 4
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Mixed: 1 out of 4
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Negative: 0 out of 4
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HaleyA.10